As Jesus prepared for his final journey into Jerusalem, his actions and teachings took on a newfound boldness. This episode illuminates Jesus’ strategic maneuvers leading up to the week of his crucifixion, highlighting the profound symbolism behind his choices. From the anointing at Bethany to the uproarious entry into the bustling city, witness how Jesus orchestrated events with profound intention and insight.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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There is a name that will live forever in the memory of man. There may not be a culture in the world that does not understand the significance of the name. The man and his name is Judas. Judas is a hard man to understand. You know, betrayal is always confusing and hard to understand. How a person who has been befriended and been so close could actually stab a person in the back. The truth is, I expect many of you listening to my voice today have experienced that in some small way in your life anyhow. And you may have referred to somebody as a Judas. It’s almost as hard to understand Judas as it is to understand Jesus, who included him, that is Judas, in a small band of men he named his apostles. Why, knowing that Judas would do this, did Jesus include him? Because the fact is, Scripture tells us that Jesus knew from the beginning who it was who would betray him. And nevertheless, he included Judas as one of his disciples. People have a morbid fascination with Judas. They know that he did an evil thing. At the same time, people wonder, is there any way to rescue Judas? Is there any way that there’s any hope for him? It’s very disturbing to know that Jesus said that it would have been good for that man if he had never been born. And I suppose that’s true. How could you live forever among people who knew that the name Judas, your name, meant that you were the betrayer of Christ. Judas first starts emerging from the background around Jesus, the background noise of all the events around Jesus, in an incident that took place a mere six days before Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus had come to Jerusalem for the last time. He was staying in Bethany, the house of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. Bethany is about a half hour’s walk from the Temple Mount. Martha had prepared supper for Jesus, and Lazarus was one of those sitting at the table, and so was Judas. And Mary took a pound of ointment, of spickenard, very costly, expensive stuff, and she began to anoint and massage the feet of Jesus and to wipe his feet with her hair. Now, this all sounds very strange to us in the 20th century, but I can assure you at that time there’s nothing that unusual about it. that Jesus, along with everybody else at the time, wore sandals. They walked everywhere they went. Their feet were dirty, and they got where they were going. They needed to wash them. And they were hard, and they were sometimes sore and crusty. And the idea of having a little foot massage with some good ointment, well, it would be very appealing. And so this is what she was doing. And the ointment she was using had such a strong odor that it filled the whole house with it. It was very pleasant. Now, This was an unusually expensive ointment with a fine aroma. Then said one of the disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, the one that was going to betray Jesus, he said this, Why wasn’t this ointment sold for 300 pence and given to the poor? Well, that’s a very noble sentiment. Why didn’t we just sell this stuff and give this money to the poor? Jesus had told the rich young ruler, he said, now go sell everything you have and give it to the poor and come and follow me. Why should Jesus’ disciples then have anything expensive? Shouldn’t Mary have sold this and given it to them? Shouldn’t they have divested themselves? We have to understand Jesus’ instructions were to that one man in order he might be free to leave home and work full time with Jesus and the apostles. He didn’t require every disciple to sell everything they had, obviously. Mary had kept this. There was nothing wrong with Mary having this ointment for Jesus. And there was a special love for Jesus in this house, even before he raised Lazarus from the dead. These were friends of his. Now, John steps into his narrative at this point with a comment about Judas’ motives. There’s no reason to assume that Matthew knew this at the time. I’m sure that it was on reflection later that he realized what Judas was doing and why. Because John says this, this Judas said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and had the bag and carried what was put therein. He carried all their money. And so the guy that carries the money around, the treasurer, says, why wasn’t this sold for 300 pence? And we could have given that money to the poor. Of course that money would have gone through his bag. And who knows what Judas was skimming out of the money that came through his hands. Judas was a thief. He carried a bag of money that had been given to Jesus and the twelve to help pay their expenses. Now there he is. a powerful connection between the idea of betrayal and money in this passage. Judas, the treasurer, was a thief and carried the bag, and he’s the one who betrayed Jesus. You know, I did some research years ago. I wrote a book, which was never published, on religious fundraising by radio and television evangelists. You know, I was studying it. I was, you know, I’m in this business now. I guess you’d call it that. And I was curious then to know, you know, what do they do? Why do they do it? And how does it all work? Well, I found there that there really probably has been nothing in the history of religious organizations that has betrayed them as often as money. You know, because I look back and I see the history and the stories of some of these evangelists who, in years that have come along, have failed for one reason or another. And when you go back to their origins, you find very sincere men, humble men, dedicated men, poor, who started off in tents or little old tiny country churches and worked hard in their ministries. Later on, once they’ve risen to become powerful television evangelists supervising empires worth, say, $100 million, Things have changed for them. If you watched the tragedies that played out a few years ago in a couple of highly visible TV ministries, you might think the thing that betrays ministry more often than anything else is sex. But you would be wrong, I think, overall. Sex is a powerful temptation. It’s caused many a preacher to fall. One survey, in fact, said that as many as 30% of all pastors of churches have had an affair at one time or another. And it’s tragic, and I know it has done terrible damage to themselves, their churches, and their families. But men are human, and this sort of thing happens. But generally speaking, when that happens, it is the betrayal of one man. I’m talking about the seduction, not of a man, but of an organization. And one of the places it’s most evident is in the television ministries, and the reason is very simple. Television is not cheap. Production and time-buying costs run quickly into the millions of dollars, and money has to come from somewhere. Usually, it’s raised by direct solicitation through the mails. And what happens is a ministry quickly becomes chained to a kind of money machine. It may have started out small and humble and everything was fine. But when you have to have a million dollars a week to keep the thing going, well, you’ve got to work pretty hard to keep that million dollars a week coming in. You’ve got to write a lot of letters. You have to make a lot of appeals. And you have to take so much of time every day of your life. and seeing to it that money comes in, that it is used properly, that it’s put in the bank, that it’s invested properly. And very quickly, a ministry is chained to this thing. I joked when I had finished my book that my vision of a televangelist’s hell was that he creates this machine, and once the machine is finished, it reaches out and grabs him and chains him to itself. And for all eternity, he has to sit there shoveling money into the maw of this machine that he built himself. Well, letters have to be evaluated when they’ve been written as to which one brings in the most money. And the evangelist, who is supposed to be a preacher, has to give increasing amounts of time to raising money. And a major ministry can become a machine that funnels money through the mails and out through television to the millions, tens of millions, scores of millions of dollars. And an evangelist can be turned into an entertainer with an entertainer’s salary. And if you think about it for very long, is it any wonder that he might forget that he is a man of God and that the message that started him out on the road to preach has been subordinated to money? And you know, it’s only a small step from the love of money to the love of women. Money is dry and cold, and it never loves you back. not even in pretense. And even an evangelist needs love. But major evangelistic efforts require at least some centralization of funds, and the size of that pool of money is a direct indicator of the level of temptation to do things we ought not to do. Even as small a centralization of funds… as one bag of money that could be put on the belt of one man, where he carried the money for 12 men, even that one small bag of money was a temptation to Judas. I’ve had friends urge me to take my radio program to television, but I have no intention of doing so. I think television is a very powerful medium for preaching the gospel, maybe too powerful for the gospel. It seems better to me to stick with radio and stay small. Production costs are low and time buying is relatively cheap. And many of these programs are sponsored by people in the local community, so I never even see the money. I’m not saying that it’s wrong to pool resources and do a work, only that as goods increase, the spirit that infected Judas comes right along with them, even in a tiny country church. But Jesus tolerated the presence of Judas even when he knew. So maybe we should just watch ourselves and carry on as best we can. Stay with me. I’ll be right back after these words.
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So after Judas made his famous remark about, you know, let’s sell this and give it to the poor, Jesus said, Let Mary alone. Against the day of my burying she has kept this. For the poor you have always with you, but me you have not always. And the statement seems to have proved out, for the poor are still here. And I guess it’s inevitable in any society there will always be poor people because, well, things happen. Accidents happen to people. Terrible diseases come up on people that are not their fault. And then there are people who are lazy and get poor. So the poor are always here. And I think the poor form a kind of a test for us as to how we will treat people in our life. And God seems to look upon the way people treat the poor as an indicator of our spiritual temperature and maybe even of our attitude toward him. So Jesus made this correction and went on his way. Funny that the disciples still did not grasp what was about to happen. When he said, she’s anointing my body preparatory to its burial, they still didn’t grasp what was about to happen in a mere six days. Now the word of Jesus in that area that he was down and around there spread far and wide. And they came to where Jesus was staying for his sake, but not for that only. They came that they might see Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. And I suppose that’s natural. You know, you’ve heard the story. You’ve heard it from people you really believe it from that this man named Lazarus died. He was in the grave four days, four days. And Jesus showed up, said, roll that stone off of there. And he rolled that stone off. And he called out, Lazarus, come forth. And the man walked out alive. And he’s alive. He lives down there right now. You can go down and see him. Well, you know, I can see myself taking off for Bethany and sitting on a rock somewhere trying to catch a glimpse of this man that Jesus had raised from the dead. But there was a problem. It was that the chief priests, the religious leaders, were profoundly troubled by what was taking place. Jesus was a threat. And they consulted, how can we put Lazarus to death as well as Jesus? Because by reason of Lazarus, many of the Jews went away from the chief priests and believed on Jesus. Sometimes you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Jesus raises this man from the dead. Nobody else had ever done that. And the chief leaders wanted to kill him again, get him back in that grave, and Jesus too. Well, Lazarus was a threat. Jesus was a threat. And people always want to get rid of the threats. They don’t want to live under a threat. And Jesus was about to make it a lot worse. It came to pass that when Jesus had come near to Bethany on this particular day, at the Mount of Olives, he sent forth two of his disciples ahead of him. And he said, there’s a village over here in the which at your entering you shall find a colt tied. Nobody’s ever sat on that colt. He’s there and nobody’s ever touched him. I want you to take him loose, untie him, and bring him here. And if anybody asks you, what are you untying that colt for? You say to him, because the Lord has need of him. So they that were sent went their way, and they found it even just like he said. There was the colt. So they went over, and they were untying him. And as they were doing it, the owner of it said, What are you doing? Why are you untying that colt? And they said, The Lord had need of him. I guess that was enough. Because they brought the colt to Jesus. They cast their garments. They laid them across the colt, and Jesus sat on it. And as they went, they spread their clothes in the way. This is interesting. Now, there’s so much symbolism in this act that it’s really hard to grasp. Because in the Bible, the symbol of greatness is the horse. But the horse is really an animal of war. And Jesus wasn’t coming in war. There’s a passage in the Old Testament about Solomon. And there was an animal that was his called the king’s mule. Notice, not a horse, a mule, a cross between an ass and a horse, which is basically a work animal. It’s a relatively humble animal. But the king’s mule was the symbol of his power. And for a man to ride upon that mule, the king’s mule, meant that he had the king’s authority. And this is interesting because of that historical connection. But I think it’s important to note that Jesus did not ride into Jerusalem on a horse. but on a colt, an ass, as it were. The reason behind it was that he was not coming as a warrior. He wasn’t coming to throw the Romans out. He was not going to establish this millennial kingdom at this time. That’s not why he’s here. He is here as the Prince of Peace. Well, as they came near, and they came over the brow of the Mount of Olives and started on the descent down the other side, All the multitude of the disciples, and by this time there were about 120 of them, began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen. It had just gotten finally to be too much for everybody. Jesus is coming back to Jerusalem. There have been three years, three and a half years of this ministry. So much has happened, and they are so full of it. And he says, Blessed be the King that comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven, glory in the highest. And there was a crowd around, and some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said, Master, rebuke your disciples. They shouldn’t be saying this kind of thing. And Jesus answered and said, I tell you, if these people shut up, the stones will cry. And as he came over the brow of the hill and down the other side, he found a spot and stopped. And the view from there of the city of Jerusalem is staggering. I can only imagine. It’s beautiful now. It’s impressive. But what would it have been like when the temple was sitting there with all of its courtyards and everything that was going on there? He stopped and he looked at the city and great tears began to run down his face. And he wept over the city. And he said, If you had known, even you, at least in this your day, the things which belong to your peace, if you had just known where peace comes from. But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days are coming upon you that your enemies shall cast a trench around you. They’ll surround you. They’ll keep you in on every side. And they shall lay you even with the ground and your children inside of you. and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you knew not the time of your visitation. Jesus makes a direct connection between the fact that Jerusalem did not know when God had come to her with the terrible destruction that was coming upon them of the Romans in just a mere 40 years. They say that when the Romans finished destroying the city, You could walk through the area and never know that there had been a city there.
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When I come back, we’ll talk about Jesus’ entry into the city of Jerusalem. For a free copy of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only. And request the program titled, The Words of Jesus, number 35. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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By the time Jesus actually got to the city the whole city was in ferment. You have to realize that many people came up to Jerusalem before Passover to purify themselves, to go through rituals of purification. And they were there for days beforehand. And there were, at peak seasons, as we’re told by some witnesses at the time, there could be two to three million people in the environs of Jerusalem. So it was an incredibly crowded and busy place. And people were saying, well, who is this? Who is this? What’s going on? The multitude said, this is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth in Galilee. And Jesus went straight to the temple, and the first thing he did was to drive out those people who were buying and selling doves and other animals and changing money in the temple. He said, Get out of here. It’s written, My house shall be called a house of prayer. You have made it a den of thieves, which I think is not merely a reflection on the fact that they were buying and selling there, but on sharp business practices that they were following as well. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. Jesus touched people’s lives in a very powerful way, and he wasn’t merely concerned about the world to come, as important as that was. He cared about people’s lives here and now. And when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things he did, and all the children crying in the temple saying, Hosanna to the Son of David, they were sore displeased. Sore displeased over the wonderful things that he did. And of course, the children. And they said to Jesus, don’t you hear what these kids are saying? And Jesus said, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it. Haven’t you ever read out of the mouths of babes and sucklings? You have perfected praise. Jesus felt that the praise of children was the best of all. And he left and went out of the city back to Bethany, and he stayed there. There’s a great crescendo building at this time. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but as you follow through this in the gospel accounts, there is a building of it. There’s a boldness about Jesus now. Prior to this time, because his time had not yet come, Jesus stayed out of the way. He stayed in Galilee. He spoke in allegories. He made his messages not clear at all to the public and then explained them to his disciples in private because his time had not yet come. He knew that if he told the truth, he knew that if he was plain in telling the truth, that he would die. And so consequently, the time having now come, he really begins to build the pressure. Now the disciples were told by John in chapter 12, verse 16, they did not understand all this at the first. But when Jesus was glorified, they remembered all the things that were written about him and that they had done these things to him. And the people, therefore, that were with him, when he called Lazarus out of his grave and raised him from the dead, bore record. And for this cause the people also met him, for they heard he had done this miracle. And the Pharisees, therefore, said among themselves, Can you see from this that we are not accomplishing anything? The whole world has gone after him. And that is the dangerous and volatile situation that Jesus faced in these days, these last six days before his final crucifixion. When he came to the temple, and this account is in Matthew 21 and verse 23, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching and said, By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you the authority to run these people out of the temple? Now, what’s fascinating about this, I think he did this twice. And on neither occasion were they able to say very much about it because everyone knew they shouldn’t be there. It’s just that no one but Jesus had the courage. Jewish expression, perhaps chutzpah, to actually do something about it. But they said, well, who gave you this authority? And Jesus answered and said, I’ll tell you one thing. If you tell me this, I will likewise tell you by what authority I do these things. Okay? The baptism of John, whence was it? From heaven or of men? And then they thought about that and said, well, now let’s see. If we say from heaven, he’s going to say, well, why didn’t you believe him? And if we say of men, oh, the people believe John’s a prophet, and we will be in a whole lot of trouble if we say that. And so they mused on it for a moment and said, well, we can’t tell. And he said, then, well, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. But what do you think? He steps off into another allegory. A certain man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, son, go to work today in my vineyard. He answered and said, I’m not going to do it. But afterward, he repented and felt sorry and felt bad about what he’d said and went. He came to the second son and said likewise. And he said, oh, I go, sir. And he went not. Tell me, Jesus asked them, which of these two did the will of his father? They said, well, the first. You mean the one that said, I’m not going to do it, but then repented and went and did it? Yeah, that’s the one. Jesus said to them, Verily I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots are going into the kingdom of God before you do. Now that’s a real wet blanket right in the face for these guys because of what he tells them. And what he is saying is, oh yeah, these people start out in a rotten attitude. But in time to come, they felt sorry about what they did and they changed. You? You have said all the right words. You have made all the right statements. But when it came time to actually do what God said to do, you haven’t done that. John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you wouldn’t believe him. But the publicans and the harlots believed him. And you, when you had seen it, didn’t repent afterward that you might believe it. It’s plain at this point in his ministry that Jesus had had enough of the Pharisees and the scribes. He’s becoming very blunt in his criticism. Up to now, he’s been relatively mild. But with only six days to the Passover, there are some things that have to be said. And Jesus went on with another allegory. He said there was a certain householder who planted a vineyard and hedged it around, digged a wine press, built a tower, and he leased it to husbandmen, and he went off into a far country. And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen that they might receive the fruits. In other words, they were sharecroppers. He had a right to receive some of it. And they took his servants and beat one and killed another and stoned another one. He sent other servants, and they did the same thing to them. And finally he said, I’ll send them my son. They will at least respect my son. And when they saw the son, they said among themselves, this is the heir. Let’s kill him. Let’s seize his inheritance. And they caught him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. It really has sinister overtones, doesn’t it, for what you know about the Gospels and about Jesus and about what finally happened. In the end, I think it’s not a question so much of what you have done in the past or what you have been. It’s in what you do with the rest of your life from this day forward. Until next time, this is Ronald Dart.
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and you were born to win. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1 888-BIBLE-44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.
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