Jesus' Final Week According to All Four Gospels - Part Seven

The 12th month of the Jewish month of Abib, continued

Note: Click the links below for downloadable PDF files for you to read along.

Jesus' final week according to the four gospels:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f85NJ4AqkewF6AkQWRREvYWs_260J2Ph/view?usp=sharing

Scriptures for reading:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18nlak17bwpg-CPG2JdTwWSsXSiCYBdUA/view?usp=sharing

Highlights:

* There are two main things that Babylon is known for in the Old Testament:

#1 The Tower of Babel - later called Babylon (Genesis 11:1-9)

Question: What were these people doing that was so wrong?

Answer: What the people were doing wrong at Babel was that they were trying to make their own way up to heaven.

#2 Babylon became the place to which God's people were taken into captivity because they refused God's law and began trying to make their own way into heaven instead (2Chronicles 36:11-20).

* So, these are the two things for which Babylon is best known:
(1) A place where people attempt to make their own way into heaven.
(2) A place where god's people are taken and held as captives.

* God had those stories written down because He had a purpose for them. That was revealed to Paul, and he passed it on for us:

"These things [Old Testament events] happened as examples for us, that we should not desire evil things, as those people did" (1Corinthians 10:6).

* God shaped history in a way that would bring His son the greatest glory - when it was revealed what He had done.

* God recorded the events that happened with Babylon because there was a spiritual Babylon coming that we would have to deal with.

* In this covenant, to "make your own way to heaven" means living as you think best, with your own, natural understanding and ability. Or, as Paul would say it, "walking in the flesh".

* Jesus came that we might have the Spirit and be led by it to where God is. That is the way into heaven that God has chosen.

* In Babylon, the only place the spirit leads God's children is out of it.

* Inside Babylon, things are not done "in the Spirit".

* Its ministers baptize people with water, washing the flesh in physical water.
* Its ministers pass out bits of bread and little glasses of grape juice or wine, feeding the flesh.
* They adorn the flesh with fine choir robes and impressive ministerial vestments.
* Religious councils have formulated doctrines, devised traditions, invented religious titles and offices and conferred them on one another, etc.

* But these are only man trying to make his own way to heaven.

* Jesus' baptism is spiritual, and no man can do that.
* Jesus feeds his saints with the knowledge of God and gives us to drink, Paul said, of the Spirit. No man can do that.
* Jesus dresses his saints with the robes of righteousness and garments of praise, and no man can do that.
* Jesus reveals his Father's doctrine by the Spirit, and anoints men by the Spirit to occupy places in his kingdom. No man can do that.

* As in the tower of Babel story, God has cursed those trying to make their own way to heaven today with thousands of conflicting "denominations" or sects worldwide. And they cannot work together because they speak different spiritual languages.

* God's people now are in the place where people are making their own way to heaven. And God is calling, or He will call His people out of it.

* Question: Do you know what that place is? Give it a name! Say it. "Sanctify the LORD in your hearts," and give it a name!

It is not what it claims to be; it is a lie, a pit, a dwelling-place of demons, God's angel told John in Revelation 18:2, a prison that holds fast to every unclean and loathsome spirit.

* If you choose God's will over your own, those who love their life, and prefer their own will over God's, will think there is something wrong with you.

* It is an honor, directly from God, for Jesus to baptize someone with the Spirit.

* It is an honor to walk in that Spirit with Jesus in this life.

* And in the end, it will be a very great honor to be given a new body and granted eternal life on a new earth.

* If we serve Christ, the Father will honor us with all that.

* Jesus, hanging in agony on that rough-hewn cross, was in the process of conquering the whole world.

* No one at the time understood it.

* But when he sent back the Spirit, the Spirit revealed what he had done to those who loved him, and they began to spread the good news everywhere.

* . . . and they were despised and persecuted, ostracized and slandered, for spreading that good news.