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It’s all right here, all in one place. And we can be sure that Y’shua’s timing was perfect. Everything He did was exquisite. He had two days of interactions in the temple that began when He entered Jerusalem and the multitudes publicly acknowledged that He was indeed the anticipated Messiah—an inflammatory start to His visit, to say the least. And on the first day He initiated a total cleanse of God’s house. It followed with a day of interrogation, at least that’s what the religious leaders intended, those who were convinced they had the upper hand. It turned out, instead, to be a complete indictment of a religious system that had fallen far away from the God they claimed to worship.
The cleanse ended with Y’shua’s final verdict, a scathing report: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees… you are loaded down with hypocrisy, lawlessness and pretense; motivated by extortion and self-indulgence; and painted on the outside to look good. But, you are really no different than a painted tomb. Although it might look clean and pretty on the outside, inside the coffin is a pile of dead men’s decaying bones. Other descriptors that come to mind to round off My opinion of you are: blind guides, fools, serpents, and brood of vipers. You would travel long distances, over land and sea, to convert even one person to your faith, who you then make into twice the son of hell as yourselves.” This assessment allows no room for interpretation of how Y’shua views man’s religion.
Then He leaves the temple and heads out east of the city, through the Kidron valley and up onto the Mount of Olives. Once situated there with His disciples, He looks back toward the temple and reveals that the whole hypocritical religious system is coming down. It won’t happen instantly; there are prophetic patterns to fulfill—a framework to understand. And quite frankly, God’s people are very behind on their prophetic education, obviously because their teachers were more concerned with building their own kingdom than preaching about the kingdom of God.
That is all about to change. These disciples have been walking through a kingdom education from the moment they heard, “Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” all the way to this significant prophetic moment on the mountain. Now, Y’shua will teach them all that must happen from this moment forward—all the way to the very end of the age! It would seem an impossible task in such a short sermon, but nothing is impossible with God. And it’s not only possible, but Y’shua does so in what can be read today in ninety-seven verses—2028 words in a popular English translation. Two thousand words to describe the rest of history!
Since that’s the case, I think any serious student of God would make understanding those words a priority of critical importance. Minimally, put it on your bucket list—but don’t place it down near the bottom, lest you be the servant who hears, “Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you. Cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
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