📖 Matthew Intensive — Unit 10: The Road to Jerusalem

Text: Matthew 21:9

Hard Teachings on the Way

These chapters carry the King the last stretch of the road to Jerusalem, into the city, and through a week of mounting conflict that ends with Him weeping over Jerusalem. On the way He gives some hard teachings. To the Pharisees who test Him about divorce He recalls the beginning: "What God has joined together, let not man separate" (Matthew 19:6). When the disciples push the little children away, He welcomes them: "Of such is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:14). And when a rich young man asks what good thing he must do, Jesus tells him to sell what he has, give to the poor, and follow — and the man goes away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. "With men this is impossible," Jesus says, "but with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26). The kingdom cannot be bought or earned; it can only be received like a child and entered by the grace of God. These five chapters are best read as one journey with two halves. The first half, on the road, keeps teaching the disciples what the kingdom is really like; the second half, inside the city, shows the King taking possession of His Father's house and facing down those who run it. Everything moves toward one week and one hill outside the walls.

The Grace of the Vineyard

Jesus presses the same point with the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. A landowner hires workers at dawn, and again at the third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours, and at day's end he pays them all the same wage. Those hired first complain, but the owner answers that he has done no wrong; he agreed to pay them fairly, and he is free to be generous with the rest. "So the last will be first, and the first last" (Matthew 20:16). The kingdom does not run on the arithmetic of wages but on the generosity of God, who gives the latecomer the same grace as the one who labored all day. No one earns a place; all receive it from an open hand.

Greatness Is Servanthood

For the third time Jesus tells the disciples plainly that He will be condemned, killed, and raised. Yet right after, the mother of James and John asks that her sons sit at His right and left in the kingdom. The other ten are indignant, and Jesus gathers them all to overturn the world's idea of greatness: "Whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant... just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:26-28). This is the heart of the road to Jerusalem. The King is going to the cross not to be served but to give His life as a ransom, and greatness in His kingdom is measured by service, not by thrones. He then heals two blind men at Jericho who cry, "Son of David, have mercy on us," the same royal title the crowds will shout at the gates of the city.

The King Enters His City

Jesus sends for a donkey and rides into Jerusalem, deliberately fulfilling the prophet Zechariah: behold, your King comes to you, lowly and riding on a donkey. The crowds spread their garments and branches and cry, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!" (Matthew 21:9). The King enters His capital — but not on a war horse. He comes in peace and lowliness, the very opposite of the conquering deliverer many expected. Then He goes straight to the temple and drives out those buying and selling, overturning the tables of the money changers: "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves" (Matthew 21:13). The King has come to claim His Father's house, and He finds it corrupted.

Authority Questioned, Judgment Pictured

The next day the chief priests demand to know by what authority He does these things. Jesus answers with questions and parables. In the parable of the two sons, one says he will not work but then goes, and the other says he will but does not — and Jesus declares that tax collectors and harlots who repent enter the kingdom ahead of leaders who only say the right words. Then comes the parable of the wicked vinedressers, who beat the owner's servants and finally kill his son to seize the vineyard. Jesus quotes the Scripture, "The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone" (Matthew 21:42), and warns, "The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it" (Matthew 21:43). The leaders understand He is speaking of them, and they want to seize Him, but they fear the crowds.

The Vineyard as a Mirror

The older sermon "The Vineyard and the Sharecroppers" presses this parable beyond identification of its characters and asks us to stand before its mirror. A sharecropper works land that belongs to someone else; the owner supplies what is needed and rightly expects fruit. That makes the parable a lesson in stewardship as well as judgment. God had protected and provided for His vineyard, sent His servants again and again, and at last sent His Son. The tenants' great sin was acting as though the vineyard belonged to them. Donald Grey Barnhouse used the great grapevine at Hampton Court as an illustration of fruitfulness: distant branches bear because they remain joined to the living vine. The issue is not possession of religious property or position, but fruit. The sermon therefore asks a question that reaches beyond the first-century leaders: what are we doing with what belongs to God? The kingdom cannot be treated as our private possession. The rejected Son becomes the cornerstone, and the people entrusted with God's work are expected to bear the fruit that honors the Owner.

The Controversies in the Temple

In chapter 22 the King's enemies come at Him one group after another, and He silences them all. He tells the parable of the wedding feast, where many are invited but one comes without a wedding garment and is cast out — "many are called, but few are chosen" (Matthew 22:14). The Pharisees try to trap Him on paying taxes, and He answers, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21). The Sadducees mock the resurrection, and He corrects them: God "is not the God of the dead, but of the living" (Matthew 22:32). Then a lawyer asks which is the great commandment, and Jesus gives the heart of the whole law: love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 22:40). Finally He asks them whose Son the Christ is, and they cannot answer, for David himself calls Him Lord.

Woe to the Hypocrites

Then the King turns and pronounces judgment on the scribes and Pharisees in a series of woes. They say and do not do; they load heavy burdens on others; they love the best seats and the titles. "Blind guides," He calls them, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. They clean the outside of the cup while the inside is full of greed; they are like "whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones" (Matthew 23:27). The deepest sin Jesus names here is hypocrisy — a religion of appearances with a dead heart, the very opposite of the truth He taught from the first, that defilement and cleanness are matters of the heart. Their fathers killed the prophets, and this generation will fill up the measure.

The Lament Over Jerusalem

And then, after all the conflict, the King's voice breaks into grief. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate" (Matthew 23:37-38). This is not the anger of a tyrant but the sorrow of a Savior. The same King who entered to shouts of Hosanna now weeps over the city that will reject Him, longing to gather a people who will not come. The road to Jerusalem ends here, at the edge of the cross, with the King grieving over the very people He came to save.

The Road to Jerusalem

Put together, these chapters show the King coming into His own. He enters His city as its rightful King, but humbly, on a donkey, in peace. He cleanses His Father's house. He answers every challenge with perfect wisdom, redefining greatness as servanthood and the whole law as love for God and neighbor. He exposes the hollow religion of the leaders and warns that the kingdom will be given to those who bear its fruit. And through it all He is walking toward the cross, for the Son of Man came not to be served but to give His life a ransom for many. The road to Jerusalem is the road to that cross, and even as the King laments over the city that turns Him away, His heart is set on gathering a people to Himself. The next unit will hear His final teaching, on the mountain looking back at the city, about the end of the age and His coming again. For now it is enough to see that the King did not stumble into Jerusalem by accident. He went up on purpose, knowing what waited there, and He went up loving the very city that would crucify Him. That is the kind of King Matthew calls us to follow.

Submit Exam & Check Pass Reset Unit