SPEAKER_00: As you know, we study through books of the Bible here, but we're taking a break today and next week as we uh take a look at Palm Sunday and at Easter or Resurrection Day as I like to call it.
SPEAKER_00: And let me get my papers and everything over here.
SPEAKER_00: Get myself set.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Week or Passion Week, as it is variously called in different streams of the church, uh, commemorates several events leading up to and including the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: These include his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, his cleansing of the temple, uh, several days of teaching in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Most people think that was Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
SPEAKER_00: Um, uh, the Last Supper itself, his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, his betrayal and arrest, several trials before both religious and political uh leaders, his crucifixion on Friday, his burial in a borrowed grave, his bursting forth from the spiced tomb on Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: What a week, you know.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's an amazing packed week.
SPEAKER_00: Biblical scholars uh disagree as to some of these events, as to what day they took place on, and it's not my intention to enter that debate at all.
SPEAKER_00: What's important to me is that these things are reported and have happened.
SPEAKER_00: I think there are some good explanations for the minor details uh that seem to uh not quite align in the way we read the four gospel records.
SPEAKER_00: But as loving disciples and followers of Jesus, we seek to honor and remember these significant events in the life and ministry of our Lord, and to focus in on them as historic events that are that have global impact as well as personal impact for us.
SPEAKER_00: So uh Palm Sunday, as as you know, is today, and all four Gospels have some record, some account of Palm Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna put the uh the references up on the screen for you there.
SPEAKER_00: If you care to read them later, you're welcome to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh some 2,000 years later, we still commemorate what happened on that day, and uh typically calling it Palm Sunday, sometimes it's called Passion Sunday, as I said.
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting though, John's Gospel is the only one that mentions the palms specifically.
SPEAKER_00: And um the use of palm branches is clearly, I'll read it in just a second, but in Matthew's Gospel, it mentions garments and tree branches.
SPEAKER_00: Mark's Gospel mentions garments and leafy branches.
SPEAKER_00: Luke's account mentions garments, but says nothing about branches at all.
SPEAKER_00: So John will be the one that we'll point back to and say, Palm Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: John's the one that maybe gave us that, that we then have put into a bit of a tradition for us.
SPEAKER_00: Precise date of the practice of the church celebrating Palm Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: It's not really clear.
SPEAKER_00: It seems that it goes back to as early as the fourth century in Jerusalem, perhaps in the Western Church much later, 8th or 9th century.
SPEAKER_00: Now, before we read the text, which will be John chapter 12, and I'd love to have you turn there as you see it up on the screen, John 12, um, verses 12 through 21.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to turn there in your Bibles andor swipe there on your devices, you'll be able to look at the text with me.
SPEAKER_00: First, this prayer for illumination, if you would join me.
SPEAKER_00: Holy, holy, holy Lord God of power and might.
SPEAKER_00: Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
SPEAKER_00: Hosanna in the highest, save us.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Hosanna in the highest, save us.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, as we read today, illumine for us the ancient scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: Reveal to us the wealth of glory that lies beneath the old, familiar stories.
SPEAKER_00: Lead us to the depths of meaning hidden in the ancient songs of Zion.
SPEAKER_00: Open our eyes that we may behold with awe and wonder beautiful things from your word.
SPEAKER_00: Amen and amen.
SPEAKER_00: John chapter 12, and uh we're we're gonna focus on verses uh 12 then through 21.
SPEAKER_00: But uh, let's step back to verse 9, if you don't mind, just to set the scene for what's been going on right before the Palm Sunday entrance, okay?
SPEAKER_00: The great multitude, therefore, the Jews, learned that he, Jesus, was there.
SPEAKER_00: This is about uh he's in he's in Bethany, near the home of uh uh Mary Martha and Lazarus.
SPEAKER_00: So they came, this multitude, they came not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom he raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: And nothing arouses curiosity like a good resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it really does.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, you kind of, when you hear about that, you're like, I gotta get me some, I gotta, I want to go find out, did that really happen?
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm interested in that, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and the chief priest, though, and now this verse 10 here is sort of the contrast.
SPEAKER_00: But the chief priest took counsel, in other words, they huddled up with themselves, that they might put Lazarus to death also.
SPEAKER_00: I I tell you, I I've for years never even noticed that.
SPEAKER_00: These guys have murder on their mind already about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The religious leaders of the day have murder on their mind.
SPEAKER_00: One of the Ten Commandments is thou shalt not murder.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, they've got murder on their mind about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They also have murder on their mind about Lazarus.
SPEAKER_00: Why would that be the case?
SPEAKER_00: Because Lazarus was formerly dead, and then when Jesus came upon the scene and wept outside the tomb there, Jesus wept the shortest verse in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: He knew what he was going to do, and yet he wept because it's not the way things are supposed to be.
SPEAKER_00: He called Lazarus forth from the grave, and they had rolled away the stone at Jesus' bidding, and Lazarus came out kind of mummified.
SPEAKER_00: So he was dead, then he was somewhat disabled, and Jesus said, get the grave clothes off of him.
SPEAKER_00: In parentheses, I put, because he might die again if you don't get those graveclothes off of him.
SPEAKER_00: Must breathe.
SPEAKER_00: Living people must breathe.
SPEAKER_00: And so they take the grave clothes off.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's dangerous.
SPEAKER_00: Dead, disabled, dangerous.
SPEAKER_00: Why is he dangerous?
SPEAKER_00: Because he's a living, walking, breathing, talking testimony to the power of Jesus in that day in that world.
SPEAKER_00: And none of this looking down our noses with our sophisticated education from the 21st century and from the West.
SPEAKER_00: That, oh, those quaint ancient Jews probably didn't know what a real dead person.
SPEAKER_00: No, they knew dead better than you do.
SPEAKER_00: They knew dead better than I do.
SPEAKER_00: They were in the presence of dead all the time.
SPEAKER_00: In ways that none of us, or most of us, won't ever be.
SPEAKER_00: The chief priest took counsel that they might put Lazarus to death also.
SPEAKER_00: Because on account of him, many of the Jews were going away and were believing in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Is that the threshold for you?
SPEAKER_00: What will it take for you to believe in Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: To trust in him, to place your hope, your confidence in him, not just be curious about him.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of people that are curious about him.
SPEAKER_00: But what gets you on the plane?
SPEAKER_00: What moves you from, you know, just sitting at the gate to on the plane with Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: These guys, they're coming to Bethany.
SPEAKER_00: They want to see Lazarus.
SPEAKER_00: He's like an animal in a zoo.
SPEAKER_00: They're just looking at him, some of them.
SPEAKER_00: Others are believing.
SPEAKER_00: And the religious leaders are upset that people are believing in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: On the next day, the great multitude who had come to the feast, and this is the feast of Passover, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, by the way, first century uh Jewish historian Josephus estimated that there would be somewhere between 2 and 2.5 million people in Jerusalem at the feast time.
SPEAKER_00: So this city, Jerusalem, big important city in Judaism, of course, at the time, but nonetheless is swelling to four and five times its normal size.
SPEAKER_00: It's rush hour traffic on 10.
SPEAKER_00: It's like trying to get to the Green Hills Mall at 4 o'clock.
SPEAKER_00: It's just not going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just, there are people everywhere on every hillside with their little tents and their little campfires, and they're, you know, singing, na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na na having a great time, right?
SPEAKER_00: And and coming for the for the feast of Passover.
SPEAKER_00: So one of the three major feasts that all Jewish males were required to actually be at if they're within traveling distance at all.
SPEAKER_00: And so the next day, the great multitude who had come to the feast when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, and this is just, you know, from just over the hill there, just over on the other side of the Mount of Olives.
SPEAKER_00: And if you've if you've ever been there, you can stand on the Mount of Olives and you can actually see Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: It's just an amazing sight.
SPEAKER_00: And you can walk down the exact same roadway.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have been there with us.
SPEAKER_00: I hope we get to go again sometime soon.
SPEAKER_00: But when they heard Jesus was coming over that hill, they took branches, this group of people, and of palm trees.
SPEAKER_00: There it is, John tells us in verse 13, went out to meet him, and they began to cry out, Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You just read that from Psalm 118, the ancient song.
SPEAKER_00: It's the end of a group of uh songs called the Halel.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's like in praise.
SPEAKER_00: And Hosanna, it means save us, but it's also, it's it's more complicated than that.
SPEAKER_00: And our English translations, just save us.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't quite do it justice.
SPEAKER_00: It's also save us, Almighty One, King.
SPEAKER_00: And it's an exalt, it's a word of praise as well as crying out for salvation.
SPEAKER_00: It's both.
SPEAKER_00: And so there they are on the road, yelling, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, quoting from Psalm 118.
SPEAKER_00: And then even the king of Israel, now that would have, you know, there's a little, the religious leaders are starting to say, oh, here's how we can get in.
SPEAKER_00: This is how we can accuse him.
SPEAKER_00: Because they think he's the king of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: We can accuse him of political insurrection.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus, finding a young donkey, sat on it as it is written, and this is from Zechariah 9, 9.
SPEAKER_00: Fear not, daughter of Zion.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, your king comes sitting on a donkey's colt.
SPEAKER_00: Not quite Zorro, is he?
SPEAKER_00: Not quite the Lone Ranger.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody old enough to remember the Lone Ranger?
SPEAKER_00: Four of you?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, nice.
SPEAKER_00: Feel like I'm not alone.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of you folks online remember the Lone Ranger.
SPEAKER_00: Um, fear not, daughter of Zion.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, your king comes sitting on a donkey.
SPEAKER_00: These things his disciples did not understand at first.
SPEAKER_00: So there they're going, what's this all about?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, look at that.
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a lot of people here.
SPEAKER_00: Used to that, but what is this about, Hosanna?
SPEAKER_00: What is this about?
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And here's Jesus riding on a young donkey, a little colt.
SPEAKER_00: And they didn't know about.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't understand it, verse 16 tells us.
SPEAKER_00: Then they remembered that these things were written of him, and uh, this is after he was glorified, verse 16 tells us.
SPEAKER_00: So after the resurrection, likely.
SPEAKER_00: Uh that would be a reference to that, I would think.
SPEAKER_00: And they remembered that these things were written of him, and then that he had done these things.
SPEAKER_00: So the multitude who were with him, when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead, were bearing him witness.
SPEAKER_00: That's verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: I love verse 17, because I love what it, the images it conjures up from me.
SPEAKER_00: As I've sort of read through all four of these gospels and taught through them multiple times, in that troupe, that entourage, that posse walking along with Jesus that day in Jerusalem, you probably got blind, formerly blind Bartimaeus.
SPEAKER_00: You probably got formally demon-possessed, a bunch of people.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Mary Magdalene, certainly one of them, possessed with seven demons.
SPEAKER_00: You got formally lame people that couldn't even walk.
SPEAKER_00: You got formerly dead guy, Lazarus.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Bartimaeus, all along the down the Mount of Olives, blind Bartimaeus who can now see, and that just happened recently, and he keeps yelling, what's that?
SPEAKER_00: What's that?
SPEAKER_00: What's this?
SPEAKER_00: You know, annoyingly, probably.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but that's the band of people following Jesus, the multitude for this cause, verse 18, went and met him because they heard that he had performed this sign.
SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees therefore said to one another, okay, they're huddling up the religious leaders.
SPEAKER_00: You see that you they're pointing their fingers at each other.
SPEAKER_00: You can see this huddle, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's an accusation, it's a huddle of accusation.
SPEAKER_00: It's your fault.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's your fault.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's your you did, you do, you.
SPEAKER_00: And we, do anybody ever have that in your family?
SPEAKER_00: No, nobody does, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but this is the this is what it is.
SPEAKER_00: You're the you know, we're down 153 to nothing here in this game, and it's your fault, is kind of what they're doing, right?
SPEAKER_00: You see that you are not doing any good.
SPEAKER_00: Look, the world has gone after him.
SPEAKER_00: They're frustrating, they're frustrated, they're grumbling, they're blaming each other.
SPEAKER_00: Um, their house divided against itself is literally falling apart, and they're desperate, right?
SPEAKER_00: Two more verses.
SPEAKER_00: There were certain Greeks among those who were going up to worship at that feast.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so now these are going to be Gentiles, these are gonna be uh there's remember, your New Testament has three sort of contexts.
SPEAKER_00: The religious context is Jewish to the New Testament, uh, the cultural context is Greek, so it's Greek speaking throughout the Roman Empire, even though the political context is Roman.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you have these three different contexts, all happening at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: But here come some of the folks that are Greeks, Gentiles, and they're going up to worship at the feast.
SPEAKER_00: So they might have been what the New Testament often refers to as God-fearers.
SPEAKER_00: That is, people who formerly believed in the Greek pantheon of many gods, or the Roman pantheon, one of the two, of many gods.
SPEAKER_00: Now they see the, it doesn't make sense if the title God means supernatural being, higher and sovereign over everything, the highest of high, there's none other light.
SPEAKER_00: If that title means that, there can really only be one.
SPEAKER_00: And so now they're God fearers, and so they've started to understand as they hear the Hebrews even just talking about there being just one God, and certainly as they hear the Christians talking about one God, even though three in personality.
SPEAKER_00: And these Greeks come to the feast, they're going up to worship, and they therefore came to Philip.
SPEAKER_00: I love that Philip is the one people come to all the time, who was from Beth Seda of Galilee, and they began to ask him, saying, and this is my favorite phrase in this passage, sir, we wish to see Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We could camp out there for a week, couldn't we?
SPEAKER_00: What a great passage that is.
SPEAKER_00: All right, what do we learn here?
SPEAKER_00: Each of these verses to me are power-packed.
SPEAKER_00: Um, really awesome.
SPEAKER_00: I'll just, we'll just kind of cruise back through from verse 12 to 13.
SPEAKER_00: First, we see the festal enthusiasm of a great multitude.
SPEAKER_00: And thank you so much for allowing me to use the word festal.
SPEAKER_00: I I've been hoping to use that word somewhere along the line, and uh we don't have many festal opportunities, but I love the idea of this celebration uh and this that there's this feast that they're coming to.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, when we first started Village Chapel, I remember we had these evening potlucks.
SPEAKER_00: We just had a few people here.
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, when we first moved in here, we only had 50 people, so we sat in this corner right here, and we put the the uh we had an overhead projector with a little roll-up screen like this, and we we faced the corner because we just knew how empty the room was if we faced forward, you know.
SPEAKER_00: So we faced the corner and we looked at that, and that was wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: But we had potluck dinners in the back because we could set up tables back there, and it was so great.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody bringing something, everybody sharing something, everybody receiving something, and the body of Christ beginning to become a community like it was designed to.
SPEAKER_00: But notice the festal enthusiasm of the great multitude in verses 12 and 13.
SPEAKER_00: The preacher, healer, Jesus of Nazareth, was coming to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: The crowds were gathering, dancing, shouting, singing the ancient song, one Psalm 118.
SPEAKER_00: Hosanna's ringing out.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord had finally heard their prayers, and they see him, and they know he can raise the dead, and he's coming downtown.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he's coming to set us free to overthrow the Roman government and its oppressive taxation and uh the way it has been so evil and unjust in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, deliverance is at hand.
SPEAKER_00: Notice also the humble fulfillment of the great prophecy.
SPEAKER_00: Um and this is this is really ironic to me because um Zechariah goes back to the sixth century BC.
SPEAKER_00: His name means the Lord remembers.
SPEAKER_00: Zechariah.
SPEAKER_00: So what happened that day for some of these folks is they start shouting out, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: They're they're thinking to themselves, this is the moment.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord has not forgotten us.
SPEAKER_00: And that is very true even today.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord has not forgotten you.
SPEAKER_00: His promise is to never leave you nor forsake you.
SPEAKER_00: That rolls right out of the mouth of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so that that aspect of it is quite true.
SPEAKER_00: But I think in their own minds, they thought he was coming as a political uh hero, a political um somebody to throw overthrow, as they say the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've noticed, but we now live in a day and age when making an entrance is really critically important.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's it's so important.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, have you noticed it like it with weddings?
SPEAKER_00: You know, you've seen the videos, or or maybe you've been at a wedding where the bride and groom kind of you know dance down.
SPEAKER_00: They're bringing it forward, right?
SPEAKER_00: They're bringing it forward.
SPEAKER_00: And if they don't do it at the wedding, they do it at the reception, right?
SPEAKER_00: And it's just like, let's be creative.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, let's, you know, we'll ride in on a horse, or you know, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: You know, they do all kinds of crazy things, make it very special, and I love all that, all right?
SPEAKER_00: Um another form of that in our in our day and time is uh completely different from weddings, is WrestleMania.
SPEAKER_00: And then the lights and the smoke, and then you know, boom! Some some light pierces the smoke like a, you know, like one of those lightsabers, and it just you know beam a light on that one wrestler who's coming in to make his entrance, you know, or her entrance now, even as well.
SPEAKER_00: So it's uh it's like carefully selected walk-on music and the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: When we first looked at this building, we thought, yeah, you know, I could make an entrance as a preacher.
SPEAKER_00: That'd be good, that'd be kind of a fun thing to do once.
SPEAKER_00: Get like a zipline from the back, the balcony down to here, and hey, we study through books of the Bible here at the Village.
SPEAKER_00: And that'd be kind of fun, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Um what what one of the one of the entrances that I experienced personally, and some of you may have as well, that I thought was awesome, was really amazing.
SPEAKER_00: The ultimate rock star entrance to me was July the 2nd, 2011.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody there, Vanderbilt Stadium?
SPEAKER_00: You too.
SPEAKER_00: Oh we were like in nosebleed.
SPEAKER_00: We know we were in nosebleed, nosebleed, double nosebleed.
SPEAKER_00: And we were sitting up there, and and and you could kind of tell things were starting to get ready to happen, you know, and giant screens and all that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: And finally up on the on the giant screen comes the film, uh, a film of the guys in the band pulling up outside the you know, stable.
SPEAKER_00: And the four of them, three, three of them were dressed all in white, and Bono, of course, was in black with his shades on, and they just did the cool rock band walk, looking like they really aren't thinking about what's happening right at the moment, although there are four or five cameras around them because we're we're getting all kinds of, I mean, this thing's a big shoot.
SPEAKER_00: And the and you're up in the crowd, you're going, oh my awesome, cool.
SPEAKER_00: They're so they define cool, you know, and their entrance was really powerful when they came in.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, and then I think of smaller versions of all that too, when you you know think of the explosive entrances of the unannounced suddenly bursting through the door, Cosmo Kramer.
SPEAKER_00: It's like he makes an entrance every time.
SPEAKER_00: People started applauding that in that show.
SPEAKER_00: It was just amazing.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: That day is so different, and yet we're still talking about it.
SPEAKER_00: Because he enters humbly.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't come in on a you know war horse.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't come looking like a guy that was literally going to turn over the government in Rome because he had some kind of political agenda.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said precious little about politics.
SPEAKER_00: And I know there's a lot of people that want to try and co-opt Jesus for their political cause, but he will have none of that.
SPEAKER_00: He basically says, render under Caesar the things that are Caesar's.
SPEAKER_00: And render under God the things that belong to God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's such great wisdom for us to always remember, especially in this day and age where we're so divided and in so many ways.
SPEAKER_00: Outrage is the mode of our culture.
SPEAKER_00: It will burn you and your soul out.
SPEAKER_00: Outrage is the kudzu of our culture.
SPEAKER_00: It will cover us up and choke us out.
SPEAKER_00: So let's don't be a part of it.
SPEAKER_00: Step out of the river of rancor and look here to your king.
SPEAKER_00: Here he comes, humbly and at the same time fulfilling a great prophecy.
SPEAKER_00: You know, so that's really amazing.
SPEAKER_00: I like uh donkeys.
SPEAKER_00: I I really do like them.
SPEAKER_00: This this is an interesting animal.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I I know Pastor Matt, you guys actually have.
SPEAKER_00: You have two?
SPEAKER_00: Two of those?
SPEAKER_00: And I've heard Pastor Matt tell some of the stories of uh of his donkeys.
SPEAKER_00: And they're awesome.
SPEAKER_00: They really seem to me to be quite amazing as animals in a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_00: Uh G.K.
SPEAKER_00: Chesterton, some of you know I really like Chesterton.
SPEAKER_00: He he wrote uh a short, very short poem I want to read for you about, it's called The Donkey, and uh this goes back to 1927, but he said, uh it sort of references and at the very end ties this donkey into Palm Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: When fishes flew in forest walk and figs grew upon thorn, some moment when the moon was blood, then surely I was born.
SPEAKER_00: With monstrous head and sickening cry and ears like errant wings, the devil's walking parody of all four-footed things, the tattered outlaw of the earth of ancient crooked will, starve, scourge, deride me, I am dumb, I keep my secret still.
SPEAKER_00: Fools, for I also had my hour, one far fierce hour and sweet.
SPEAKER_01: There was a shout about my ears and palms beneath my feet.
SPEAKER_00: I love that, because the uh the the humble animal, this beast of burden that people would deride, that people thought of as dumb.
SPEAKER_00: Um here is what God chooses to enter into Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote in on that humble donkey representing humility, representing peace.
SPEAKER_00: Peace he came to offer, peace of God, the peace with God, and peace and reconciliation for the people of God to share with one another.
SPEAKER_00: This is all part of God's amazing grace.
SPEAKER_00: Also, notice, if you will, the wondering puzzlement of the disciples in verse 16, just like them.
SPEAKER_00: I think we do well to understand that following Jesus will inevitably lead us to periodic puzzlement.
SPEAKER_00: Look again at that verse, William 16.
SPEAKER_00: These things his disciples did not understand at the first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written of him and that they had done these things to him.
SPEAKER_00: So everything we look back to when it comes to the life of Jesus on earth goes through the lens of what?
SPEAKER_00: The resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: See?
SPEAKER_00: Now it makes sense that he could actually ride in in humility, that he could actually ride in representing peace.
SPEAKER_00: Because what?
SPEAKER_00: He actually was victorious.
SPEAKER_00: He defeated death itself, and right before that on the cross, he paid the price for your sin and for mine once and for all.
SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: And so, puzzlement is something we ought to expect when it comes to our attempt to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Every now and then he's gonna turn left or right or go faster or slower than you want him to.
SPEAKER_00: But don't stop following.
SPEAKER_00: Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He's the author and perfected, or the one that matures your faith.
SPEAKER_00: Got to move fast for the indisputable testimony of the eye, witnesses, verse 17 there.
SPEAKER_00: Multitude who were with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb, bearing witness of him.
SPEAKER_00: That's testifying of him.
SPEAKER_00: This is Jesus, he's the guy that raised that guy from the dead, and they point right at Lazarus.
SPEAKER_00: This is Jesus, he's the one that opened my eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Bearing testimony.
SPEAKER_00: Why are we so silent in our own day and time?
SPEAKER_00: I love the indisputable testimony of the four of these eyewitnesses.
SPEAKER_00: And it reminds me that our our faith, the Christian faith, the gospel message, is actually based on stuff that really happened, that people actually saw happen and experienced themselves.
SPEAKER_00: So people like Luke, when he researches everything carefully, that we might know the exact truth about what happened.
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about history here.
SPEAKER_00: This is not just myth, legend, and some kind of fairy tale.
SPEAKER_00: I enjoy myth.
SPEAKER_00: I enjoy those kinds of literature, but that's not what this is.
SPEAKER_00: Let this be what it claims to be and presents itself as.
SPEAKER_00: History.
SPEAKER_00: Really happened.
SPEAKER_00: Because if it didn't really happen, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: When I stand beside a grave, I got no hope whatsoever.
SPEAKER_00: But if it really happened, it changes everything.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean I don't weep, doesn't mean I don't mourn, but I grieve with hope.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not just a hopeless mourner.
SPEAKER_00: Five, the irresistible power of Christ is in verse 18 there.
SPEAKER_00: For this cause, the multitudes went and met him because they heard that he had performed this sign.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, miracles display his power, they affirm his identity, and they reveal his compassion.
SPEAKER_00: He actually has the power to do these things.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if he's the son of God, one would think he could do those things.
SPEAKER_00: If he is who he claimed to be, you would think he could do some things like that.
SPEAKER_00: They affirm his identity, son of God, reveal his compassion.
SPEAKER_00: He actually loved the people that he healed.
SPEAKER_00: He actually was moved one time when the widow of Nain was bringing her dead son out, and the funeral procession was coming out of the village.
SPEAKER_00: She didn't ask for anything, the crowd didn't ask for anything, but Jesus saw it happening, and Jesus walked over and raised that boy or that young man from the dead and gave him back to his mother.
SPEAKER_00: This is the compassion of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: On that first poem Sunday, riding on a donkey, weeping as he was.
SPEAKER_00: And it says in Luke's Gospel, if you if you read that there, he literally convulsed in his weeping over Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Not convulsing out of, in some way, uh looking at Jerusalem as some kind of repugnant city or whatever, or not revulsed at what he sees there, but brokenhearted at the way they would reject him.
SPEAKER_00: And he knew this was going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: And so he weeps over you, he weeps over me when we edge him out in some way.
SPEAKER_00: Or block him out, or don't trust him, or don't believe him.
SPEAKER_00: Sixth.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the chronic frustration of a religious legalism.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 19, Pharisees said, Oh no, you stop doing it.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine?
SPEAKER_00: Look what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00: The world has gone after him.
SPEAKER_00: And man, religious legalism is always just going to end in frustration.
SPEAKER_00: Chronic frustration.
SPEAKER_00: Trying to do it on your own, trying to follow the rules, trying to be the one to be self-righteous, trying to save yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know how many people I've talked to in this world that think like that, that they think it's really up to them to balance out the moral scales before they'll go to church or before they'll believe in Jesus or trust the gospel, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: They think I got to get my act together before I.
SPEAKER_00: No, please.
SPEAKER_00: If you think you got to get your act together, you're just gonna be like these religious leaders, you're gonna be in chronic frustration.
SPEAKER_00: And the good news about the gospel of Jesus is that he came for sinners like me, sinners like you, before we get it together.
SPEAKER_00: Um, need to come to that.
SPEAKER_00: And I know that's humbling, but that's also compelling, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: The compelling grace of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel of Jesus is surprising, it's mysterious, it's compelling, and it's also transforming.
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead, I dare you.
SPEAKER_00: Believe him.
SPEAKER_00: Watch him begin to transform and change your life.
SPEAKER_00: The Greeks said it very simply.
SPEAKER_00: They responded, you know, we would see Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We're just here, we want to.
SPEAKER_00: Can we see Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if that bit of curiosity is in you or in me each and every day.
SPEAKER_00: It needs to be.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came for those who have been sorely disappointed because they thought politics would be the answer that would save them.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Jesus came for those who think economics are somehow or another going to be the way to be saved.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Jesus came for those who are afraid and cowering right now because they think the world is literally falling apart.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came for those who have, who are struggling with some kind of physical report or some chronic physical condition.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: He's come for you as well as for me.
SPEAKER_00: Those who sought Jesus on that day exhibited, I would say, a variety of different motivations.
SPEAKER_00: There were people that were curious, or people that were desperate for deliverance, or people that had false expectations of him, and there are people that expressed faithful allegiance to him as well.
SPEAKER_00: And he came for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the great news.
SPEAKER_00: He came in humility and utter weakness, and yet the sacrifice of Christ on the cross would turn out to be the very instrument of saving power from God that would ultimately destroy all powers of evil and violence and lead to his glorious resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see what God is revealing about himself?
SPEAKER_00: What he's insisting on?
SPEAKER_00: His capacious affections for his own are not threatened by their fickleness, because pouring out of his heart is the turbulence of divine longing.
SPEAKER_00: And what God wants, God gets.
SPEAKER_00: May the hound of heaven, if he's chasing you, may he just continue to pursue you relentlessly until you turn around and surrender.
SPEAKER_00: He came for you, he came for me because, as the Bible teaches us, God wants his family back.
SPEAKER_00: And we see the lengths to which this God of the Bible will go to redeem and restore us.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came to seize us with his great affection, his furious and passionate love that led him to tears, that led him to the cross, that also led to the glorious resurrection, are for the weak, the vulnerable, the lost, the brokenhearted, every sinner who has been distracted away from God.
SPEAKER_00: Here comes Jesus to lay his life down for you and for me.
SPEAKER_00: Our friend Sam Mulberry says Jesus didn't come to scold us, he didn't come to excuse us.
SPEAKER_00: He came to forgive and redeem us.
SPEAKER_00: He's not wagging a finger or shrugging shoulders, he's got outstretched arms.
SPEAKER_00: So on the cross, like this, is him saying, Come to me.
SPEAKER_00: Come to me.
SPEAKER_00: And don't just come to get saved, come to get loved by him as well.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus comes and it's not merely as we wish him to be, but Jesus comes as he is in reality.
SPEAKER_00: What's so great about that is that the burden isn't on you to figure it out.
SPEAKER_00: The question I just asked for you is will you receive what he has on offer?
SPEAKER_00: It is leading to a wonderful and a beautiful uh culmination in Romans, I mean in Revelation 7, 9.
SPEAKER_00: After these things, the Apostle John says, I looked, and behold, a great multitude, which no one could count, every nation of all tribes, uh, peoples, and tongues standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes and palm branches in their hands.
SPEAKER_00: See, that's where this is all leading.
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's a beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_00: We'll close with this Piper quote here.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came the first time, he's coming again as king over all kings, king of Israel, king of the nations, king of the nature itself and the universe.
SPEAKER_00: Until he comes again.
SPEAKER_00: There's a day of amnesty and forgiveness and patience.
SPEAKER_00: He still rides a donkey and not yet a white war horse with a rod of iron.
SPEAKER_00: He is ready to save all who receive him as Savior and treasure him as king.
SPEAKER_00: Come to him.
SPEAKER_01: Know him, receive him.
SPEAKER_01: Live your life in allegiance to him.
SPEAKER_01: How he respond.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you for this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for Palm Sunday and all that it symbolizes.
SPEAKER_00: Um we are humbled that you would come uh to serve, to lay down your life, to love us the way you have.
SPEAKER_00: This is um one of those things that just drives us to our knees.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, I pray that each and every one of us would receive from you what we cannot achieve ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: This gift of grace and mercy through Jesus Christ, the humble King, the King that we have always needed, whether we knew it or not, the King that we've always really wanted, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer.
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.