27. Crushed Under Messiah's Feet (End-Times Series Part 8)

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Welcome to the broadcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 27, Crushed Under the

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Messiah's Feet. In an atomic weapon, a handful of neutrons cause a chain reaction ending with the vaporization of an entire city and the deaths of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people.

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The chain of events happens sort of like this. A free neutron is released very quickly into the presence of uranium atoms.

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So once it collides with one of those atoms, it enters into that uranium's nucleus causing it to become so unstable that the atom will split.

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When this happens, that atom will release three additional neutrons that are also sent forth like the speed of a bullet and they end up colliding with three additional uranium atoms so that now the process has netted us nine free neutrons being shot out at blazing speeds.

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Now, that process occurs very quickly, roughly one six hundred billionth of a second. And by then, an uncountable amount of nuclear reactions will have occurred, unleashing unimaginable havoc in every single direction.

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No matter how quickly the chain reaction occurs, it would not be possible without a single specific sequential event that magnifies in intensity.

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That is a chain reaction. Now, similarly, God has unleashed a chain reaction upon unstable

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Jerusalem nearly two thousand years ago when Christ bulleted into the city. Based on specific single sequential events that increase in intensity and magnitude, detailed in Matthew 21 through 23,

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Jesus collided with the leadership of the city and the result was eventually the city reduced to ash and rubble.

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Now today we're going to jump right into the middle of this nuclear reaction and we're going to notice four specific fission events that occur from the end of Matthew 21 to the end of Matthew 22 that set this whole thing on fire.

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Event number one, the ones reduced to rubble. Now while a deeper treatment of the issues is well in order,

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I must briefly summarize how this escalation unfolded. Matthew 21 ends with an incredibly provocative statement by Jesus that has massive implications for how these events transpire in Jerusalem.

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Jesus says, Now, Jesus is not only accusing them of being ignorant of the scriptures, like Psalm 118, where he's actually quoting from, but he's also demonstrating how they are going to be the ones to reject him and that he is going to be the stone upon which

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God's kingdom is going to be built. That is why Jesus can look at this group of Pharisees, scribes, and Jewish aristocracy and say that the kingdom is going to be taken away from you and it's going to be given to another people who are going to bear its fruit because you are going to be crushed under the weight of the rock of ages and scattered like chaff to the four winds of the earth in judgment.

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That kind of judgment language goes well beyond the typical evangelical interpretations where the

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Jews simply made a poor choice. That line of thinking might well cause you to think that the

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Jews are in the same league as every other unbeliever who weighed the evidence, heard the sermon, listened to the track, was not convinced, and then chose wrongly and ended up in hell.

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Or if you're a Calvinist like myself, maybe you would say that, well, they were just not elect and they acted like every other reprobate has throughout church history.

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Whoever lived, there's nothing unique about them, but that is just simply not true. That is not what is happening here.

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They are the people who held on to the kingdom. They are the people who were losing the old covenant kingdom, which has never been true for an unbeliever, at least in the new covenant era.

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The Jews were the people who had the kingdom and now they're losing the kingdom. That's what makes this unique.

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That's what makes this judgment so severe. Jesus is coming to the ones who should have known better.

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He's coming to the church folk and he's removing the kingdom from them and giving it to his

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Gentile brother. Now, Jesus uses verses 43 and 44 to remind the

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Jews not only of Psalm 118, but also to remind them of God's promises made in the book of Daniel, chapter 2, where God is going to cut out an eternal rock,

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Daniel 2 .34. And that rock is going to be the one that strikes a brittle kingdom,

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Daniel 2 .43. And that rock is going to topple and crush the empires of antiquity to dust,

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Daniel 2 .35a. And then when that happens, it's going to scatter them like chaff to the ends of the earth,

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Daniel 2 .35b. And that event, Daniel says, will be the inauguration of the kingdom of God, Daniel 2 .44.

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That kingdom is going to be the one that ends up capturing all of the earth, bringing it under the dominion of the sovereign

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God, Daniel 2 .35, 44 through 45. Jesus is telling him that,

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I am the rock that God sent. I'm the cornerstone. He's showing them that he's the one who will not only bring

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God's kingdom to all the nations, but he's the one who's going to strike them and crush them.

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They're the brittle kingdom that Jesus is going to crush. They're the clay mixed with iron, which in the book of Daniel is

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Rome. And I'm arguing it's Rome mixed with Judah. This is exactly what happened when

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God used Rome to end the nation of Judah, where God brings about his eternal kingdom through Christ himself, and where he scatters the nation of Judah to the ends of the earth.

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He crushes them in AD 70, and he scatters them to the ends of the earth, even while establishing the church, his eternal kingdom.

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That has been going for the last 2 ,000 years. All of these things happened in that generation.

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Jesus, I think, is appealing to Daniel's prophecy to say, these things are now so. Event two, removed from the wedding.

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There is no gap of time existing between the end of chapter 1 and the beginning of chapter 22. Jesus moves from the two previous parables of judgment upon Judah to the final parable of judgment against Judah, which most fully captures his point.

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In Matthew 22, 1 through 14, he gives us the third in a series of three parables, where he describes a particular king who decided to give a particular wedding feast for his beloved son.

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And while the event was still in the future for this king, with plenty of time for the people in the kingdom to respond, he sent out his slaves and his ambassadors to invite all of the citizens of his realm to come and join him for this wonderful festival that he was throwing.

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Yet none of them responded or were willing to come, which is an egregious act of defiance and hatred that they were casting upon their king.

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But then as the meal drew near, as the food was already in the oven being prepared, as the table was being set by the slaves and the servants, when all the preparations had been made, no one still had come.

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So the king hurriedly, out of love for his citizens, sent another group of servants out into the people to plead with them, to cause them to attend before it was too late.

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Now some ignored the invitation and they simply went on about their business, not caring at all about what their king's heart is.

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But then there were others who abused and who killed the king's slave as if nothing was going to happen to them.

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Do you know what that king did when he found out? He was enraged with a perfect, righteous fury.

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And the text tells us that he sent out his armies to kill them, and then he set fire to their city, and then he offered the banquet to another people that he himself would choose.

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Here again, we see Jesus speaking with terrifying accuracy about the state of cursed

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Judah. For God was and is the mighty king in this parable that Jesus is telling.

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He's the king that they were rejecting. And Jesus himself is the beloved son who was being prepared for marriage by his father so that he could feast with his people and enjoy relationship with his bride.

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This makes Judah, in the passage, the one who spurned the coming prophets, the one who ignored the prophets, and the one who killed the prophets.

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This makes Jerusalem, the city that that great king, God, is going to set on fire.

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And this makes Jerusalem the one who, later in the parable, it says is going to be cast into the outer darkness, incapable of participating in his new covenant wedding, banned from participation.

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Jesus' coming produced two outcomes. We've seen it time and time again.

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We've seen it in Malachi. We've seen it all throughout the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus' coming produced two outcomes.

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The first was salvation for his elect. The second is judgment on apostate

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Judah. Event two, render unto

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Caesar. The triad of parables from Matthew 21 to 22 incensed the

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Jewish aristocracy so spectacularly that they had to step away to gather themselves so that they could conduct a clever theological trap.

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Jesus had just humiliated them publicly in downtown Jerusalem, and they were looking for a way to embarrass him back.

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Now ironically, they sent a group of their disciples because they weren't courageous enough to do it themselves, so Jesus rightly humiliated them for their ignorance as well.

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Now how did he do it? Well, many have endeavored to exegete and tell the story of this passage where, you know, should we pay taxes or not?

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Render unto Caesar things that are Caesar's. Render unto God the things that are God's, Matthew 15 or 25, Matthew 22, 15 through 22.

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And for my estimation, there's so many who've done such a fine job with this parable. You can look up R .C. Sproul's treatment on it or others.

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Many have done a fine job with this, and there's no need for us to rebuild a proper foundation. But what

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I would like to do briefly is just point out the irony of the language here. When Jesus said, render unto

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Caesar the things that are Caesar's, he was not simply talking about money and tax policy, and he was not simply telling you what you ought to do at the end of tax season.

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He's talking about identity. You see, humans were made to render themself to God because God had stamped his image upon us.

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So when he says, render to God the things that are God's, humans were made to render themselves to God, to give themselves to God freely, lovingly, adoringly to God.

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And yet, because of the fall of man, sinful creatures find every single possible image to take upon themselves and to render themselves in all these myriad of different false gods other than their creator who's blessed forever.

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That's certainly true of us, but it's also specifically true of the Jewish leaders who were standing in Jesus's presence.

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These were Jewish leaders who were in bed with Rome. These are Jewish leaders who got their appointment as priest, their status, their ability to reign.

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They got all of that from Rome, and in the end, in John 19, 15, this group of people are the ones that cried out, we have no king but Caesar.

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We have no king but Caesar. The irony is that the

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Herodians and the Pharisees were idolaters, and they brought to Jesus the idol of their heart, their wealth, their status, and their money,

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Luke 16, 14. Is it any wonder that they brought Jesus a coin? The Bible says that they were lovers of money, and by their allegiance to Rome, they confirmed that they were the ones who were already given over to Caesar.

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They should have been giving themselves over to God, and yet by their love of wealth and power and status, and by the situation that Rome had put them in, they were rendered unto

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Rome. And in 40 years, the consequences of their idolatry would be paid in full since God would fully render them over to the might and power of Rome when they were destroyed in AD 70.

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Event three, routed under the Messiah's feet. Now, as the chain of events continue to ratchets up in intensity,

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Matthew 22 ends just before the explosion occurs. Like the

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Herodians, the Sadducees step up to take their crack at Jesus, only to be abashed by him in the process.

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Now, to be fair, Jesus had just delivered three devastating parables in public and humiliated all of them, so I'm sure that they felt obligated to answer, but this is one of those moments where you probably shouldn't speak.

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And unfortunately for them, they did. Their response was not bathed in the kind of humility that one would need to have when approaching a king of any kind, much less the king of kings and the

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Lord of lords. So their reply and the way that Jesus responds to them confirms their foolishness and the inevitability of their impending judgment.

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The Pharisees, again, are the last ones to enter the ring in Matthew 22, and after their question is very easily answered by Christ, he poses a question to them which is devastating.

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He says this, what do you think about the Christ, whose son is he?

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And they said to him, the son of David. Then Jesus said to them, then how does

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David in the spirit call him Lord? Saying the

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Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies beneath your feet. If David then calls him

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Lord, then how is he David's son? No one was able to answer him a word, nor did anyone dare from that day on to ask him another question.

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As Matthew 22 draws to a close, an awkward and tense close, Jesus again reveals that he is

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God. He's the one who David looked to and called Lord. He's the one who's going to sit at the right hand of God and power and might to rule over his kingdom.

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And he's the one who's going to crush all of his enemies under his magnificent, powerful foot.

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Now given the larger context of Scripture, the first enemy that Jesus is going to crush under his feet will no doubt be

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Satan on the cross. That's Genesis 3 .15. But the second enemy, the one that rarely gets spoken about because he's going to put all of his enemies under his feet, there has to be a second enemy and then a third and the fourth and the fifth.

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But the second one is important. The second enemy that's going to be put under Messiah's feet is none other than Judah, whom

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Jesus called children of the devil in John 8 .44. Like father, like son,

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Judah would be crushed under Messiah's feet for the crimes against him and against his father,

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God. This as we've seen is confirmed time and time again in the context of Matthew's book.

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He's the king who was offered only leaves in verses 1 through 11 of 21. He's the priest who found the rotten temple that was supposed to be dedicated to him in Matthew 21, 12 through 17.

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He's the prophet who acted out parabolic judgment upon a fig tree, which represented Jerusalem in Matthew 21, 18 through 22.

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He's the God -man who they rejected, Matthew 21, 23 through 27. He's the true messenger of God who spoke three explicit parables of judgment, ripping the kingdom away from them and setting their city on fire,

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Matthew 21, 28 through chapter 22 through 14. In the end, the

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Jews did not repent. They challenged him. They embarrassed themselves.

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And instead of admitting the error that was fueling their madness, they remained silent and awaited for their cursing.

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The chain reaction was finished. Next week, as the Pharisees remained silent, we're going to see how all of these things explode with Jesus pronouncing seven covenantal woes upon that city.