In Jesus’ final week, He enters the fruitless city and they offer Him only leaves. He also goes to the fruitless temple, that lies rotting in rebellion. On the second day, He curses a fruitless tree as a demonstration of what will soon happen to Jerusalem. Then, as Jesus ends His day in the city, He tells the story of a fruitless vineyard that will be torn down, replanted, and given to a people who will care for it.

How to Walk Up to a Six-Fingered Doctrine
When the revenge-seeking Spaniard from Princess Bride uttered his most famous lines: “I will go up to the six-fingered man and say, Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” there was more than an hour and twenty minutes of storyline underpinning that scene. From his motive for revenge atop the cliffs of insanity to his rants and flailing about with his father’s sword in the thieves’ forest, much happens in Inigo’s life that makes his signature scene all the more important. Without that critical context, killing Rugen may appear like nothing more than a frivolous crime of passion.
The same is true when we consider the topic of eschatology. Before we can understand those prickly end-times concepts coming out of Matthew 24 (like the great tribulation, the rapture, and the end of the age) we must first go back and understand the context that is underpinning those statements. We must understand that Matthew is telling the story of the long-awaited Jewish King, who as Malachi foretold would come to set up His never-ending empire here on earth. Those who accept His rule would live forever in His Kingdom. Those who oppose Him, beginning with Jerusalem, would be put under His feet and crushed. If we do not understand that story, we will miss every eschatological point the book is making.
So with that, let us continue along in Matthew, as we seek to understand the end times.
Final Week: The Saga Comes to Jerusalem
Nearly a thousand years before the events in Matthew, the city awoke to the sounds of laughter, worship, and joy. The nations (as God intended) had been coming, streaming into Jerusalem, to see if what they had heard was true. They were coming to see the radiance and power of Israel’s God. They wanted to see the temple where He visibly reigned from, the city that was His footstool, and the wise vice-regent He appointed to sit upon her throne, King Solomon.
Now, a thousand years later, the line of Davidic kings had been completely snuffed out. The temple, which had already been destroyed once before, had become a whitewashed tomb of dead pharisaical religion. The prophet who was called to announce the inauguration of God’s Kingdom had been beheaded by the puppet king, Herod. And, as Malachi warned, the love of God was at an all-time low among the increasingly pagan Jews.
By the time we arrive at Matthew’s Gospel, the rot had sunk so deep into the soul of Judah, that the wound was incurable. Josephus, the Jewish historian, describes this era and its people, highlighting the inevitability of God’s judgment soon to come. He tells us:

And here I cannot refrain from expressing what my feelings suggest. I am of the opinion, that had the Romans deferred the punishment of these wretches, either the earth would have opened and swallowed up the city, or it would have been swept away by a deluge, or have shared the thunderbolts of the land of Sodom. For it produced a race far more ungodly than those who were thus visited. For through the desperate madness of these men the whole nation was involved in their ruin.

By the time of the New Testament, the city of Jerusalem was so odious to God, that she couldn’t even detect her own moral stench. With lying lips, and hearts far from God (Matthew 15:8-9), she not only persisted in her murderous rage (Matthew 14:1-12; 23:29-33), but she was increasingly opposed to God’s own Son. As a result, Jesus tells His disciples that the keys of God’s Kingdom would be removed from her (Matthew 16:13-20) and that some of them would be alive to see her downfall (Matthew 16:28).
When Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem, during His triumphal entry in AD 30, it was surely for the salvation of His people. But, as Malachi predicted, He also came for the judgment and destruction of Jerusalem.
In the weeks ahead, we will narrow our focus to the final week of Jesus’ life and look at the events happening in Matthew chapters 21-24. In these chapters, we will see how Jerusalem will be punished for her crimes against God and we will gain a clearer understanding of eschatology than we have ever had before. Today, we will focus on Matthew 21 and the cursed city of Jerusalem.
Day 1: A Procession of Joy and Judgment
Matthew 21 opens with Jesus, the true Davidic King, preparing to ride into the royal city on the back of a donkey. At that time, kings would only ride upon horses if they were going out to war. But, if they approached a city in peace, they would ride on a far less threatening mode of transportation, which was the mule or a donkey.
This is especially true during the Israelite changing of the guard ceremonies that became a tradition at the time of David. Per David’s command, Solomon (his son) would be anointed for the office with oil by the High Priest of Israel. He would then ride into the capital city on the back of a donkey, and as he rode a procession of important people would follow him singing and chanting “Long live the King”. By the time he and the procession arrived at the city of Jerusalem, where Solomon would sit upon his father’s throne, the entire city was in a joyful uproar (1 Kings 1:38-40).
Since John tells us that Jesus was anointed with oil just before His triumphal entry (John 12:1-8) and since Luke tells us that He rode into the city with a crowd of people singing “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord;” (Luke 19:37-38), and since Matthew tells us that the city was stirred up upon His arrival (Matthew 21:10) there can be no doubt Jesus was coming as King to set up His Kingdom. Whether the people understood the ramifications of His coming or not, matters very little. Jesus saw Himself as the true Solomon, the true son of David, who was coming to establish His Kingdom.
If there was any doubt about this interpretation, Matthew Himself clears it up for us, by quoting from Zechariah 9:9, which says:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, Humble, and mounted on a donkey, Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

From this quotation alone we can see how Jesus is the long-awaited messianic King. He is the one who came to Jerusalem that day, in order to provide salvation for His people and to bring them into His Kingdom of peace. But, what we must not miss, is how the context of Zechariah 9 also says much about this King coming in judgment.
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Written by R. Scott Clark |
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
If you have not listened to “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” you should. It helps us to understand the so-called New Calvinism or the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement. It also helps us to understand the intersection between a part of the PCA and Acts 29 and that might help us understand some of the debates occurring today within the PCA.

Regular readers of the Heidelblog and listeners of the Heidelcast will know that considerable time has been spent here analyzing and interacting with the podcast series produced by Christianity Today and hosted by Mike Cosper (see the resources below).
In that interaction most of the time and attention has been spent on the nature and effects of Mark Driscoll’s Narcissism and abuse and on highlighting the differences between Reformed theology, piety, and practice and that of the so-called “New Calvinism” or the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement as represented by Driscoll and Mars Hill.
The most recent episode of the Presbycast (“Deconstructing 2021 and Big Eva with D G Hart”), however, hits on a very important aspect of the Acts 29/Mars Hill/Driscoll story that I overlooked: the role of the PCA, specifically the Church Planting Assessment Center (CPAC) in Atlanta, and Spanish River PCA in the formation of Acts 29 and Mars Hill.
In that regard it is interesting to note that this is the first thing one sees on the CPAC page:
Choosing and Retaining the right pastor is the key variable in planting a new mission.—Lyle Schaller
Was the Apostle Paul “the right pastor”? After all, the Corinthians were not much impressed with him. They were interested in “wisdom,” and “power,” and eloquence but Paul came to them with “foolishness,” “weakness,” and stumbling: “I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Cor 2:3–5; ESV). They were much more taken with the self-proclaimed “Super Apostles” than they were with an actual apostle and they continued to be unimpressed with simple gospel ministry for, as far as church history knows, the rest of their history.
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Written by T.M. Suffield |
Wednesday, October 13, 2021
 If you follow Jesus you will have your sins forgiven. Your shame will be wiped away to be replaced by the Father’s smile on his beloved daughter, his beloved son. Your fears and afflictions from evil spiritual forces will be defeated by the victory of Jesus on the cross. But they are not the good news.

I’m a charismatic, and plenty of others who would claim that label believe some fairly kooky things. It thus occasionally falls to us to carefully disassociate ourselves from what others might believe.
It’s pretty normal that we would occasionally denounce what is commonly called the ‘Prosperity Gospel’—essentially that if you follow the way of Jesus God will bless you financially. You will become rich, or sometimes healthy and rich.
This is a pernicious lie from the pit of hell, but I don’t have a lot of desire to spend time writing about why it is. Here’s the challenge I’d like to offer instead: I think most Christians I know believe something pretty similar.
I think that because I think I do.
Let’s back up a bit. We’re very careful to exclude financial blessing from the blessings that God will give you if you follow the way of Jesus. This is not to suggest that God could not bless us financially—as though Adam Smith’s invisible hand was a spiritual force not under Yahweh’s ultimate command—nor to say that if we receive wealth we shouldn’t thank God.
The problem comes when we imply that finances come as a reward for obedience.
Yet, there are plenty of passages in the Bible that suggest that God does bless the obedient. I think it’s a very reasonable thing to say. Normally we would want to qualify blessing to exclude health and wealth as a rule. Which I would happily agree with.
Here’s the rub. I believe that if I am obedient that God will bless me with comfort. I think it’s likely you do too. This is a lie. I believe that he will secure me gainful employment, a nice house, and a middle-classed lifestyle. God had given me much of the window dressing of middle-classed life, and some of it has come in ways that were frankly miraculous. I am deeply thankful, when I remember to be.
The problem is that if I think it’s a reward—even though I would deny I do if asked—and I experience pain, or even simple discomfort, I’m thrown for a loop. The problem is that I have, and I think we have, a doctrine of blessing that only works for middle-classed knowledge workers like me. The problem is that it’s a doctrine of blessing that would make no sense in South Sudan, or India, or North Korea. The problem is that it’s a false gospel.
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