The portion of God's word we're gonna read tonight is Mark chapter 11, verses 12 to 19. Tonight we're gonna study the zeal or the passion of the king. If you could follow along with me in verse 12 of Mark chapter 11. On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, may no one ever eat fruit from you again. And his disciples heard it. And they came to Jerusalem, and he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple. And he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, is it not written? My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers. And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. And when evening came, they went out of the city. Let's pray. Father, as we come before your word, we want to hear you. And so I pray that by your grace, that your spirit would speak to us through your word, and that we would be transformed, that we would be changed, and that we would leave this place convicted and challenged and excited and encouraged and ready to go out and represent you to a world that desperately needs him. May we be fed from you tonight by your word, we pray. Amen. Well, good evening. It's good to be with you. We are in day two of our seven-part series on the coming of the King, the last week of Jesus. I don't know how you have figured out what you're passionate about. I don't know how you've discerned in your own life what turns that knob up of passion in your life, or as Joshua put it, what fills your passion bucket. I don't know how you discern your zeal, but as we're going through this last week of Jesus' life, we're going to see precisely what he is very, very passionate about. In fact, tonight we see in a glimpse, in this short passage in Mark, but yet a very full day for Jesus, we see some things that He is extremely zealous for. One of the ways that you can tell what you're zealous for, what you're passionate about, is by finding out what makes you angry, what frustrates you, what really boils your blood. That's a pretty easy way for me to figure out what I'm passionate about. Sometimes it has to do with road rage a little bit, and that would make me selfish and passionate about myself often in the car. I'll leave it at that. But what do you get angry about? What are the things that, boy, they just, they irk you? They resonate in your heart and you feel outraged, you feel angry at the event or the circumstance or the situation that you see going on before you. Often that's a way to tell yourself, maybe others as well, what you're passionate about, what you're zealous about. This second day of Jesus Holy Week, of the Passion Week here in Mark, gives us a glimpse of what Jesus is passionate about. And it's revealed for us, not in sinful anger, but in Jesus' righteous anger towards religiosity, legalism, corruption, and inauthentic worship. And tonight, in Mark 11, we're going to unpack this. Now, I just wanna recap just briefly what happened, what we saw on Jesus' first day. The day that we would call the triumphal entry. Palm Sunday, as it's referred to. It'll be April 1st this year on our calendar. Jesus, as Mark has been presenting him, is the King of all kings and the Lord over all lords. And as Jesus comes to the city of Jerusalem for his final week, the week leading up to his death, burial, and resurrection, We see Jesus entering the city of Jerusalem, presenting himself as the king over all kings. He comes and he fulfills messianic prophecy in the Old Testament by riding into the city on an unridden colt, a donkey, and he has this throng of followers, disciples around him that are proclaiming, Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David. Hosanna in the highest. They praise and worship Jesus as the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords. And Jesus comes and presents himself as king. And then at the end of Mark 11, 11, we read, Jesus went into the temple as it was late, that triumphal entry Sunday, as it was late that evening, he went into the temple, looked around at everything, And as it was late, he went back to Bethany with the 12. That's one of the curious, it's a curious verse. Jesus comes in and he's heralded as King of Kings, Lord of Lords. And it seems like the crowd dissipates. And the way that Mark writes it for us, there's Jesus entering the temple almost alone, it seems. And Jesus makes a survey of the temple. sees what's going on there, and then Mark tells us he departs and leaves, and that ends the first day of Jesus' last week before his crucifixion. So today we enter into day two. What's gonna happen in Jesus' Monday, as it were? Like many Mondays for us, it seems Monday has not been a good day. Monday for Jesus, as it seems, turns out to be a pretty hard day. Now let me just clarify right off the bat, Jesus' Monday here of his Passion Week wasn't a result of him waking up on the wrong side of the bed. He didn't get up and put grumpy socks on and just live that way. There's a very intense passion and zeal in Jesus' life behind everything that he does. What goes on in Jesus' life is intentional. The thing that he is trying to teach and display It's not that he didn't get his chocolate milk in the morning or just have a bad night and didn't sleep well and now he's grumpy and angry at everybody. Jesus is intensely purposeful on dealing with the religiosity of Israel and her leaders. He wants to display himself as king and show the things that he's passionate for are the very things that Israel and her leaders are not passionate for. Imagine this, the king of all kings and his people aren't lined up, they're not aligned and on agenda with him on the very things that he is excited for, that he is passionate about. This text reveals for us three passion areas, or three things that Jesus, as the king, is zealous about. If you have your Bible, I would encourage you to take it. We're gonna unpack it together tonight and see just what Jesus, the king, is zealous for. Let me pray again and then we'll unpack these three things together. Father, we do come to you again tonight with a sense of need and urgency, Lord. Unless we hear from you, what we do in this time is vain. Unless your spirit works and moves in our hearts, Lord, We've wasted our time. We don't desire that, Father. We desire to hear from you tonight. We desire to be passionate for the things that you and your Son are passionate for. Father, tonight, expose our hearts by your Spirit. Help us to see where we're in opposition to your Son, the King. Give us growing passion for Him and for the things He's passionate for. Give us a greater zeal for the Gospel. for the good news. Change us tonight, Father, we ask and pray in your name, amen. Mark chapter 11, verses 12 to 19, three things that Jesus, the King, is passionate for. The first thing is found there in verses 12 to 14. We see that the King is zealous for authentic lives. The king is zealous for authentic lives. So we have there on the following day when they came from Bethany, so again, Jesus with his 12 disciples have been staying overnight in Bethany, just a city that's just a short, maybe a mile, just a very short walk from the city of Jerusalem, not far at all, into the city. They're coming into the city, and when they came from Bethany, and he was hungry. Okay, that's natural in the morning. You're walking in, you're hungry. Verse 13, and seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. And when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, may no one ever eat fruit from you again. And his disciples heard it. This is interesting because the thing I said earlier that Jesus didn't wake up on the wrong side of the bed, he didn't put his grumpy socks on and decide to have a bad day. On the outset, it looks like in these three verses, that's exactly what happened. He got up, he was walking into Jerusalem, he was hungry. The fig tree didn't have any figs on it and he got mad. Had a little temper tantrum. Cursed the tree, may no one ever eat fruit from you again. Let me explain to you a little bit of what's going on here with this tree and why it's important, why Mark even includes it for us. Fig trees in Israel, in Jerusalem, in that area, bore a couple different kinds of fruit. In the spring, before the figs would come on it, the trees would leaf. You would see these leaves on the fig trees and little nodules that were edible would grow on it. So when you saw a tree and leaf, you could expect to go up to it and find at least something to eat off of it. What Jesus finds here is this tree that looks on the outside like everything's healthy, like there's food for Him. It's useful. It's authentic. It's real. It's healthy. And yet when He goes to it, the thing that He expects to find, these little nodules, not the figs yet, but these little nodules, would be there so that He could eat and be sustained from it. What he finds, though, is a tree that looks healthy on the outside, it looks like it should produce fruit, and yet, on the inside, it's decaying. Timothy Keller said it like this, if you found a fig tree that had begun to sprout leaves but had none of these delicious nodules, you would know that something was wrong. It might look okay from a distance because the leaves had emerged, but if it had no nodules, it was diseased, or maybe even dying inside. Growth without fruit was a sign of decay. Jesus here is proclaiming that very thing. There's growth, this tree looks healthy, it looks good, but on the inside, it's dead. It's dying, it's decayed. Now what does this have to do with Jesus' ministry? What does this have to do with him coming in and cleansing the temple, as we'll see in just a minute? Jesus is using this fig tree as a visual parable, a symbol, a display, if you will, of the nature and the condition of Israel as a whole. The nation, its leadership, It's activity. On the outside, it looked healthy. The Sanhedrin, the scribes, the Pharisees, the religious leaders, it looked really good. There was activity. There was things going on. As we'll see in just a minute, there was business. Externally, things looked great. However, internally, they were dead. There was decay. Jesus, in fact, challenged the religious leaders and the Pharisees. He would call them whitewashed tombs. They look beautiful, brilliant on the outside, but on the inside, there's a rotting, dead body. That's how Jesus is seeing the nation of Israel. What Jesus is showing us here in his zeal is that he is looking for lives that are authentic. He is looking for real fruit in lives that say we're really following God. He's looking for genuine discipleship. People that would say, yes, I'm following Christ. Yes, I'm pursuing Him. Yes, I'm living for His glory. And inwardly, that would be true as well as externally. But all Jesus was finding at that time was hypocrisy. People making big shows, religious leaders making big shows of their worship and their giving and their tithing and their prayers. You can look through the Gospel of Mark and see how Jesus went after them one after another. Here they stand on the corner and pray and make a big show of how great they are before God and yet they oppress the widow and the orphan. They don't show justice or mercy. They love the accolades that they get in standing before people and being religious. But inwardly, they're full of death. As we've been studying on Sunday mornings in the Gospel of John, Jesus said, you're of your father, the devil. You're full of lies. What Jesus is looking for and zealous for is authentic living. Not hypocrisy, but life. He's looking for a people whose hearts and lives would reflect the same reality. That he, Jesus, is the king. He's our king. That we would live in submission to him. The problem is it gets really easy for us to play games. It gets really easy for us to put on a show, to make things externally look good, but our hearts be disconnected from Christ. The reason for that is because we're not believing the gospel. We're believing that we still have to earn things. that we still have to earn God's favor, that we still have to get His love, and we do that by our effort, our work, our own righteousness. That's not authentic Christianity, and that's not the authentic life that Christ is looking for. He's looking for people who are broken spiritually, who are poor in spirit, who come to Him and say, I've got nothing. As we sang tonight, your righteousness alone, nothing but the blood of Jesus. Nothing but the blood of Jesus can cleanse me from my sin. It's coming to him as empty-handed sinners and saying, unless you cleanse me, I have no righteousness. Unless you wash me, I'm not clean. Jesus here is zealous for authentic living. He puts a curse on the tree. May no one ever eat fruit from you again. In a sense, he's voicing to Israel, you're done. It's no good. It's not acceptable. What is acceptable is faith. Trusting Christ and His righteousness alone. Are you zealous for living authentically? Like Jesus? Are you zealous for the gospel? Or are you passionate about your own righteousness? Your own labor? Are you passionate about what you've earned? that you're gonna present to God one day and say, hey, look how I made it happen in my own life. Isn't this enough? Jesus, the king, is zealous for authentic lives. The second thing is there found in verses 15 to 16. And in some ways, the fig tree and Jesus' cursing of it explains and interprets what happens for us in the temple. Or maybe the other way around, what happens in the temple interprets and explains for us what goes on with the fig tree. Either way, they're both speaking to us and telling us of the zeal of the king. And so we find in verse 15, they came to Jerusalem, they finally get to the city, and he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who had Now again, this isn't just Jesus outraged and further angered because he's had a bad night, he woke up on the wrong side of the bed and he didn't get breakfast and he's just grumpy. This is not that kind of thing. Jesus is righteously angry, he's zealous, The king is zealous for actual worship, for actual worship. That's the second thing here. The king is zealous for actual worship. And what Jesus does in reading this is he goes into the temple and really begins to cause quite a scene and a commotion. Now, most scholars believe that where Jesus entered into the temple was probably the outer courtyard. Herod's temple, it's the third temple that would have been built in Israel, wasn't completed until 8066. It was a massive complex. It was huge. In fact, the outer portion of it, which is called the Court of the Gentiles, many estimate and believe that it was somewhere near 35 acres large. I think, if I remember correctly, maybe the size of our entire campus here at Santa Rosa Bible Church, including all the way back to the ball fields, huge. huge area. Jesus enters into this court of the Gentiles where obviously they had been engaged in some merchandising and commerce. There was an economy and industry set up there. Now let me just give you a picture of what was happening in that day and age. Remember this is Passover week. The Jews from all over Israel were entering into Jerusalem to worship and to celebrate the Passover festival. And as was told by the law when they came, they were to come and bring sacrifices, burn offerings, to worship God with. And so imagine all these families from all over Israel coming to the focal point, the city of Jerusalem, to worship and to remember what God had done some 2,000 years previous in releasing Israel from their captivity in Egypt, passing over them, their houses that were covered in blood, passing over them, and leading them out. It was a celebration and a remembrance of what God had done in his grace in the past. And so imagine all these families coming into Jerusalem, coming with their families, but not just their families, also their herds. They had to bring an animal to sacrifice. Josephus, the Jewish historian and scholar, He mentioned in 8066, that the year the temple was completed, he estimated some 255,000 lambs were sacrificed that year. So imagine the crowd, probably millions. Imagine the animals, imagine the commotion. And not only did they come and bring their animals for sacrifice, but they also had to pay a temple tax, if you will. And the tax had to be paid in a specific currency. They couldn't just accept a Roman coin as payment for the tax because the law, the Old Testament law prescribed that the tax be paid on a coin that was pure metal and that had no image of any king or ruler on it. It had to be a plain coin. And so people would come and they wouldn't have these coins, And there in the temple, they could exchange that and get the proper coin for the temple tax. So imagine all this commotion, all these animals, people exchanging money. Many had believed that they had set out the markets on the outskirts of the temple, somewhere near the Mount of Olives actually, to begin to be able to do this exchange. Some people got the bright idea they were trying to be helpful and efficient for the people of Israel and said, hey, Instead of everybody having to bring their animals, why don't we have pure animal sacrifices ready to go? People can just come and they'll pay us. We'll sell them our animal. They can take that into the temple. They're pre-approved, if you will, and they can sacrifice them and they can come and get the temple tax. They can exchange it. Let's just make it expedient for people. Bring it in, they can exchange it. We'll even do it near the Mount of Olives, offsite a little bit. As time developed, that market moved closer and closer into the actual temple, into the actual place of worship. So much so that in Jesus' day, it seems very apparent that that court of Gentiles now was filled with animals. It was filled with money changers. If you were poor in that day and you couldn't afford or have a lamb, the law made provision for you to present a couple pigeons to be sacrificed before the Lord. Those guys were there too. All of that moved into the temple complex. All of that into the outer courts of the temple were commotion, livestock, merchandise. I mean, it was a huge bazaar. I mean, it was just a great outdoor market. The temple that had been set aside and created and made to be the place of God's presence and the place for worship of God, had now turned into the local strip mall. People came to buy, to sell. When Jesus sees this, he's filled with passion. And this passion comes and is expressed in righteous anger. He begins to cleanse or purify, as some have said, the temple, going around, turning tables, kicking over the seats of those who sold pigeons. The other gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Matthew, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John tell us that Jesus made a whip to drive off the animals, to drive out people. Why is he doing this? You see, because Jesus had seen the function of the temple was compromised to allow for the industry of worship. The function of the temple, worship, prayer, sacrifice, had become a supermarket of religious deeds. He turned worship and prayer and justice and sacrifice and mercy into just perfunctory motions and actions. Worship was about doing the same thing over again, or the right thing, or being expedient about it, being efficient about it. I'm not here to knock those that would help us streamline things in the ministry and the church to serve more people and to advance the gospel that way. But here they had exchanged what God had commanded and the very function of what the temple was for, prayer and worship. to make a profit, to engage in economic betterment. The merchandise and the exchanging of money, this was a huge business for the Sadducees, for the scribes. They were in charge of the temple, the Sanhedrin was, and this is where their living came from. And yet, that's not even what God had commanded their living to come from. Their living was to come from generous giving of the people of Israel all over the nation, and yet they turned it into a business. Worship was exchanged for profit. Prayer was exchanged for money. Expediency was placed on the top shelf, and authenticity, actual worship, was disregarded. You can see why Jesus is zealous, why he's passionate and angry here. The worship of his father, the worship that he, the king of kings and lord of lords is due, was made a mockery of. It was a joke. Come in, pay your cash, get your animal, take him to the priest, he sacrifices him. I've done my duty, on my way, I'll see you later. It wasn't real worship. Were their hearts really crushed at their sin? Did they really see in the sacrifice of that animal what their sin had done to violate the holiness of God, what it cost them, what it was teaching them about who God was. No, they were just moving in a mundane, organized, I imagine there was a lot of efficiency and it seemed very systematic movement, but no prayer. No real spirituality, no real worship. Everything was inauthentic. Again, Tim Keller quotes in his book King's Cross, Jesus was returning to a place that was religiously very busy, just like most churches are. Tasks, committees, noise, people coming and going, lots of transactions. But the busyness contained no spirituality. Nobody was actually praying. There are many things that we can do that appear to be signs of real belief but can grow without real heart change. Evidently, we can be very busy in church activities without real heart change and without real compassionate involvement with others. That stirred the passion of Jesus. He was zealous for real worship and he saw busyness. He saw going through the motions. He saw ritual that was devoid of heart. Are you, and I'll point to myself on this one as well, are we really passionate for real worship? Are we zealous for the things of God in honoring His name and glorifying Him? Or is this just something we have to do? Is it just perfunctory actions that once again distort the gospel and turn it into what we've earned and what we've accomplished and what we've done? God, I've given my time this week. I've gone to church twice. I sang songs. I gave. I set my clock forward so I'd be there on time. Is it just perfunctory to us? Or do we value, do we push in our hearts and our heads and say this is really about God and who He is and what He's done for us in Christ? Is coming and worshiping really a moment for us to engage with the living God? To recognize Him in His glory? to pray as a people together and to seek his face? They say be merciful to us, show us grace. Or is it just routine? Is it just expedient? Heaven help us if we do things in the church just to be efficient without really looking at actual worship. What does God desire? Jesus, the king, is zealous for actual worship. He wants his people to be in prayer and to worship him, and he doesn't see it happen. In fact, he sees hypocrisy. He sees a game. He sees people going through the motions. The king is zealous for authentic lives. He's zealous for actual worship. The third thing is found there in verse 17. The king, Jesus, is zealous for all peoples. Listen, this amazes me here. We get the picture in our minds, and I think it's justifiable, that Jesus was just kind of the Tasmanian devil in the temple that day, just swirling about, kicking everything over, scourging and driving off the cattle, creating a big commotion. I find it interesting, though, in verse 17, it says he was teaching them. To me, that implies he had to take a moment and stop and say some things. He had to gather a crowd and say, did you just see what I did with the tax collector, with the money exchangers and with these people selling and how I drove them off? Let me tell you why I did that. Let me teach you about that. He was teaching them saying, is it not written? He points back to the Old Testament. He goes back to Isaiah. He says, is it not written? My house shall be a called, a house of prayer for all the nations. but you have made it a den of robbers. Jesus quotes or alludes to two particular scripture passages here. The first one, the first sentence is from Isaiah. It's from Isaiah, where did we go? Isaiah 49. Isaiah 49. Therein, and as I said earlier, Jesus was in the court of Gentiles. He's in the very place that had been set aside for non-Jews. It wasn't just set aside, but it was the one place that the non-Jews could get in the temple complex. That's very important. He goes back to Isaiah 49 and says, Now if you go back to Isaiah 49 here, Jesus again, or I'm sorry, Isaiah is quoting and he is speaking in one of the servant songs, a song that talks about the coming Messiah, the King. I don't know if I have this right. It's Isaiah 56. Yeah, I have two Isaiah passages in my notes tonight. I saw the second one, not the first. Isaiah 56. Isaiah 56.3, here's this amazing promise in Isaiah. What God is saying is, listen, I'm not just a savior for Jews. I'm a savior for all peoples. Isaiah 56.3, let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, the Lord will surely separate me from his people. He's saying let not the foreigner, someone who's not a Jewish person, say to God, God's not gonna accept me. I'm not the right ethnic group. Verse six, the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord to minister Him, to love the name of the Lord and to His servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it and holds fast my covenant, these I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. The Lord God who gathers the outcasts of Israel declares, I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered. What Isaiah is prophesying and promising forward is an inclusion of every tongue and tribe and race and people into the salvation of the Lord. He's kicking open the door on this ethnic racism of the Jews and saying, listen, I'm not just for the Jewish people, I'm for all nations, I'm for all peoples. And Mark picks up on that when he quotes Jesus. Jesus, as he's talking here in the temple, says, isn't my house to be called a house of prayer for all the nations? Isn't this place, even this court of Gentiles that we're standing in, that these tax collectors, these money exchangers, these salesmen of sacrifices, isn't this place a place for them to pray and to worship as well? You see what they had done in bringing in these booths of animals and places to exchange money in this marketplace, they had effectively eliminated any opportunity for worship from a non-Jewish person. Try it sometime, okay? Just go down to the very, very busy mall. Hit the mall on Black Friday, how about this? and try and pray there. Try and find a corner, a place, just to spend some time in prayer and devotion and worship. I promise you, I'm pretty sure the crowds will make it very, very difficult. You might be able to do it, but it's just gonna be hard. Here this place, the place that is to be recognized as the place of God's presence, the places where God dwells with his people, the place where sacrifices and offerings were brought, This place that even had a place for Gentiles to come and to worship had been turned into a marketplace so that they couldn't do it at all. They couldn't worship one bit. It was impossible. And Jesus coming here to cleanse the temple to kick out these money exchangers and these people selling off things was saying, listen, as he quotes in Isaiah, isn't my house and my Father's house a place of prayer for all the nations? This is the truth of the gospel. Where the Jews were trying to exclude and keep people out, Jesus is saying no, the gospel is for everyone. There's nobody that the gospel isn't for. In Isaiah 49, even to push this further, God speaking to his son, the servant, the Messiah, says in Isaiah 49.5, and now the Lord says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has become my strength. He says, God says to his servant, God says to his Messiah, Verse six, it is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel. God says to his servant, the Messiah, it's too light. The word there means it's too small. It's too insignificant. It's not big enough for the glory of God that you should only be a savior to the tribes of Jacob and to the people of Israel The end of verse six, I will make you as a light for the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. The promised Messiah wasn't just a Messiah for Israel, he was a Messiah for everyone. He's a king over all kings and Lord over all lords. And Jesus' passion here is exuding as he sees the people of Israel excluding, prohibiting, the nations from worshiping the God of the universe. My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den for robbers. He goes right back to the religious leaders and he says, you've made this place your safe house. The temple has become a place of iniquity for you, a place for you to hide, a place for you to be safe in your religiosity and your legalism and your wickedness You've made it a den for robbers. You're stealing, you're exhorting, you're corrupting true worship of me. I'm passionate for all people. This really challenges me and I hope it pushes on you to think about who, by your life, you might be excluding from the gospel news. Are you living in such a way as to keep people from hearing the good news of Jesus as King and Savior because of whatever. I don't like the color of their skin. I don't like the fact that they don't have as good of an education as I do. I don't like the fact that they are as wealthy as I do, I am, or not wealthy. I mean, pick a thing. We exclude based on race, age, gender, economic status, educational status. Our culture is pushing us even to exclude from telling people about Jesus based on sexuality. The gospel has to go to everybody so they may hear, turn from their sin, and embrace the King and the Savior. But we want to pick people that we think deserve the gospel. We want to choose. Jesus is zealous for all peoples. In fact, that's the song of worship that's sung In the last book of the Bible, in Revelation, worship to the lamb who's been slain, Revelation 5, 9, and 10. Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them a kingdom and priest to our God, and they shall reign on the earth. The gospel is for everybody. Jesus is passionate that we share it with everybody, that we announce that he is king over all kings and as king he has come and lived a perfect sinless life that you and I could not live and he has died in our place for our sins. He was buried and on the third day he rose again from the grave to give us life, to reconcile us back to God the Father, to include us as his people. Are you passionate about that? It's what Jesus is passionate about. He's passionate about authentic lives. He is passionate about actual worship. He is passionate about all people and the gospel going to all people. And yet there's a fourth zeal here in this text. It's not the passion or zeal of the king. It's a dangerous zeal. Verse 18, 19. The chief priest and the scribes heard it. They heard what Jesus was teaching and what he had done. And they were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. The fourth zeal here is this. It's those who are offended by the things of the king. Those who are offended by the very things that the king is zealous for, are really zealous for the destruction of the king. I mean, there's no middle ground here. If you're not zealous and passionate about the things that Jesus is passionate about, there's only one thing that you're really zealous for and passionate about, his destruction. That's how these chief priests felt about it, these stribes. They're floored. He's messed up their whole system. He has turned over their tables. He's ruined for a day, at least, the economy. He's messed up the efficiency of their way. And he's kicking out the doors on who God and who the temple belongs to. Are you kidding me? They're zealous for themselves. And in being opposed to Jesus and offended at what he does, They find themselves in opposition to him. They're looking to destroy him. Let's be clear about this. If we're not zealous and passionate for the things that Jesus is, for the gospel, for authentic lives, if we're not passionate for worshiping him rightly, really, aren't we just opposed to him? I mean, it may look like we can play the game and perform well and keep it clean on the outside, but internally aren't we really just throwing our fist up at God? Rejecting what Christ has done? I mean, if it bothers us that the gospel should go to every people, aren't we really distorting the gospel and aren't we really saying it has to go our way? If authentic living, being fruitful on the outside as well as inside, is difficult for us and we rebel against it, aren't we really just rebelling against the King who calls and changes us from the inside out? If our opposition, if our zeal is because we're offended by the things that Jesus does probably means we're zealous for his destruction. We want to be king and not Jesus. Let me ask you tonight in closing here, are you zealous for the things that Jesus is zealous for? Are you passionate? for authentic living, for actual worship, for all people. My heart struggles with that, I'll be honest. There's a good note of the gospel here, though, for us. Because it doesn't come back to how hard we try to earn this. It doesn't come back to how much energy and strength we can muster to perform the zeal or to have it in our hearts. Jesus, as the King of kings, is the one who is perfectly zealous for authentic living, and he gives it as grace. Jesus is the one who is perfectly zealous for real worship, and he changes us and gifts his righteous worship to his Father, to us. He is the one who is perfectly zealous for all peoples, even when we wouldn't be, and we would put up barriers and exclude those that need to hear the gospel from it. He's been zealous for us. The gospel is a word to tell us tonight that we can't earn it or perform it, that Jesus has gifted it to us in His life, death, and resurrection. And we, by faith, receive what He has done for us. We accept that good news. Tonight, the challenge for you is not to leave here and to try harder, to do more, to muster up some passion. Tonight, the challenge is for you to embrace by faith what Jesus has already accomplished, to embrace by faith what he's already zealous for, and to cry out to him and say, God, make me more zealous for the things you are. Give me a deeper passion for the things you're passionate about. Grow grace in my heart. changed me, I repent of my pride, I repent of my own attempts at self-righteousness. Jesus has done it all for me. I trust Him. Let me pray. Father, we confess tonight we are not as intensely passionate about the things that you are. Often we don't even come close. We thank you that we have a king who is passionate for all peoples, that he has extended his life for us and for our sake. Father, would you grow our faith? Would you give us faith to believe and to trust and depend on him and not our own merit and not our own work? Make us passionate for the things that you are. Give us a right zeal for your name. Give us a holy passion for real worship, for authentic lives and for all people. We thank you that you have gifted that to anyone who believes in Christ. And so we sing and worship Him tonight and give you thanks for all that you've done on our behalf. In Jesus' name, amen. by living out the word, loving one another, and leading others to Christ. 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