Jesus The Expected One

[0:00] So Luke chapter 19 is where we're going to start. And the question we were trying to answer, if you remember, was! How should they have known that Jesus was due?

[0:16] How should they have known that he was due then? Because they've had 2,000 years of history. They've had all these bits of information. And the bits of information that they have been given, but seem to have ignored, is the one about when he would arrive, which was written about 600 years before he arrived.

[0:38] But more about that in a moment. When, in chapter 19 and verse 28, you have the account of what is usually referred to as the triumphal entry.

[0:52] And many of us would call it the first Palm Sunday. After he said these things, he was going on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.

[1:03] When he approached Bethphage, not sure how it's pronounced, and Bethany, near the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, Go into the village ahead of you.

[1:19] And there, as you enter, you will find a colt tied, on which no one has yet ever sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, why are you untying it?

[1:30] You should say, the Lord has need of it. So those who were sent away and found it, just as he had told them, as they were untying the colt, its owner said to them, Why are you untying the colt?

[1:45] And they said, the Lord has need of it. They brought it to Jesus, and they threw their coats on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he was going, they were spreading their coats on the road.

[1:57] As soon as he was approaching near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples, and keep that in mind, disciples, we often hear that everybody praised God on this occasion.

[2:09] It was his disciples that praised him. There was a whole load of people who were absolutely vehemently against him. But the whole crowd of his disciples began to praise God joyfully, with loud voice, for all the miracles they had seen, shouting, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.

[2:27] Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. But Jesus answered, I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out.

[2:40] When he approached Jerusalem, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace.

[2:51] But now they have been hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you and surround you and hem you in on every side.

[3:03] And they will level you to the ground and your children within you. And they will not leave in you one stone upon another because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.

[3:13] So, this time of visitation, Jesus was expecting them to have been able to deduce when it would be.

[3:31] And they were going to suffer judgment. And he speaks here of the judgment that came about in AD 70 when exactly what was spoken here, some 40 years earlier, came about in minute detail.

[3:46] Barricades were put around them. They were all hemmed in. The city was razed to the ground. The temple was burned. And literally what not one stone was left upon another because they picked over the site because all the gold in the temple had melted and run between the stones.

[4:00] And they picked the stones apart to get to the gold. So, this prophecy was filled to the very last detail. And it's what I love about the Bible. It's very precise.

[4:12] And it's never partially fulfilled, unless by intent. You have some prophecies that have been partially fulfilled, but the rest is yet to come when he comes again.

[4:24] But in the main, biblical prophecy is fulfilled minutely. And it's very trustworthy. So, the reason they're being judged is because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.

[4:41] You should have known. You had every reason to know. And this is written, well, we'll, I won't steal my own thunder.

[4:52] It's important to know that in verse 37, we did read, it was the disciples that were praising him. It's important to keep that in mind.

[5:03] Because otherwise, you get this picture of a load of people who were for Christ one minute and against him the next. Because at superficial reading, the Bible paints this picture of the people who were praising him and throwing palm branches down in the streets and throwing their coats down, just a little bit later, were saying, crucify him, crucify him.

[5:25] I don't think that's an accurate reflection of what the scripture says. The disciples were praising him. The rest were saying, crucify him and give us Barabbas. And in their worship, that little, there's a little extract there from the Old Testament that says in verse 46, no, verse 38, blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven and glory in the highest.

[5:56] If we turn to Psalm 118, what you will read is what they were singing and shouting at the time.

[6:07] So that quotation, now it's very unlikely that they cherry-picked that verse. What is far more likely is that they sang that psalm and that Luke, when he wrote his gospel, he selected this verse to guide everybody to the right psalm and to guide everybody to the spirit of what was being said.

[6:30] And so Psalm 118, Psalm 118, and I'm going to read the psalm because it's worth reading and it carries the very spirit of what we've just read in Luke's gospel.

[6:43] Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his loving kindness is everlasting. Oh, let Israel say his loving kindness is everlasting. Oh, let the house of Aaron say his loving kindness is everlasting.

[6:55] Let those who fear the Lord say his loving kindness is everlasting. From my distress, I call upon the Lord. The Lord answered me and set me in a large place.

[7:06] The Lord is for me. I will not fear. What can man do to me? The Lord is for me among those who help me. Therefore, I will look with satisfaction on those who hate me. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust man.

[7:20] It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust princes. All nations surround me. In the name of the Lord, I will surely cut them off. They surround me. Yes, surround me.

[7:31] In the name of the Lord, I will surely cut them off. They surround me like bees. They were extinguished as a fire of thorns. In the name of the Lord, I will surely cut them off. You pushed me.

[7:43] You pushed me violently so that I was falling. But the Lord helped me. The Lord is my strength and song. He has become my salvation. The sound of joyful shouting and salvation is in the tents of the righteous.

[7:59] The right hand of the Lord does valiantly. The right hand of the Lord is exalted. The right hand of the Lord does valiantly. I will not die, but live and tell of the works of the Lord.

[8:11] The Lord has disciplined me severely, but he has not given me over to death. Open to me the gates of righteousness. I shall enter through them.

[8:22] I shall give thanks to the Lord. Lord, this is the gate of the Lord. The righteous will enter through it. I shall give thanks to the Lord for you have answered me and you have become my salvation.

[8:34] The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord has made.

[8:44] Let us rejoice and be glad in it. O Lord, do save, we beseech you. O Lord, we beseech you, do send prosperity. Blessed is the one who comes. And this is the verse quoted by Luke.

[8:56] Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. We have blessed you from the house of the Lord. The Lord is God and he has given us light. Bind the festival sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar.

[9:08] You are my God and I give thanks to you. You are my God. I extol you. Give thanks to the Lord for he is good for his loving kindness is everlasting. They were singing the Hallel and Psalm 118 is known as the Hallel.

[9:23] And they were singing that song because it was a song that was written for this day. It was written for the day that Messiah showed up. And the people who were singing this had perceived correctly that Jesus was Messiah.

[9:38] And they were rejoicing in the fact that he was Messiah. Unlike the ones Jesus was weeping over who had not seen that he was Messiah yet for some reason should have seen that.

[9:50] So what we're going to look at we look a little bit more at what's been said in Luke's gospel and then we're going to look at how they should have known.

[10:05] I'm going to read unusually for me I'm going to read something from the Amplified Bible. And I don't use the Amplified Bible very often but I think it gives a good rendition of these verses from Luke.

[10:17] And it says this as he approached Jerusalem he saw the city and wept over it and in brackets and the spiritual ignorance of its people which I think is apt saying if only you had known on this day of salvation even you the things which make for peace and on which peace depends but now they've been hidden from your eyes.

[10:46] If only you had known this day of salvation. The reason Jesus was weeping is because they've thrown away their day of salvation. I don't know about you but it's why I weep sometimes.

[11:02] When I share the gospel with people then they brush it aside and they don't want to know it and you realise that they are throwing away their salvation. Reading on.

[11:15] For a time bracket of siege is coming upon you when your enemies will put up a barricade with pointed stakes against you and surround you with armies and hem you in on every side and they will level you to the ground you Jerusalem and your children within you.

[11:32] They will not leave you sorry, they will not leave you one stone on another or because you did not come, this is in brackets, come progressively to recognise from observation and personal experience the time of your visitation.

[11:48] Now I think the Amplified Bible has amplified that well because Jesus had turned up and he had demonstrated again and again and again his divinity.

[12:00] He did things only God could do and in doing the things that only God can do he also fulfilled messianic prophecy from the Old Testament for previous centuries and even millennia where those prophecies said he would open the eyes of the blind, heal the sick, cause the lame to walk, cause the deaf to hear, cause the dumb to speak, etc.

[12:25] and even raise the dead and even control the weather. Only things that God could do and yet they didn't look upon that and by observation and personal experience conclude this is Messiah.

[12:39] He left them without excuse. So even if you ignore the timing they were without excuse anyway. But what I think is miraculous is the timing.

[12:51] I mean it's all miraculous but what I, what particularly appeals to my nerdiness is the timing. these slides are, I've deliberately done them bit by bit in the hope that it will stop people looking at a massive print and getting confused.

[13:08] God expected them to know. There's a very, very helpful piece of work done by a man called Sir Robert Anderson. He lived from 1841 to 1918 and he produced a piece of work and there's a book available and I think you can get it at next to no cost online now because it's way, way out of any copyright.

[13:29] The book is called The Coming Prince and he got a knighthood from Queen Victoria I believe for this piece of work and I was left thinking, you know, wouldn't it be wonderful if our monarchy today was so in awe of God's word that they awarded knighthoods for people who did what turns out to be a great Bible study whereas you're more likely to get locked up for a great Bible study these days.

[14:02] We've gone a long way down as a nation unfortunately. But he published this work and the work explored the question of how religious leaders should have known that Jesus was due to arrive and I'm hoping that at the end of this you will come to the conclusion that the religious Jews should have been walking around looking at their watches saying he's going to be here any minute because we've read our Bibles.

[14:34] what's even more interesting to me is that most of this information came from the prophet Daniel and therefore the Jews more than anyone would have known because Daniel was taken into captivity in Babylon and while Daniel was still alive at the end of his life towards the end of his life they were released back to Israel and so Daniel wrote this prophecy and it refers to historical events that the Jews would have seized upon because it involved their future every other nation of the world you could forgive them for not picking up on it but the Jews had no excuse and there was only one other group of people that had no excuse and that was the Babylonians because they were in captivity in Babylon when all this happened and interestingly the Magi who turned up at Jesus birth came from Babylon or they were related by descent from the people in Babylon they weren't 600 years old but they were related by descent to those

[15:49] Babylonians who were listening to Daniel and were aware of his prophecies who were looking for the star in the sky and as soon as it appeared followed it because they knew the timing was right and if you go back to our earlier studies in Matthew you'll find that we covered that so turn to Daniel 9 24 now this is the prophecy of the 70 weeks of Daniel we're not interested for this morning's purposes in all 70 weeks we're interested in 69 of those weeks and keep in mind as we read these are not weeks of days they are weeks of years so a week is seven years and I always get people come to me after talking about Daniel saying I'm really confused just forget days in fact you could even forget weeks and just use the word sevens because actually in Hebrew that's the way it reads so 77 have been decreed for your people and your holy city to finish the transgression to make an end of sin to make an atonement for iniquity to bring in everlasting righteousness to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place so that's the total plan of

[17:05] God over 77 but now we come to a slightly different number so you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven sevens and 62 sevens it will be built again with plaza and moat even in times of distress after the 62 weeks Messiah will be cut off and I'm going to stop there for the purposes of this morning so we are looking then from this scripture we're looking at first of all you've got seven sevens and 62 sevens a total of 69 groups of seven years which is 483 years anybody confused by that hopefully not we've got 483 years 483 years from when what we read was from from the decree the only decree that fits the requirements of

[18:19] Daniel's prophecy given by Artaxerxes Longimanus who reigned from 465 BC that's when he began his reign he was the one who made a decree if you turn with me to Nehemiah chapter 2 Nehemiah chapter 2 and verse 1 and it came about in the month Nisan in the 20th year of the reign of King Artaxerxes that wine was brought before him and I took up the wine and gave it to the king now I had not been sad in his presence so the king said to me why is your face sad though you are not sick this is nothing but sadness of heart then I was very much afraid and I said to the king let the king live forever why should my face not be sad when the city the place of my father's tombs lies desolate and his gates have been consumed by fire then the king said to me what would you request so I prayed to the

[19:23] God of heaven I said to the king if it please the king and if your servant the queen sitting beside him how long will your journey be and when will you return so it pleased the king to send me and I gave him a definite time and I said to the king if it pleased the king let letters be given to me for the governors of the provinces beyond the river that they may allow me to pass through until I come to Judah and the letter to Asaph the keeper of the king's forest that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress which is by the temple for the wall of the city and for the house to which I will go and the king granted them to me because the good hand of God was on me then I came to the governors of the provinces beyond the river and gave them the king's letters now the king had sent with me officers of the army and horsemen and

[20:26] I'm going to stop there for the moment but what this is when he gave letters that was his decree and his decree came according to what we've just read in the month Nisan the 20th year of the reign of Artaxerxes so the decree was given in the 20th year of his reign so it was 445 BC so what the Bible has promised in Daniel is that 483 years from 445 BC Messiah will return and according to the Bible this decree was given on the 20th of Nisan in that year so we've got if you convert that to the Julian calendar it works out at March the 14th and you'll have to take my word for that because somebody's laughing

[21:29] I guess it's in your footnotes or something yeah I didn't steal her footnotes I did read Robert Anderson's book though so March the 14th 445 BC is the date from which we start counting 483 years but as you see up here Anderson sees a prophetic era as 360 days not 365 days as we would the Julian calendar works on a 365 day year the prophetic year was a 360 day year and he does that based on biblical information that in Revelation 11 2 13 5 Revelation 11 3 12 6 all of those indicate that 42 months or three and a half years is 1260 days and from that he believed that they were operating on a 360 day calendar that's also supported by history because the

[22:35] Babylonian calendar was 360 days so we've got a date and it seems to be an accurate date 445 BC on the 14th of March that's when the count starts so if we look now at Luke 3 verse 1 what we read is in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Iturea and Trachonitis and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas the word of God came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness and he came to all the districts around Jordan preaching a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sins so that is here of the reign of

[23:42] Tiberias so as we read on verse 21 and 22 now when all the people were baptized Jesus was also baptized and while he was praying heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove and a voice came out of heaven you are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased Anderson and I agree with him takes this therefore as the time when Jesus ministry started the time of his baptism so Tiberius started his reign in 14 AD that's just a historical fact you can read that in any Roman history book so Jesus then 15 years later started his ministry in 29 AD and Jesus celebrated four Passovers during his life 29 30 31 and his final

[24:45] Passover was in 32 so with the help of Lunar Charts we can calculate the exact date of the ancient Passover so it's possible to calculate the exact day of Jesus triumphal entry the date we've just been reading about in Luke 19 and it was April 6 32 AD have I lost anybody yet and you can get these notes you can have them by email or you can go on our website and find them so from 455 BC to 32 AD there are 476 years if you use the Julian calendar the one that we tend to live by right 476 years not 477 because there's no there's no they don't count zero they go from 1 BC to 1

[25:46] AD so there's a year missing in the calculation there so that amounts to 173 740 days that's that total time period you then got to make an adjustment because we've got March the 14th when the decree was issued and we've got April the 6th which was the Passover in the year in question so we have to add 24 days to that 173 740 days and then we've also got to make adjustments for leap years and if you add on another 116 days for the leap years guess what you come to the total number of days from March the 14th 445 BC to April the 6th 32 AD is 173 880 days which is what which is what you get from the prophecy

[26:57] I didn't labour it at the time but when I first put up the slide about the prophecy of Daniel and you've got these 483 days 483 years of 360 day years it comes out when you multiply it to 173 880 days so the day when Jesus rode in on the donkey was exactly 173 880 days from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem if you check your bibles by the way you'll find there are two other decrees but it could not be the right decree because it wasn't complete this decree was to rebuild the whole city whereas the other decrees were only to rebuild parts of it so that decree from 445 BC had to be the right one now that is accurate that's biblical accuracy in spades is it not so

[28:02] Daniel told us there would be 173 880 days between the decree and the arrival of Messiah the prince and this day of the first Palm Sunday is taken as the day of his arrival because that's the day he presented himself to the city as king it's interesting isn't it he rode in on a donkey in fact the colt of a donkey with the mother in tow if you read all four gospel accounts you'll find that the mother was there as well because because the colt needed milk but why would the king ride in on a donkey's colt not a white charger a massive stallion carrying spear and so on well it's because he was a different kind of king he was the king of kings and the lord of lords and he was compassionate and he was good and he wasn't looking for war he was looking to forgive!

[28:54] wrongdoing so the general population could be forgiven for but the pharisees and the scribes they should have known because it was their job to know and it was their job to teach this to the people and it's been left to Gentiles like me to teach this to the people because they didn't do their job why was that well if you look at their history it was because they were far too corrupt and they were too busy feathering their own nests to pay attention to what they were there for which was to instruct the people in the word of God they should have been saying Messiah is due any minute and when he showed up they should have been saying to the people he's here and they said no no he's working by the power of Satan tragic I've already mentioned the Magi descendants from the Babylonians of Daniel may well have been guided to the correct time by

[29:54] Daniel's prophecy and when the Magi showed up and you read that in the scriptures you realize that the attitude towards them by believing Jews was horrible in fact they used the arrival of the Magi who come to find the king they knew who they come to find you know this star is leading us to the!

[30:16] probably the king and instead of going wow we need to find this king come and tell us when you find him so that we can kill him what a dreadful mess we get in so we've already examined the story of the these Gentiles the Magi who knew more about Jesus the Messiah than the Jews to whom the prophecy was written but we have to say Jesus was the expected one he has always been expected and he's the only human being that's ever walked the planet that was the small exception of King Cyrus who at least was expected 150 years before he was born because God said he was going to send Cyrus and I think Nebuchadnezzar got a little bit of you know God warned ahead of time that Nebuchadnezzar was coming however the only one who from the beginning of human history has been known that he would come is

[31:17] Jesus and we will leave it there father thank you so much for the accuracy and the completeness of your word and the treasure that it is to us the way that we can so depend upon it father keep us in your word and let your word be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path father may we not stray from the word by continually manipulating it to fit our human desires or likes or even dislikes father may we be a people that strives to stick to your word and not be swayed from it in Jesus name Amen