This week we are kicking off a brand-new teaching series that is going to take us through the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead on Easter. For the next few weeks, we are going to be walking through Luke’s Passion Narrative beginning with Jesus’ triumphant ride into Jerusalem. These stories are perhaps families, but there is great worth in giving a fresh set of eyes to an old story. You just might be surprised what we’ll find along the way. Let’s get started with a look at Jesus’ message of judgment and how we need to adjust our lives in light of it.

But Is It Real?

Did your folks ever leave you home alone when you were a kid? Once I was old enough, mine did on occasion. And maybe your experience was like mine. Did they ever leave and by the absence of any departing instructions give you total free reign over the house and what you would do in it while they were gone? Yeah, mine didn’t do that very often either. There’s just too much trouble a kid can get into when left entirely to his own devices. What’s the solution to this problem? Why, it’s to keep them engaged with chores and projects, of course! As a result, when your parents left, you got a list. If you completed the list before they got home, that was good. If you didn’t…not so good. 

Confession time: How often did you fail to complete the list? Okay, you only have to answer that if your parents aren’t in the room. If your parents are in the room, you can just let that be your little secret. This is perhaps the more interesting question: How often did you just make it look like you completed the list to make them happy, when in reality you did nothing of the sort? Your room looked spotless when they returned for an inspection which made them as happy as could be. Meanwhile, you were praying harder than you had ever prayed before that they didn’t do something. What was that something? Open the closet door where you had shoveled everything at the last second when you heard the garage door going up because you were playing a video game the whole time they were gone instead of doing what you were asked to do. Your little veneer of righteousness was just that: a veneer. You hadn’t done what they had asked you to do at all. Sure, you got everything off your bedroom floor, but you hadn’t actually cleaned anything. You followed the letter of the law, but not its spirit. At some point, though, you knew they were going to open that closet door. And if you hadn’t bothered to take care of the mess waiting in there before that day arrived, it was not going to be a pretty day. 

This morning, we are kicking off a brand-new teaching series. Each year about this time we go on a journey to the cross together. We take that journey because the cross was the prelude to the empty tomb, and we are all about that empty tomb. To paraphrase what the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, the whole of Christianity hangs on the matter of the empty tomb. If it really was empty—and there is a very good argument to be made that it was indeed empty on that fateful Sunday morning—then everything Jesus said is true and we need to give Him our lives. If it wasn’t, then we should just pack up and go home because nothing else matters. 

In light of all of this, walking intentionally toward the cross together, remembering and delighting in the story of how it all unfolded is a good thing to do. Well, each of the last three years we have taken this journey with the help of one of the Gospel authors, letting them navigate us through their passion narrative. Along the way we have covered Matthew, Mark, and John. If you are ticking off the Gospel accounts on your fingers, the one we are missing is Luke. And so, here we are. Luke’s presentation of the final week of Jesus’ earthly life is just as remarkable as all the others, but he gives special attention to the sacrificial nature of what Jesus was doing. Let’s give our attention, then, to Luke’s Story of Sacrifice, as we make our way to Easter, experiencing together the wonder of what Jesus did for us. 

Now, selecting where to start a journey through the Scriptures is tough because each part builds on what comes before. But if we are going to join Luke on his journey to the cross, the best place to start is with Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. If you have your copy of the Scriptures handy, join me in Luke 19. Over the course of the ten chapters leading up to this one, Luke has followed Jesus on His journey from Capernaum to Jerusalem. He gives the most thorough coverage of this trip of all the Gospel authors. Whether the journey is covered in detail like Luke does, or summarized in the span of a single verse like Matthew does, though, it ends in the same place: Jesus rides into Jerusalem, kicking off a series of events that would end with His death on a cross. 

This is a story that is perhaps familiar to many folks who have been around the church for very long. Jesus rides into Jerusalem to great fanfare. How much fanfare did the whole scene actually attract? Honestly, we’re not sure. We like to imagine it as this humongous ordeal, but it doesn’t seem to have registered with the Roman authorities in the capital city which is pretty notable considering the crowd was shouting things like, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” Rome tended to be pretty sensitive to claims of authority that rivaled their own. Yet the king was coming even if no one really understood who He was or what exactly that meant. 

Look at how this unfolded starting in Luke 19:28: “When he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples and said, ‘Go into the village ahead of you. As you enter it, you will find a young donkey tied there, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. If anyone asks you, “Why are you untying it?” say this: “The Lord needs it.”’ So those who were sent left and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the young donkey, its owners said to them, ‘Why are you untying the donkey?’ ‘The Lord needs it,’ they said. Then they brought it to Jesus, and after throwing their clothes on the donkey, they helped Jesus get on it. As he was going along, they were spreading their clothes on the road. Now he came near the path down the Mount of Olives, and the whole crowd of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the miracles they had seen: ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven!’ Some of the Pharisees from the crowd told him, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples.’ He answered, ‘I tell you, if they were to keep silent, the stones would cry out.’” 

Now, there’s a lot going on here that we don’t have time to go all the way into this morning because we’ve got a lot of text to cover. But I want you to notice a couple of things. The disciples were quoting from Psalm 118 which is all about the victory of the Lord given to His people. Jesus’ riding into town on a donkey was an intentional reference to Zechariah 9:9 which is all about the coming of the Messiah to the people. His coming is a mark of victory for the people of God, but it is also so that He can announce the judgment of God on His enemies. And who are those enemies? Those who would oppose God’s people and plans. They will be known by their rebellion against God’s revealed Messiah—a revelation Jesus was consciously claiming for Himself in about as clear and dramatic a fashion as possible. As for the Pharisees’ fussing, they would have been all worked up about the blasphemy of the disciples’ acclamations, but also about the potential of drawing unwanted attention from Rome. 

More than any of this, though, Jesus was riding into town like one who was supposed to be there, sent by God for a mission. As for the nature of this mission, Jesus reveals some of that in what comes next. “As he approached and saw the city, he wept for it, saying, ‘If you knew this day what would bring peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. For the days will come on you when your enemies will build a barricade around you, surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you and your children among you to the ground, and they will not leave one stone on another in your midst, because you didn’t recognize the time when God visited you.’” Then, once Jesus got into town, He marched straight to the temple and made a big show of driving out the vendors who were profiting off the piety of the faithful with the explicit permission of the religious leaders of the Jews. 

So, what was Jesus’ mission? At least in part, His mission was judgment. He was coming into town in the fashion of a prophet of old to declare the judgment of God on all those who had turned from Him. God’s judgment was coming, and it would not be pretty. He was yet going to offer the people a way out of it—a way out of it that Jesus Himself was soon going to make available, reminding us that God is both just and loving; just in holding us accountable for our sins yet loving in paying the price that sin demands Himself—but the judgment was coming. In fact, historically, we know it came, and it came very much like Jesus described it there. In A.D. 70, the Roman army surrounded the city, violently crushed all of the resistance within it, and utterly destroyed the walls and the temple, leaving not a single stone standing on another. 

We often think of Jesus as coming for salvation, and He did. We should make no mistake about that. But when He rolled up into Jerusalem on the day we celebrate as Palm Sunday, He came to announce judgment on the people. God’s just judgment was nigh, and only those who were willing to accept His offer of life and salvation would be exempt from it. For everyone else, the end was near. God’s patience with the unfaithfulness of the people was wearing thin, and their unwillingness, their chosen inability, to recognize the Lord when He was right in front of them was just making things worse. Luke actually goes on to show over and over again in chapter 20 how this cluelessness gets put on display by the very people who should have been among the first to recognize who Jesus is and celebrate Him for it. 

As soon as Jesus got into town, the religious leaders of the Jews began to challenge Him. Now, to be somewhat fair, He returned the favor, but He was challenging them from the position of the kingdom they were supposedly living in support of, meanwhile they were coming at him from the standpoint of wanting to maintain their illusion of power and control. They were perfectly content with shoving everything in the closet and calling themselves clean while Jesus was inviting them to get their act together and actually live up to the ideals they were espousing. 

Jesus, for His part, was loving, but bold in calling them out for their failures. He refused to step into their traps again and again and again. They tried to challenge His authority right at the beginning of Luke 20 by demanding that He reveal the source of it. He responded that He would be delighted to tell them the source of His authority if they would answer a question for Him. He then went on to ask a question about their thoughts on the ministry of John the Baptist that was geared to reveal that they were firmly on the wrong side of an 80-20 religious and cultural and political issue. They refused to answer. So then did He. 

He went on to offer a parable that was a clear indictment of their faithlessness and their rejection of God and His purposes in spite of so much rhetoric to the contrary. The people loved seeing the power brokers of their society challenged like this. Jesus had a knack for keeping public opinion firmly on His side that kept the hands of these men who knew they lived and died by public opinion tightly tied. 

The religious leaders tried to get Jesus trapped with questions about paying taxes and the doctrine of the resurrection, but once again, Jesus wriggled out of their traps and turned things around on them so that they were the ones the people were starting to see as feckless, faithless, and even incompetent. He famously told the Pharisees they were to give to Caesar what belonged to Caesar, and to God the things that belong to God. He embarrassed the Sadducees by correcting their unscriptural beliefs about the resurrection, arguing that God is the God of the living, not the dead. They couldn’t out-think Jesus. They couldn’t out-argue Him. They couldn’t sway public opinion the way He could. Jesus was basically better and smarter than they were at every level. Jesus wound up in a position from which He could denounce the whole group in a very public way. 

“While all the people were listening, he said to his disciples, ‘Beware of the scribes, who want to go around in long robes and who love greetings in the marketplaces, the best seats in the synagogues, and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and say long prayers just for show. These will receive harsher judgment.’” If you want the full version of that indictment, Matthew includes a much longer version.

Over and over again the religious leaders of the people demonstrated just how profound their rejection of Jesus really was. They were playing the role Jesus ascribed to them in his parable perfectly. The tragic irony is that they understood Jesus’ parable, and played the role anyway. They simply didn’t agree with His assessment. And that would not normally be such a big deal—especially politically speaking—except for the inconvenient fact that He was…well…Jesus. His assessment was correct. Theirs was not. They did not recognize the time God visited them, and worse still, they were leading the rest of people into blindness with them. 

But just when it looked like things were set immovably on this path to destruction—a path Jesus was about to describe in far more graphic terms as we will see together next week—a light shone in the darkness. The light was small, especially in contrast to just how much darkness there really was in the city, but even a small light can drive back a whole lot of darkness in its shining. Look at this with me in the beginning of Luke 21 now. 

One day, after another bruising round of debates in the temple complex with the religious leaders, Jesus was sitting quietly off to one side simply resting and observing the scene playing out before Him. As He did, something caught His eye—and if something caught Jesus’ eye, we should pay attention to it as well because that means it’s important. While Jesus was watching people bring their financial offerings to the temple, He saw something that left Him hopeful and encouraged. “He looked up and saw the rich dropping their offerings into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow dropping in two tiny coins.” 

I can pretty much guarantee you that if anyone else even bothered to notice this poor, old widow, they did not have the same reaction to her that Jesus did. They would have seen a woman put such a small amount of money into the treasury box that she might as well have not put in anything at all. Hers was a truly worthless gift. That money wasn’t going to be able to accomplish anything. I mean, sure, it was going in as part of the collective offering that altogether was going to do much good, but her portion of it was so small as to be entirely inconsequential. The contrast was especially glaring with all of the rich people dumping in huge amounts of money on either side of her. At the very least, someone might have looked on her gift with belittling, patronizing sympathy. “How sad for her that she only has that much to give. She might be better off keeping that for herself. Surely God will understand.” 

Yet this is not what Jesus saw. He saw faith and faithfulness in a measure that wildly exceeded what anyone else around her had. “‘Truly I tell you,’ he said. ‘This poor widow has put in more than all of them. For all these people have put in gifts out of their surplus, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.’” The size of the gift people brought didn’t even register with Jesus. The size of the sacrifice was the only thing that mattered. A big gift that wasn’t sacrificial was meaningless to Him…it is meaningless to God. But the kind of sacrificial gift this widow brought was given out of faith and faith alone. Her sacrifice was an indication of a faith that was vastly more significant in her life and through her life than what anyone else was demonstrating. It wasn’t even close. 

Now, as with many of the other stories we have breezed through this morning, we could undoubtedly spend a whole morning talking about nothing but this story. But I don’t want you to miss the forest for the trees today. And to really grasp the forest, let’s take a quick run into the distant past. When God was going to bring judgment on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, He first went to Abraham and announced His intentions. Part of the reason for that is likely the fact that Abraham’s nephew, Lot, was living in Sodom, but I think the bigger reason is that God was inviting Abraham to take an intercessory posture toward the evil cities that mirrored God’s own heart. Moved by compassion and, no doubt, an understanding of the horrors God was going to unleash on these massive cities even if they did deserve them, Abraham essentially bargains God down to be willing to spare the entire population if He can find just ten righteous individuals in the cities. He can’t, but He does notice and save the one—Lot—who was there along with his family. 

That narrative is an introduction to the idea that this part of Luke’s story drives forward that faithfulness and righteousness are always things that get God’s attention. He notices when people are faithful. He really notices when that faith comes at a cost. He really, really notices when it comes at a cost that very few others are paying. He notices this and will reward it richly when the time comes. Now, what that reward is going to look like, we don’t know. But we shouldn’t overlook the reward this woman has received. It’s easy to miss. After all, we don’t have any evidence that God miraculously provided for her, that her life got any easier, that she was suddenly flush with resources so she could give more. Jesus never said a word to her. He didn’t verbally encourage her. He just watched passively. 

How is any of this a reward? Because any of those kinds of rewards would have been temporary. What she has received is something far greater than that. She received glory and honor from God. How? By virtue of the fact that we are still telling her story. Think about all the people around her whose names were known by the masses in that day. Think about all the people who were culturally significant, religiously significant, politically significant. Think about all the celebrities. Nobody ever thinks about them anymore. Nobody talks about them except to use them as an anonymous bad example. But this woman? We may not know her name, but we are still telling her story and praising her faithfulness. We are still highlighting her sacrificial generosity as an example of the kind of thing God loves. She receives fresh glory and praise in the presence of Christ every time her story gets repeated; glory she no doubt directs straight back to Jesus. That’s a reward that won’t ever end. Jesus may have been coming for judgment, but her faithfulness caught His eye, and that fact should catch ours. Jesus always honors genuine faithfulness like hers. Jesus is coming, and He will honor genuine faithfulness. 

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is that we not miss that. Jesus is coming, and He will honor genuine faithfulness. He came once already. He was born as a baby. He lived a sinless life during which time He told us how we should live. Then He rode up into Jerusalem to make it possible for us to do it. And when He came, He came for judgment. He announced that judgment, and that judgment did indeed come. We know that from history. But before that time, He made a way for anyone willing to take it to avoid it. That way was all about faith in Him; faith like what this woman had in abundance. Then Jesus left. But before He left, He promised us that He was coming back again. And just like on His ride into Jerusalem at the very beginning of His passion story, this time is going to be for judgment too. And just like before, He will notice genuine faithfulness and reward it. Jesus is coming, and He will honor genuine faithfulness. 

I hope the implications for us here are obvious. Jesus is coming, and He will honor genuine faithfulness. What’s more, He’s going to recognize which is which. You may have been able to fool your parents with an act of obedience, but you can’t fool Jesus. He knows. He sees. And He’ll respond accordingly. So, take a minute sometime—you can do it right now if you want to—and ask yourself the hard questions. Then, be really honest about the answers. Is my faith genuine? Do I really believe it? Do I trust in Jesus more than in other things? Are the people around me going to agree with my answer to these questions? Jesus is coming, and He will honor genuine faithfulness. 

So, what do we do about this if our faithfulness isn’t where it should be? We invest in it. We do the things that are going to grow our faith. We invest time in the Scriptures. We invest time in prayer. We invest time in the church. We look for and are intentional about taking advantage of opportunities to have Gospel conversations. We practice the spiritual disciplines. We grab hold of practical, meaningful, helpful ways to be the hands and feet of Jesus. If your faith is going to be genuine, it’s got to move from your head and your heart to your hands. James made that much clear: Faith without works is dead. Believing matters…a lot…but believing without doing isn’t really believing at all. This woman put her faith into action and it caught Jesus’ attention. How are you putting your faith into action? Action just for show won’t do. In other words, the believing really does have to be there. But by the combination of both of these sides—belief that’s right and actions that give evidence of its veracity—you’ll start really growing. And Jesus will notice. Jesus is coming, and He will honor genuine faithfulness. Make sure yours is, and come back next week as we continue forward in Luke’s Story of Sacrifice.