A Dead Loss // Who is Jesus, Part 3

<p>Let’s face it – we like winners.  We want to hang around successful people.  And yet when Jesus was hanging there on that cross – He looked like anything but a winner. In fact, given all that He’d said and done and promised, frankly, He looked like a dead loss.</p> <p> </p> <h3><span style="color: #ff9900;"><strong>An Angry God</strong></span></h3> <p>Perhaps one of the biggest objections I ever had to Christianity was what I observed to be a kind of a self righteous hypocrisy. On the one had they put some old guy on the news and he’d tell me that this was wrong and that was wrong. And on the other, that same denomination had a club with gambling and poker machines in it not far from where I lived. I mean, come on. Is it any wonder that people weren’t flocking to church on Sundays? Well, that’s how I saw it.</p> <p>And so for me that equalled Jesus, which equalled God. And frankly, who needs that sort of religion. Pretty impeccable logic really, until, well until you take the time to look at Jesus himself. Tell me, how would he respond to the church with poker machines? Well, actually we know, because in his walk on this earth he had to deal with almost exactly the same thing.</p> <p>Well, this week we’re heading towards Easter and over these last few weeks we’ve been looking at this series “Who is Jesus”. And today I’d like to particularly look at Jesus in that difficult week leading up to the first Easter, in that difficult week leading up to the cross. And it began with a triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We’re not going to go there and look at that now because we don’t have the time.</p> <p>It was like a rock star entry where Jesus rode this donkey into Jerusalem, and the church celebrates it now as Palm Sunday. And people were cheering and shouting “Hallelujah” and “The Messiah’s here”. And straight after that, gets into Jerusalem and one of the things, the thing we’ll look at today, is that He goes to the Temple.</p> <p>And He kind of behaved a little bit on the surface at least, like one of those quixotic