The Preparation of the Slave-Savior for His Redemptive Service (1) & (2)

0:00We praise the Lord for thy great plan, that we might well in place may be." Welcome to Life Study of the Bible, provided by Living Stream Ministry and featuring the Ministry of Watchmane and Witnessly. Witnessly served the Lord faithfully for more than 70 years, culminating with his exhaustive commentary on the entire scriptures called Life Study of the Bible. We're happy to bring you recorded excerpts from his ministry at the end of the program. We'll give you the website where you can find out more about the remarkable ministry of these two men. But for now, we hope you enjoyed today's program. At the end of a nearly three-year-long journey with his disciples, the Lord Jesus, at the end of his gospel ministry, makes a triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Just six days before

1:00the time of his sacrificial death on the cross, the Lord Jesus surprises his disciples, confounds his opposers and thoroughly captivates the hearts of the people of the great city Jerusalem. During these final days, Jesus was finished performing the miracles, the great teachings, the casting out of demons, even the healings and the cleansing of lepers. For now, he is totally focused on the preparations necessary for his death, his burial, his resurrection, and ultimately his ascension. Mark 11 gives a marvelous account of these six days of preparation. And Bill Lawson is here as we, I think, have a privilege bill to be able to fellowship such a portion. It's so rich, it's so dense in its profound content. I don't think there's any way we can hope to get through it in just a short 30-minute program, is there? Yeah, well, I think we'll have to try, Chris, like you say, it's very rich, very full, and very enlightening. Bill, I want to begin by making reference to something that came up in our previous program for those who were with

2:03us. Just to summarize very quickly, this was just prior to entering Jerusalem. The Lord makes a stop at the city of Jericho. You and I have been there. It's not a pleasant place. It's a low place. It's a dusty place. It's hot. And it's place bearing a curse in scriptural references. And he comes across this man, a poor beggar named Bartimaeus, who is a blind man. Now, the Lord has just presented for the third time to his disciples. The fact that he was going to enter into Jerusalem, be rejected, be delivered up, ultimately be killed and resurrected. And again, for the third time, his disciples have no ear to hear this. And what is occupying them is their own desire for position. And they're asking, can we sit at your right hand, your left hand, you know the story? Well, the Lord is somewhat chagrin at what they are occupied with. But this blind beggar who asks only for his sight gets what he is asking. And in the course of this miracle, this healing, the blind beggar, Bartimaeus, lays aside his garment and in light of what has

3:09been happening with the disciples. This matter of garment here is very significant, isn't it? It is, Chris, when we think of a garment, we think, well, that's somewhat insignificant. We think the healing of the blindness is the big thing. But a big, big thing here we need to see is the garment laid aside by Bartimaeus, his blind beggar. The garments in the Bible have unique scriptural meaning in that they refer to man's behavior and especially man's position, man's desire for status, for self-image, his desire to be something to be somewhat egregate. So the fact that Bartimaeus set aside these garments means that he just threw aside his position in a sense ambition. He didn't want to be anyone. He just wanted to be healed and receive the sight. So this is a real type for us to realize that in order for us to receive anything from the Lord, we have to approach him not with any motives, not with any intentions, not relying on our status or our credentials, just that

4:14we might receive our sight. Yeah, it's important because it comes up again here at the beginning of chapter 11 at this crucial, important portion in the Scripture. Actually, there are two references to it in just the first few verses. Let me read a little bit here at the beginning of the chapter. And when they drew near to Jerusalem at Beth Fage and Bethany at the mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, go into the village opposite you and immediately upon entering into it, you will find a cult tied on which no man has yet sat, untied, and bring it. And they brought the cult to Jesus and threw their garments on it. And he sat on it. And many spread their garments in the road and others spread layers of branches full of tender leaves having cut them out of the fields. So here's the picture bill. In the previous chapter, the disciples are contending for a position in contrast to this poor beggar who lays his position aside as represented by the garment. And now it seems

5:15like finally the disciples have gotten it. They're about to enter into Jerusalem and when this donkey is brought to the Lord Jesus, the first thing they do is lay aside their garments finally. And even the crowd is moved to follow them and they all lay aside their garments of marvelous picture. And we'll see how that is developed in the first portion here with witness Lee. All right, let's join him and then you and I will come back for more fellowship. His gospel ministry has been completely finished at the end of chapter 10. Praise the God's will, teaching the truth, casting out the demons, healing the sick, and cleansing the lepers. Then from chapter 11, they all came to the capital, Jerusalem, and the string thing with these, the Lord told them, go to a building, upset you. You go there, a little donkey, what's bad there, when you see that, you just entide and bring it here. If I were a Peter, I said, Lord, what

6:21are talking? I'm talking. You say, and now after that long training in chapter 9 and chapter 10, nobody dared to send this thing. Whatever she says, that's it. She says, go, I go. If that happened, you didn't talk to the same, but Peter would be the first to jump up. Norges, who are you talking about? But you could see to chapter 11, no opinion. They all got trained, and it happened so, and the donkey came and they put their garments. You know they blend vatimas, and he threw away his garments. And now these disciples didn't throw away, but they

7:23took off their garments. That means what? They wouldn't take care for their position, any longer. They would give their position to this one, the single one. Their position would be all together for this one's exhortation. The disciples did this. All the crowds followed. They put their garments on the roof. You know, Bill, I think I said this in either the program just before, right before that. You know, you hear these things and you realize, okay, here's this mention of the third time of a seemingly insignificant matter, this matter of the garment. Okay, Bartimaus at the end of chapter 10, he throws away his garment, not caring. Now the disciples lay aside their garment, and now the crowd lays down their garments. I think most people reading this portion would be all focused on the matter, that the blindness got healed, and you know, the Hosanna, all of the wonderful things happening, and miss this matter of the garments, but it's an

8:28incredibly rich point, isn't it? The garment is so significant. Right, it's so significant because this is what we are. Every human being, we have our ambition, Chris. We're proud. We have a status. We have our integrity. We have our self-image about ourselves, who we are. We want to be better than others, greater than us, and the Lord was just exposing the disciples. They're just the same. So the Lord uses the matter of the garments to open our eyes, that eventually everyone should lay down their garments to acknowledge that Christ is supreme. He's superior. He should be exalted. In a sense, if you look back in Mark 8 and Mark 9, this is exactly what the Lord was saying in the amount of transfiguration. The Father came here. This is my beloved Son. Hear him. Don't hear anyone else. Well, the Father was saying, I only want the Son exalted. I don't want anyone else exalted, but the Son himself. You know, there's another passage that I think all lovers of the Bible love this passage, and there's a reference importantly to a garment, and that's Luke 15.

9:30There, of course, the Son comes back to the Father without a garment, essentially. He's been rolling in the mud with the pigs, right? And the Father gives His garment, signifying that this position now had been elevated clear up to the Father's status. And that's our portion also, isn't it? The garment, we lay our own aside, our own pride, our own ambition, and we end up wearing His garment before the Father. Right. And then we get the real sight. The point here is not just the physical sight, the receiving the physical sight here is the type of the spiritual sight. When we receive the spiritual sight, then our eyes are open, and then we begin to realize how supreme, how wonderful Christ is and how Christ wants to terminate us and replace us with Himself through His death and resurrection. Well, that is clearly the focal point of where the Lord's attention is at. And He has now, to some degree, it seems like finally gotten through with His disciples.

10:31They are no longer now arguing about who's going to be greater, who's going to be at His right hand, who's going to be at His left hand. But they're now all willing to lay aside their garments, the crowd is laying aside their garments. So the Lord Jesus uniquely now is exalted in this marvelous picture as He enters Jerusalem. And many spread their garments on the road and other spread layers of branches full of tender leaves, having cut them out of the fields. And those who went before in those who followed cried out, 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. It's really the triumphant pinnacle, isn't it, Bill, of His earthly ministry just not days before the end? Right. As Bradley has shared earlier in his ministry, Chris, he said, this was the Lord's golden time out of the whole 33 and a half years of His existence there. This was a golden time where now He is being exalted as He should be and everyone else is subdued, which should be the real situation.

11:31Well, there's some other things that need to be done as the Lord continues His preparation for this final dramatic conclusion to His earthly ministry. And let's join when this Lee is He will talk about these items. He went to Jerusalem for the purpose to accomplish His redemptive death. To do this, He needed a great preparation. He went there. Six days are high. In order to finish the preparation, all what is recorded in chapter 11, chapter 12, chapter 13, 14, and so forth are not accidents. Before he accomplished the redemptive words, he did the preparation. He went there. Six days are high to do the preparation. First of all, he entered into Jerusalem. What an entrance. A glorious entrance. A entrance,

12:39which was a great welcome. All the people were for Him, recognizing Him, acknowledging Him as the Messiah. In a Hossana, the one who comes in the name of Jehovah, this is a prophecy in Psalm 118 concerning the coming of Messiah. And we have to know such a thing will be repeated at the Lord's second coming. When He will come back again, Psalm 118 will be fulfilled in a fullest way. And that welcome will be much bigger than this one. He will be raiding on the cloud. But anyhow, the prince will be the same. Here, God, children, people, recognized and acknowledged their Messiah. So before He was going to

13:43confront all the apostles, He got votes. He got the election. What can you do, apostles? You have lost the situation. The Messiah, this little Nazarene, was really something, right? Bill, I'm just looking here at Psalm 118. Oh, Jehovah, do save. We pray. Oh, Jehovah, do send prosperity. Blessed is He who comes in the name of Jehovah. We bless you from the house of Jehovah. Clear parallel to this recognition on the part of all these people. The ones that God had chosen of the exalted position, as you said, finally now acknowledged for the Lord Jesus in these final days. And yet that is just a foretaste of the real fulfillment of this portion coming at the Lord's second appearing. Right. The Psalm 118, Chris, really has a dual fulfillment. It was fulfilled, you know, no doubt probably a thousand years after the Psalmist, when the Lord came the first time.

14:44And here, when the Lord enters into Jerusalem in his golden time, really, this was really fulfilled. No dot thousands were there. Some were going before the Lord in his disciples, some were following behind. They were exulting him. They were fulfilling Psalm 118. What was spoken a thousand years earlier. And then on the other hand, we're almost 2000 years after the Lord. And we realize that it possibly in our lifetime, if the Lord does come back, he will do the same thing when he return. We know he's going to return to Jerusalem, who'll be there at the Mount of Olive. And he will do the same thing. And the fulfillment of this second prophecy will be much greater than that of the first. Interesting comment he made there. I don't know if you caught it. The next time he won't be writing on a cold on a donkey, really, he'll be writing on the clouds. Yeah. That will be quite a change, right? And then not just these few thousand in the city of Jerusalem, but the whole earth will have the realization of the exultance of this one. We lift up supremely for him. We always need

15:48to day by day lay aside our own garments. Give him the first place. And this will really be, I mean, probably the top fulfillment, you know, this is my beloved son here, him. Right. The whole earth will be finally listen to the Lord and give him the honor and glory that has been due to him for ages. So you wonder, Bill, when you hear these passages opened up in such a way, perhaps at this point, Peter and John were thinking back to those days, not that long before when they were with the Lord on the mount of transfiguration. And that experience when Peter was offering his opinions and the father from having intervened in both the words you just uttered, maybe these things were all sort of flashing back and starting to connect for Peter. Right. Well, Bill, let's go on. We have a marvelous conclusion today. I think a real high point again in this passage in this portion in Mark 11. I'll pick up the reading here at verse 12. And on the next day, when they had gone out from Bethany, he became hungry and seeing at a distance of fig tree having leaves,

16:48he came to see if perhaps he would find anything on it. And when he came to it, he found nothing except leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he answered and said to it, may no one eat fruit from you forever. And his disciples heard it and they came to Jerusalem. And he entered into the temple and he began to cast out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple. And he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling the doves. And he would not let anyone carry a vessel through the temple. And he taught and sent 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 this, and they sought how they might destroy him, for they feared him, for all the crowd was astounded at his teaching. So the scene intensifies. Now the religious ones, the opposers have been stirred up to the utmost as we'll see. Not insignificant. Here's one to sleep for our last portion.

17:52The second time of his preparation was cursing the fig tree and cleansing the temple. The fig tree had just the leafs, the outward glorification, the outward appearing, no fruit, no reality. Nothing there can satisfy God's desire. Then the temple, which should be the house of prayer for all the nations, became what the den of robbers, in the eyes of the Lord, all those worshipers in that temple were robbers. So he came to curse the trade and to cleanse the den, to get rid of the corruption. And no one can oppose because before doing this he got the people.

18:55He got the election. So all the Pharisees and scribes last the situation to him. Listen from chapter 1 through chapter 10, the Lord Jesus was all the time kind, right, compassionate, having mercy in this and that. But now, in the beginning of chapter 11, what can Jesus he was, cursing and cleansing, and the way he cleansed was what. He overthrew the tables and he's time to traffic, yet no one dared to do anything. I tell you this was his preparation. And these stir up the Pharisees to plot more, to have more counsel, to find a way how to destroy

19:55this man. Actually the Lord Jesus speed up, speed up his opposers to kill him, the sooner the better, to curse the day, or the day, to pass over the day. So they did a quick job and they made a quick decision. You just think about it. Suppose that night the Lord Jesus entered into the temple and he behaved so nicely, looking around, amen, hallelujah, very good. And all the followers would say, amen, hallelujah, praise our, very good. Let's go to somewhere for rest. I tell you, I don't think the Pharisees would be there to serious, to speed up, to make some decision, to kill this man at this feast. Don't let him go. So you see the Lord Jesus wouldn't,

20:56to prepare the situation. He prepared. This was his preparation, to prepare the environment, the situation, the opposers, and his followers, everybody, everything, to be prepared for his great, even the greatest performance of his days. Bill, I'm marveling as you are. I mean, not just the light that we're seeing, but such a clear anointing on his utterances. We touched this portion. I've never seen this portion open up in such a way. Now, even these two events, the cursing of the fig tree, the cleansing of the temple, they take on so much more significance now. They're not just isolated things that were happening at random. Right, Chris, we read this as some activity. Well, then after he left Jericho, then he came to Jerusalem. And then when he, on the way to Jerusalem, you know, he curses the fig tree. And then after that, you know, he's interesting to the temple,

21:56as if they have no significance. But the more you listen to brother Lee, you realize a profound significance that he is preparing himself, his redemptive work, to terminate the whole universe, and to enter into death and come in to resurrection. But he has to prepare the environment for this. He has to curse the fig tree, showing that he's finished with a nation of Israel. They have the formality, they have the leaves, they have no fruit for God. They no longer can feed God. So, and then not only that, he goes, Jerusalem is like the exalted place on the whole land of Israel, Jerusalem is the city. And he didn't appraise the temple worshipers and honor the magnificent buildings of gold. And he called it, and you've made her to dinner robbers. So here he's not doing what the people and what we thought he would be doing. In a sense, he's instigating the people against him to put him to death earlier. Like you mentioned earlier, Chris, the time frame here, he has to speed up the time because he has to fulfill all of the prophecies from the past

23:03centuries about when he would die, where he would die, and even how he would die. You know, I was just considering, if you look at Daniel chapter 9, the prophecies there is the 69th week, which is time seven is 483 years. That means, the chronologist think that Artusurksis the king of Persia gave this decree in about 451 BC. If you go 483 years in the future, that was the exact year. So the Lord had to fulfill the prophecy of Daniel six centuries earlier that Messiah would be cut off in that year. That was the 483rd year from Artusurksis decree. And then you have he had to go to Jerusalem because that's where Mount Mariah is and that's where Abraham sacrificed Isaac. Isaac is the type of Christ. Then the Passover that year, Chris, fell in that particular days in that year. So he had to fulfill also the Passover lamb. And then one more thing

24:04in Numbers chapter 21, the Lord we know is the type is the reality of the brass serpent lifted up on the pole. So that means the Lord had to be lifted up in his death. He couldn't be stoned to death. He couldn't be murdered in just a certain way. He had to be lifted up as the type shows as the Numbers chapter 21. So you have at least four of these marvelous occurrences that the Lord had to get himself ready and to speed up the time to fulfill these things. Because if he didn't, then the situation would be delayed and he couldn't fulfill the prophecies. Whoa, Bill, I feel like we could take a month to go through this. Right. And not exhaust all these points. So you can see he prepares the situation for his redemptive service by coming into Jerusalem. By cursing the fig tree and by cleansing the temple. He uses these three situations to stir up the opposers, even the more to put him to death. So he could enter into his death, enter into his resurrection and carry out God's economy. Complete our redemption and usher in the new creation.

25:09Right. Well, Bill, to be continued, I guess, is the only way to close this program. So much today to have tried to cover in a short time. I really appreciate your help as always. We're out of time quickly. I'll give you our toll free number and invite you to call us at 1-888-life-study. 888-543-3788. For Bill Lawson, I'm Chris Wilde. Thanks very much for listening to me. We hope you enjoyed this program. For more information on witnessed Lee and Watchman Lee, please visit our website LSM.org. Again, that's LSM.org. Thanks for listening today.