Be careful of desiring prosperity but not by means of grace. John 12:10-12; Mark 11-12; Psa 118:22-26

John 12:10 But the chief priests took counsel that they might put Lazarus to death also;

 

It seems their meetings are ending up in the same way each time. Kill Jesus, the miracle worker, kill Lazarus, the miracle itself, let’s just kill all evidence of grace in this world so that we can stay fat, powerful, and wealthy.

 

Their time is short.

 

John 12:11 because on account of him many of the Jews were going away, and were believing in Jesus.

 

The construction of this verse is interesting. It says that because of Lazarus many of the Jews were going away, and were believing in Jesus.

 

Going away doesn’t mean just walking away, rather it means that they were going away from the religiosity of the Sanhedrin.

 

We have the imperfect active indicative from the verb u(pagw.[hupago] The imperfect tense is inchoative, which means a change of state and since the change is to faith in Christ, they began to withdraw from religion.

 

Religion is no good in fact it is evil.

 

They began to separate from the legalism and the teaching of salvation by works. The active voice indicates that as the believed in Christ they began to withdraw from religion. The indicative mood is the reality of separation from religion based on faith in the grace gospel. Therefore, Bible doctrine delivers the believer from religion.

           

“and believed on Jesus” - the imperfect tense this time indicates a succession of people believing in Jesus Christ. They have made the decision on their own which is the importance of human privacy in making the decision.

 

The reality is that only Christ Jesus is the working object for salvation.

 

Now the next day is what has come to be known as Palm Sunday. Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a colt as was prophesized but the Jews mistook what He entered Jerusalem to do.

 

The false celebration of this day has continued in religious perversions of Christianity because a religious Jew and a religious Christian share one thing in common: no doctrine so as to discern the works of the Lord.

 

On this day, the Jews are going to shout out a part of the song they would sing at certain feasts that is Psalm 118.

 

   

Ps 118:14-25

The Lord is my strength and song,

And He has become my salvation.

15 The sound of joyful shouting and salvation is in the tents of the righteous;

The right hand of the Lord does valiantly [This is the Lord on the Cross].

16 The right hand of the Lord [Jesus Christ] is exalted [This is the Lord on David’s throne in the Millennium];

The right hand of the Lord does valiantly.

17 I shall not die, but live,

And tell of the works of the Lord.

18 The Lord has disciplined me severely,

But He has not given me over to death [David did not die, Israel will not die but has a future, and the Lord was resurrected].

19 Open to me the gates of righteousness [Millennial temple];

I shall enter through them, I shall give thanks to the Lord.

20 This is the gate of the Lord;

The righteous will enter through it.

21 I shall give thanks to Thee, for Thou hast answered me;

And Thou hast become my salvation.

22 The stone which the builders rejected [rejection of Christ at the first Advent]

Has become the chief corner stone. [direct result of the cross so that the building made up of God’s regenerate people can be built]

23 This is the Lord's doing;

It is marvelous in our eyes.

24 This is the day which the Lord has made;

Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

25 O Lord, do save [Hosanna], we beseech Thee;

O Lord, we beseech Thee, do send prosperity! [this is a prayer for the beginning of the Millennium.]

26 Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord;

We have blessed you from the house of the Lord.

 

The point of this is that the doctrinal Jew who sung this song at the Passover and the feast of Tabernacles should have been fully instructed in the 2 advents of our Lord and that the first Advent contained the cross and the second Advent contained the crown.

 

But these are either religious believers or unbelievers who have no doctrinal framework and are therefore without understanding. They are only concerned with deliverance from the Romans and their entrance into the Millennium.

 

This is exactly what the bullying of the disciples upon Mary was doing; to forget the cross [represented by the costly perfume] and use someone else’s money for the poor.

 

Man cannot create perfect environment, only God can, and that perfect environment can only be based on making fallen mankind perfect and that only happens through the cross.

 

If Mary’s perfume was taken away and sold so that money could be given to the poor, that is just like skipping the cross so that Christ may rule over the world in His humanity and keep providing physical sustenance to all people.

 

The Jews attempted this after they saw Jesus feed 5000 with 5 loaves and two fishes.

 

John 6:14-15

When therefore the people saw the sign which He had performed, they said, "This is of a truth the Prophet who is to come into the world." 15 Jesus therefore perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force, to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.

 

 

He was tempted with this by Satan as well:

 

Matt 4:8-10

Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory; 9 and he said to Him, "All these things will I give You, if You fall down and worship me." 10 Then Jesus said to him, "Begone, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.'"

 

If Jesus had taken over the kingdoms of the world He certainly would have been able to provide for everyone, but by passing over the cross no one would have eternal life.

 

Could Christ have stayed on earth and provided loaf’s and fishes to the masses without going to the cross? Yes.

 

Would that have solved man’s problems? No.

 

The center of all God’s decrees on the earth is the cross and that is for the reason that man can do nothing, but God can make everything possible, and He did through the cross.

 

What they in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday don’t understand is that the crown cannot come without the historical act of the cross occurring first.

 

Any time the cross is bypassed then man is doing the work and that always results in religion, which is the worst thing that has ever happened to mankind.

 

God’s plan is a grace plan and grace is where God does the work for us. God the Son bears our sins and the cross the must come before the crown—that is God’s grace plan.

 

In effect this was the devil’s plan. If he could set up the Millennium without the cross then, again, Satan would have won the angelic conflict.  

 

This is one of Satan’s greatest attacks, on this Palm Sunday. He was trying the same trick as when he said to Jesus, “If you will fall down and worship me I will give you all the kingdoms of the world.”

 

Now, in effect, he is saying, “Forget the cross, pick up the crown, and start ruling.” Jesus Christ could not have a permanent kingdom if He skipped the cross because there would be no salvation.

 

A permanent kingdom has to have permanent people! There are no permanent people unless there is regeneration.

 

The feast of Passover must come before the feast of Tabernacles. Psalm 118 was sung at both feasts and the song clearly placed the cross before the crown, or Passover before Tabernacles.

 

Mark 11:1 And as they approached Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, He sent two of His disciples,

 

Mark 11:2 and said to them, "Go into the village opposite you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, on which no one yet has ever sat; untie it and bring it here.

 

Mark 11:3 "And if anyone says to you, 'Why are you doing this?' you say, 'The Lord has need of it'; and immediately he will send it back here." 

 

Mark 11:4 And they went away and found a colt tied at the door outside in the street; and they untied it.

 

Mark 11:5 And some of the bystanders were saying to them, "What are you doing, untying the colt?"

 

Mark 11:6 And they spoke to them just as Jesus had told them, and they gave them permission.

 

Mark 11:7 And they brought the colt to Jesus and put their garments on it; and He sat upon it.

 

Mark 11:8 And many spread their garments in the road, and others spread leafy branches which they had cut from the fields.

 

Mark 11:9 And those who went before, and those who followed after, were crying out,

"Hosanna!

Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord;

 

In verse 9 they are quoting:

 

Psalm 118:25 O Lord, do save [Hosanna], we beseech Thee;

O Lord, we beseech Thee, do send prosperity! [this is a prayer for the beginning of the Millennium.]

 

Psalm 118:26 Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord; We have blessed you from the house of the Lord.

 

They have confused the issue. What they should have been singing was Psalm 118:22, 23 [First advent: the cross] rather than Psalm 118:25,26 [second advent or the crown]. This is why verses 22 and 23 come before verses 25 and 26.

 

Psalm 118:22 The stone which the builders rejected [rejection of Christ at the first Advent]

Has become the chief corner stone. [direct result of the cross so that the building made up of God’s regenerate people can be built]

 

Psalm 118:23 This is the Lord's doing;

It is marvelous in our eyes.

 

This distortion in the minds of the Jews, wanting the Millennium before the cross is a satanic plan.

 

They want to make Jesus King right then and there without going to the cross.

 

Later on that day Jesus taught them something with regard to their mistake—Mark 12:1ff. This is again another place where we see the divine authorship of the word of God. We tie together the gospels, the epistles, and a psalm and it’s seamless, even though there are different authors who are in different locations, writing at different times, including Psalm 118 which was written close to a thousand years before the NT.

 

Mark 12:1 And He began to speak to them in parables: "A man planted a vineyard, and put a wall around it, and dug a vat under the wine press, and built a tower [restoration of the earth], and rented it out to vine-growers [man put in rule] and went on a journey. 

 

Mark 12:2 "And at the harvest time he sent a slave [prophets] to the vine-growers, in order to receive some of the produce of the vineyard from the vine-growers.

 

Mark 12:3 "And they took him, and beat him, and sent him away empty-handed.

 

Mark 12:4 "And again he sent them another slave, and they wounded him in the head, and treated him shamefully.

 

Mark 12:5 "And he sent another, and that one they killed; and so with many others, beating some, and killing others.

 

Mark 12:6 "He had one more to send, a beloved son [Jesus Christ who has just rode into Jerusalem on the colt]; he sent him last of all to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.'

 

Mark 12:7 But those vine-growers said to one another, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours!'

 

Mark 12:8 "And they took him, and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.

 

Mark 12:9 "What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the vine-growers [Jews], and will give the vineyard to others [Gentiles].

 

Now, note verse 10. Jesus quotes Psalm118, verses 22 and 23, rather than 25 and 26. So He hits them with what they should have been quoting. In other words, they did not distinguish between the first and the second advents. And Satan took advantage of that in order to do something to them—let’s forget about the cross and get the crown.

 

Mark 12:10 "Have you not even read this Scripture:

'The stone which the builders rejected,

This became the chief corner stone;

 

Mark 12:11 This came about from the Lord,

And it is marvelous in our eyes'? "

 

Is the word of God, God breathed or what?

 

This brings us back to John 12:12 where the Palm Sunday incident is recorded. But remembering that John is the Gospel of the Son of God it will be handled in a little different way.

 

John 12:12 On the next day the great multitude who had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem,

 

John is writing about the crowd that have come up the hill from Jerusalem, while the synoptic gospel writers write about the crowd that followed Jesus from Bethany. All of them will meet together at the outskirts of Jerusalem.

 

Those that were at Jerusalem have all come for the Passover. They have come from the surrounding provinces and from other foreign nations all controlled by the Roman Empire and by some estimates there are almost 3 million of them. Some portion, maybe thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands have come out to see the man who raised a man from the dead.

 

And all these Jews who have been under the yoke of the Roman Empire in Africa, Asia, and here in Israel all have been dreaming about one thing - their glorified state and nation that is prophesized in the scripture.

 

They all have national pride and lust for the fulfillment of the unconditional covenants which will be fulfilled by the Millennial reign of Christ. But what they have missed in their scriptures because of their lust for glory was that the suffering Savior has to come before the glorified Savior.

 

John 12:13 took the branches of the palm trees, and went out to meet Him, and began to cry out, "Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel."

 

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The effect of this criticism is not recorded in John, but in Matthew 26:8 and Mark 14:4 we see that the disciples became critical of Mary, following the lead of Judas.

 

Matt 26:6-9

Now when Jesus was in Bethany, at the home of Simon the leper, 7 a woman came to Him with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume, and she poured it upon His head as He reclined at the table. 8 But the disciples were indignant when they saw this, and said, "Why this waste? 9 "For this perfume might have been sold for a high price and the money given to the poor."

 

Mark 14:3-5

And while He was in Bethany at the home of Simon the leper, and reclining at the table, there came a woman with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume of pure nard; and she broke the vial and poured it over His head. 4 But some were indignantly remarking to one another, "Why has this perfume been wasted? 5 "For this perfume might have been sold for over three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor." And they were scolding her.

 

The disciples all became indignant and even scolded her saying that she wasted it.

 

Amazing. If you were in this crowd would you have agreed with them? Would you have chimed in along with them? These are the 11 - the disciples of Christ, the writers of scripture and those who are depicted in paintings with halos and pious looks on their faces.

 

They are so wrong it’s comical.

 

Beware of the herd-bound instinct! The disciples did not have any facts; they were influenced by the emotional revolt of Judas. As Judas spoke they reveal their own jealousy and vented it.  

 

Judas doesn’t care for the poor at all. The disciples were the victims of the herd instinct. Basically, they didn’t have enough doctrine to resist this thing.

 

Be careful who does your thinking for you!