Holy Tuesday. . .

On the morning of Tuesday of Holy Week, Jesus and his disciples made their way back to Jerusalem. They probably passed the withered fig tree, and Jesus addressed again the subject of genuine faith that lived on the inside and not simply on the outside of a man.

Back at the Temple, the religious leaders cleaning up Jesus' mess and plotting against Him.  They were offended at how Jesus had established Himself as a spiritual authority and challenged their own authority as the religious leaders of God's people Israel. They put their heads together and organized an ambush to capture Jesus and arrest Him and silence Him but Jesus evaded their traps.  It did not stop Him from issuing a warning upon them: 

"Blind guides!...For you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness...Snakes! Sons of vipers! How will you escape the judgment of hell?" (Matthew 23:24-33)

Later in the day Jesus took His disciples to the Mount of Olives.  Sitting due east of the Temple, this is a vantage point that overlooked the whole of Jerusalem. Here, Jesus spoke what we have come to call the Olivet Discourse, words that surely caused alarm bells in the minds of His disciples.  Who would not have felt anxiety over talk of Jerusalem's destruction and the end of everything as they knew it.  More parables were spoken by Jesus when the disciples would have preferred some plain and clear talk about the future.

Scripture tells us that it was on this day that Judas had gone to the Sanhedrin and negotiated to betray Jesus and turn Him and the other disciples over to their authority.  Whether Judas had an inkling of what they were going to do or not, Jesus knew the heart of His disciple and was not surprised (Matthew 26:14-16).  Then, after a very long day of confrontation and warnings about the future, Jesus and His disciples returned to Bethany to rest for the night.

The tumultuous events of Tuesday and the Olivet Discourse are recorded in Matthew 21:23–24:51, Mark 11:20–13:37, Luke 20:1–21:36, and John 12:20–38.  Jesus knew where the week was going and that His hour had come and He warned His disciples even more urgently that He would soon be betrayed and crucified (Matthew 26:2).  Still, He continued to teach. A man among men, Jesus is not without feelings and not above the pain of betrayal working itself out and the cross ahead of Him and the plotting and planning of the religious leaders of the day against Him.  But where was His heart?  It was for you and me and for the salvation of the whole world.  His shame, humiliation, testing, betraying, crucifixion, and death was not for show but in order that we might be saved.  Our minds may be on taxes due or momentary problems we are facing but His mind is on us and has always been on us even as the days moved closer to His passion and death on the cross.