Why Did Jesus Predict His Own Death 3 Times | (Matthew 20_17-19 Explained)

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We're gonna keep going in Matthew chapter 20 I have to survive about three more weeks, and then I can take off for the rest of the month of November. I will not be preaching in November or December. Some of you just like, praise God. Some of you are like, oh, and everywhere in between. Brent's gonna be doing Matthew chapter 21 in the month of November into the first week of December, while we're on sabbatical. And then Cam's gonna be finishing off the year as well. And I think, are we getting through Matthew chapter 22 in there? Something like that, getting through Matthew chapter 22 So I'm gonna kind of recap. Since we weren't here last week, we were out building forts in the woods. Two weeks ago, we talked about the generosity of God. It started off in Matthew chapter 20 with the parable of the vineyard. And we saw that the people who started work at 5 p.m. got paid exactly the same daily wage as the people who had started at 5 a.m. And there was a lot of frustration from the people who had started at 5 a.m. They said, I don't understand. How come we're not getting more? They were the people who got paid last. And ultimately, what we saw was that this was a parable about the kingdom of heaven, where people who come in at the end get the same exact reward that people who get in the beginning. Now, obviously, as Christians, we understand that. We understand that there's not like two heavens. There's not like some sort of weirdness that's happening there. But in Judaism, they absolutely did believe that your fiscal wealth, your materials, things like that, were a reflection of how God was blessing you. And so there was absolutely a concept, especially in the Sadducees who did not believe in the afterlife, that the more you have now, the more God is actually blessing you. And so this parable is important because it's saying, hey, Judaism in the first century, the more you have, if you're under the house of Shemai, which is the Sadducees, the more you have, the more God is blessing you. You are God's chosen because you drive a Porsche. You are God's chosen because all you wear is Armani, Brent. There's new glasses over there. You are chosen by God. In this parable is Jesus saying, that's not true. That's not how the kingdom of heaven operates. The kingdom of heaven operates the same for the least and for the greatest in this world. This parable had shattered first century Judaism and what their belief was about physical material wealth being the reflection of God's favor. It also shatters what is our modern belief system that says somehow God blesses us more just because we have more things.

And so we can skew that any way we want. We can say, well, because we have more material possessions, God is blessing us more. Just because you're a hoarder doesn't mean that God is blessing you more. That's not true at all. That's an inaccurate way of thinking of things. In fact, a closer way of thinking of things is, how much are you giving away? And why do I say that? Because obviously, you know, I'm a pastor and people are like, oh, hey, you know, he's going to get into a tithe message. It's not at all what we're talking about here. The king of the universe, Jesus the Christ, Yahweh, came to the earth. He had everything. Everything was his. The throne room was worshiping him nonstop, day and night, night and day. There was no conflict in his throne room. He was the king. There was no argument about whether he was the king or not the king. He was worshiped all the time. And yet, he decided to give up all of that so that we could be safe and come into this world, to Tabernacle with us, to take on flesh. So today, we're going to see, start picking up in verse 17 of Matthew chapter 20, we're going to see the beginning of the end. Jesus is going to start traveling towards Jerusalem. Up until this point, most of Jesus' ministry is taking place in the outskirts, the suburbs of Jerusalem. He's in Galilee. He's in Judea. He's in Samaria. He's all over those places. Jerusalem is the hotbed of the religious leadership. This is where the temple is. This is a place that is full of commerce, full of trade, but it's also full of a lot of politics. You've got the Roman Emperor and the Empire of Rome, which is controlling that whole entire area. They have conquered the Israelites and many others at that point. You have the Jewish leadership, which is run by two different branches. You have the House of Shemite, the Sadducees, and you have the House of Haleel, which is the Pharisees. The Sadducees are politically operating the temple, and the Pharisees are the teachers of religious law. And so both have their own focus. Both are arguing over all the time, mid-rushing on what is the application of the scripture, what is the application of the commandment, what is the proper way to do this. And then you have the political things that happen in first century Judaism, where the changing of the money, there's taxation, there's all these types of stuff. And this is where Jesus starts to shift what's getting ready to happen. Verse 17, it says, as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the 12 disciples aside privately and he told them what was going to happen to them. This is not some big fanfare. This is not a family meeting. Jesus didn't gather them all together and say, hey guys, we're gonna have a family meeting. We're gonna do an update. We're gonna do a ministry update. We're gonna do a ministry update here. He pulled them privately aside, and he starts to tell them about what's going to happen. Now, we've been in Matthew for a long time, so this is not the first time that Jesus has predicted his death. And so, you know, sometimes as a pastor, especially in today's American church, you know, people are like, hey, look, you can't go line by line, precept by precept, because people get bored. And the truth is, is people do get bored. They get bored really, really easily. We fill our time with all kinds of things. We fill our calendar with all kinds of things. And we give God the leftovers. And we say we don't give God the leftovers, but we do give God the leftovers. We had a busy week, so we're tired, and we're going to sleep in. And so God can, God can get my Saturday afternoon when I catch up with my favorite teacher online. This is the third time. And so don't check out Today on me, because we've already read through the previous two. If it was important enough for Jesus to teach his disciples, I think it's probably important enough for us to read through that. Okay? And so I'm not here saying, hey, you know, I was at Sukkot the entire week, and so I'm just going to mail it in on my notes. I'm just going to read the last time. No, we're going to continue line by line, precept by precept, until we get through the Book of Matthew. Then once we're through the Book of Matthew, then we'll shake it up for a little bit. At that point of time, we'll go through women in the Bible. Pretty excited about that series. For us to be able to take a look at some of the most important people that Jesus operated with, who sometimes we just kind of cast aside in modern society. We're not going to do that here. Was Elijah, were you clapping? Was Elijah clapping on that? Interesting. This is the first week you have not yelled and screamed me off the pulpit there, bud. I am very happy about that. So, Jesus is talking to his 12 disciples and he pulls them aside privately and he tells them what is going to happen to him. Matthew tells us that if we are willing to accept the Torah and the prophets, that they testified till John. Remember that, right? We were in Matthew chapter 11 It says, the Torah and the prophets testified till John. It then says, if you can accept it, because again, this is a tough teaching. They had the Torah and the prophets was everything to them. That was the governing body. It was the religious text. It was all of these important things to them. It told them who the Mashiach was going to be. He says, if you can accept it, John was the spirit of Elijah that must come before the Mashiach comes. So Matthew tells us that John came under the spirit of Elijah, and Jesus told us that he was going to fulfill the Torah and the prophets. So everything Jesus is predicting here has to have some sort of fulfillment in the Torah and the prophets. If Jesus is the Mashiach, if he is our king, if he is our salvation, it has to do what he says he's going to do. And we should be looking for that. Because if Jesus is fulfilling the Torah and the prophets, then we should understand what that means today. Because we love the Torah, we love the prophets, we love the feasts, we love the Sabbath, we love Jesus. So we need to understand what that means. Jesus is prophesying this third time about his death to this point when this conversation has happened. It's okay, buddy, it's okay. He's like, I've heard this sermon before. No, you have not. It's new, I promise.