Plan to attend our Good Friday Service at 7:00 PM on March 29.

MORNING READING: THE ESCALATING CONFLICT BY ANDREAS KOSTENBERGER & JUSTIN TAYLOR

It is now Tuesday morning, March 31, A.D. 33. The disciples point to the withered fig tree that Jesus had cursed the day before. Jesus gives his disciples a simple lesson from it: Have faith in God. In particular, he says, if they have undoubting faith they can throw even the mountains into the sea.

Now if the disciples had ears to hear they would recognize that Jesus is talking about more than seemingly magical powers that can curse trees and crumble mountains. He is talking about realities bigger than this.

Note that he closes this mini-lesson on mountain-moving, undoubting faith by saying, “whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” (Mark 11:25). Jesus is reminding them that failing to forgive looms as a bigger obstacle to answered prayer than a mountain. The disciples will soon face great challenges to their faith and their ability to forgive. Will they remember this withered tree on the road from Bethany?

As they approach the Holy City, the events from the day before could not have been far from their minds. As Jesus enters the Temple Mount, crowds gather to hear him teach (Luke 21:38), and the chief priests, scribes, and elders waste no time in making their move. They will try to lay four traps to ensnare their adversary.

Trap One: Whose Authority?

By whose authority, they demand to know, had Jesus carried out his actions the day before (Mark 11:28)? Jesus doesn’t take the bait. Instead, he turns the tables on them with a question of his own: “Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man?” (Mark 11:30). If they respond “from heaven,” the next question is obvious: Then why don’t you believe the one about whom John testifies? If they retort “from man,” they risk alienating the crowds that hold John in high esteem as a prophet.

Jesus then offers three parabolic stories (about two sons, murderous tenants, and guests at a wedding feast), all driving home the point that they are rejecting grace and truth in the service of hypocritical self-righteousness.

Trap Two: Whose Allegiance?

The leaders try a new tactic. They send Pharisees (a Jewish sect known for its zeal for the law) and Herodian’s (those loyal to Herod’s dynasty) to ask him a question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” (Matt. 22:15–22; Mark 12:13– 17; Luke 20:20–26). If he answers “yes,” he shatters people’s expectations of him as a Messiah who will overthrow Roman rule. If he says “no,” he can be arrested for fomenting revolt.

But Jesus deftly evades the either-or dilemma: The denarius has Caesar’s image on it; as long as Caesar is in power, it is appropriate to pay taxes to him. And we are also to give God the things that are God’s; since we are made in God’s image, we owe everything—all that we have and all that we are—to him. Pay your taxes and worship God.

Trap Three: Whose Wife in the Resurrection?

After Jesus has silenced the Pharisees and Herodian’s, the Sadducees (a Jewish sect denying the end-time resurrection of the dead) try to ridicule Jesus’s belief in the resurrection by asking a trick question about marriage in heaven (Matt. 22:23–33; Mark 12:18–27; Luke 20:27–40). Jesus tells them they do not understand the Scriptures (there is no marriage in heaven) or the power of God (God’s self affirmation in Ex. 3:6, 15–16 shows that he is a God of the living, not the dead). Like the others, their smirk turns to marvel as they grow silent.

Trap Four: Which Commandment?

Now the Pharisees send forth an expert in the law to question Jesus: Which of God’s commands is the greatest (Matt. 22:34–40; Mark 12:28–34)? Jesus summarizes his answer in a word: love (to God and for neighbor: Deut. 6:4–5; Lev. 19:18). But Jesus discerns something different from this questioner, so he commends and implicitly invites him: “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:34).

Now it’s Jesus’s turn to initiate some questions with those who are trying to trap him. When he asks them a question about Psalm 110:1 and how the Messiah can be David’s Lord, “no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions” (Matt. 22:46). Jesus then launches a lengthy, scathing critique of the scribes and Pharisees, pronouncing seven woes of judgment upon these “hypocrites” and “blind guides” (Matt. 23:1–39; Mark 12:38–40; Luke 20:45–47).

This full-scale verbal assault removes all doubt concerning Jesus’s intentions, agenda, and aims. He has no desire to ally himself with the current leadership. He has come to overthrow their authority. There’s no way both sides can survive the escalating conflict. Either Jesus will assume power, or he must die.

Grace and Truth in Every Trap

With another tension-filled day behind them, Jesus and the disciples begin to head back to Bethany. They stop on the Mount of Olives to rest, giving them a wonderful view of Jerusalem as the sun begins to set behind it in the west. The disciples marvel at the size and the grandeur of these impressive buildings, but Jesus tells them that a day is soon coming when not a single stone will be left upon another. He goes on to explain that his followers will experience increasing persecution and tribulation, leading up to the final Day of Judgment. But their task is to remain vigilant and persist in faith.

Tuesday is now done. But Friday is coming. This is not the flannel-board Jesus some of us learned as children. This is the real, historical Jesus: fully in control as he responds with grace and truth to traps on all sides. He knows what he is doing. And he knows what is coming. Every word and every step is for the fame of his Father’s name and the salvation of those willing to pick up their cross and die with him.

 

EVENING READING: THE KING WE NEEDED, BUT NEVER WANTED BY MARSHALL SEGAL

“The Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles.” (Mark 10:33)

The road to Calvary was a road of confusion, not confidence, for those first disciples.
Three times Jesus explained to these men what it meant for him to be the Messiah. It was a horrific, yet hope-filled story: the murder of the promised king and then an inexplicable, unprecedented resurrection. It was way over the shortsighted, glory-hungry heads of Peter, James, John, and the others.

Their ignorance and wrong responses highlight ungodly grooves in the human heart. Their errors weren’t peculiar to first-century fishermen. No, they’re as pervasive and offensive in the church today. As we look forward to the horrors of Good Friday and the victory of Easter, we have to ask again, Who do we say this Jesus is? (Mark 8:29). Is he the Christ (on God’s terms)? Or is he just the all-wise, all-powerful key to something or someone else?

The Son of Suffering, Not Comfort

The drama begins with that question, “Who do you say that I am?” “You are the Christ” (Mark 8:29). Peter was simultaneously very right, and very wrong. The word Christ was fitting in every respect. It was the right answer. But even though Peter’s profile of the promised one was rightly named, it fell woefully flat.

Jesus paints a more detailed portrait of the Christ—the job description of the most important human who’s ever lived:

"He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again." (Mark 8:31)

Peter (and presumably the other disciples) despised the idea of a suffering Christ. That’s why he immediately gets in Jesus’s face (Mark 8:32). Having rightly identified the Christ, he then presumed to have the perspective and authority to correct him. Right, yet tragically wrong.
The only Savior who truly saves, only saves through suffering. The cross was the only means of making us sinners right before a holy God. Our salvation was purchased with suffering, and it will be sealed and preserved with suffering (James 1:2–4), not comfort. We are promised comfort in the Christian life (2 Cor. 1:4), but not the cheap, temporal imitation we’ve grown accustomed to in our modern world.

If we come to the crucified one expecting him to make life easier and more comfortable, we’re not listening to him. Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).

The Son of Death, Then Life

Again, Jesus tells them the story of Calvary before it happens:

"They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” (Mark 9:30–31)

Many of Jesus’s followers thought Jesus came to rescue and reign now. They anticipated a physical and political freedom from the oppressive Roman rule. For them, the Christ was the key to their immediate, this-world issues. Life now. Freedom now. Power now. But Jesus, walking to the cross, instead says to wait. Be patient.

The rewards of following me, of finding life in me won’t come in full today, but they will far surpass anything else you could have hoped for. In this story of life and hope and freedom, death comes first, and then life. Darkness, and then liberating, untouchable, unsearchable light.

The Son of Rejection, Not Approval

A third time, Jesus prepares them (and us) for his death:

"Taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit on him, and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.” (Mark 10:32–34)

The disciples certainly imagined there would be opposition in Jerusalem, but not like this. They expected a hostile takeover—and that did happen—but they expected Rome would be the bruised one, not the King. They were happy to have an opposed King, but not a rejected one, certainly not one who was betrayed, tortured, and executed.

Jesus did not come to purchase the approval of others. No, he “was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised” (Isa. 53:3). Why? Because it is God’s approval we desperately need. And God’s approval doesn’t come by popular opinion, but by divine intervention—the substitution of his own Son in our place. We were saved through rejection (Isa. 53:3), and by God’s grace, we will be carried and delivered through rejection (Matt. 10:22).

The call to Calvary—to follow Jesus—is a call to die, and rise again. It’s a call to everlasting next-life gain through temporary this-life loss. Salvation isn’t about securing our unique and selfish desires and ambitions on this earth, but about securing and preparing our souls for another world, a new creation built and preserved for our glory in God’s and our satisfaction in him.

To truly live, we must surrender to the King we really needed, not the one we might have imagined for ourselves.

 

A variety of versions (of the full book) are available at desiringgod.org or click Here for the direct link to the book.