The Triumphal Entry | Pastor Eric Hammen

March 29th, 2026

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Transcript

The Triumphal Entry

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, welcome. I know this morning didn't start as spring, but I pray as you leave this morning it feels like spring. I'm always a little leery to come up here while they're still singing, thinking that you may expect me to join in, so I try to give them a break in that. But we are so glad that you guys are here with us. We want to welcome you. If you're a first-time visitor, if if you've been here for a while, we still want to welcome you and appreciate you if you're watching online. Again, we want to thank you for joining us this morning on this Palm Sunday morning, this triumphal entry as we're going to discuss and remembering what we're celebrating on this kind of anniversary in history that happened 2,059 years ago. And how does that affect us here today? And so I think even though we have preached on this very specific historical context probably about four times in the last two years, um, because it just has come up in our rotation. But this bears repeating for us as we're talking about, as we are one week from the resurrection, as you're following along in this holy week, and we'll talk more about it as we go. It's just a very important time in history as Jesus is entering Jerusalem, and we see this picture fulfilling his destiny, willingly entering, not being drugged by an army or being uh coerced to come down, but willingly entering, understanding what this means for him in his life. Understanding everything that has taken place in the Old Testament, pointing to this moment, and we'll discuss that today. All four Gospels actually speak to this triumphal entry, which is not always the case on every single event. Although the word Palm Sunday, we call it Palm Sunday, is not in Scripture. It's called Palm Sunday because it's Sunday and they wave palms. Triumphal entry is not in there, also, except for at the probably the beginning of your text as a as a title. But so today we're gonna look at John's account versus the other ones that we discussed. I think it's it's appropriate because there's gonna be some neat tie-ins in there. But we know that John focuses his book on Jesus' divinity, and there's a lot of I am statements within the book of John using using some signs that he goes. And so it'll be interesting as we walk through it from his perspective. So imagine, if you will, 1965, the Beatles come to America and they and they come to an airport, and thousands and thousands of people come to greet the Beatles and to hear or to see a glimpse of them. People are screaming, they're crying, girls are fainting. Literally, if you watch the old videos, the black and white, they they're raising the girls that have fainted on top of the crowd over the fence to get them to safety, just to try to get a glimpse of the Beatles. Now I try to think of who would it be today. I don't listen to a lot of modern stuff, but I'm thinking T. Swift or you know, maybe Morgan Wallen or somebody. Imagine. But people are going crazy to see the Beatles, maybe to catch a glimpse or to hear a concert from them. It was absolute chaos in 1965. But imagine this, if you will, with the crowd showing up to see, expecting a rock concert, but instead the band walked out and said this hey, we're not here to perform, but we're here to call you to change your life. That crowd would probably change, right? The cheering would probably stop, people would check their watches, the excitement would be over, and people would probably disperse. Because they came for a performance, not a transformation. That's exactly what is happening here in John 12 as we continue and as we look at this text. You see how this massive crowd is gathering, they're shouting, they're celebrating, they're waving palm branches in the air. They think they are welcoming a conquering king, but actually they're receiving a suffering savior. You see, they want a messiah that's gonna defeat Rome, and they're not thinking of a savior that is gonna defeat sin. You see, like us, they wanted those, that person or whoever, to change their circumstance and life. Whoever was coming, they wanted them to change their circumstance and life. They were not expecting for him to change their hearts. So the question I have for us today, kind of the theme question that I want us to be thinking about as we're reading this text and as we're going through some of this, is are we the crowd? Are we the same crowd that's receiving them, that's coming with them? On this Sunday, the 29th of March in 2026, here in Chesapeake, Virginia, are we the same crowd that would have been found back then? Are we looking for someone to change our circumstances? Someone to help us change our health, our finances, maybe our relationships, maybe our political circumstances. Are we waiting for someone to change those circumstances? Or are we gonna be open for the real reason why Christ came and tell us to change our hearts, transforming how we live and realigning our worship. So we have this triumphal entry and Palm Sunday that basically commemorates this. Jesus coming into Jerusalem. Like I said, it's in all four Gospels, but we read it in the Gospel of John and starting in verse 2 or 12. I'm sorry. Verse 12 talks about this. It says, it speaks of this large crowd that is there. It says there's this large crowd. Well, there's actually two crowds, if you didn't know. So Jesus is coming from Bethany. He was just visiting his friend Lazarus, and there's a lot of hype that was going on. You can imagine if you heard that someone raised somebody from the dead, you'd probably be curious yourself to find out what was going on. So we had this large crowd that was with him entering in Jerusalem. Think of a posse or a mob that's with him, cheering with him, like, hey, we just saw this and we were just experienced, hey, we saw Lazarus ourselves. And then colliding with this massive crowd that's already gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover. So we know historically Jerusalem, their population was probably 25,000 to 80,000 on a good day during that time. But because of this festival, because of what was going on, this this um Palm Sunday, what was happening, there was probably about 2.65 million people. So go from 80,000 to 2.65 million people is tremendous. That's a crowd. Mardi Gras, nothing on that. That is a crowd. And you ask, how do we know how many people were at this crowd? Well, we know probably how many were in Jerusalem because they took very careful notes and how many sacrificial lambs were sacrificed during this week. The rabbis would count and would tally those numbers. And we know that they they have sacrificed during that week 265,500 lambs. And if you average that one for every 10 people, you get 2.65 million people. Not an exact sign, there was no clicker or anything like that, but you get my point. There was a lot of people at this crowd right there in verse 12, is talking about this large crowd coming in to see Jesus. And 13, it says they were laying palm branches, waving them, and which would symbolize victory, by the way, these palm branches. Hey, that's the king is coming. So think of it. Who's the author of this? John. So John's writing about this massive crowd, Jesus coming in and the palm branches. What else did John write? John wrote Revelation. And if you were to look at Revelation 7, 9, see if this looks familiar to you. After this, I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number. So a big crowd, right? A massive crowd, maybe more than 2.6 million. But behold, look at this crowd. For every nation, every tribe, all peoples and languages, you know, everybody would have come from all the outer points to come to Jerusalem. Standing before the throne, the Lamb. So big crowd, Lamb, Jesus coming in as the Lamb of God who comes and takes away the sins of the world. Are you seeing this imagery? Clothed in white robes and what? With palm branches in their hands. So how how neat it is that he's he's knitting these worlds together in this. John sees this in heaven and the joy of heaven depicted in this vision right here before him, as the crowds are welcoming him, yelling, Hosanna. Basically, hey, save us. They were yelling, save us. And you don't do that for just anybody, right? You're only yelling, save us for somebody who you think can save you. Imagine you're in the front door and someone walks in. You're not gonna say, hey, save us. They don't have the authority to do that. But they're expecting this king, their deliverer, their messiah. Their hope and expectation is that any moment the power that he exhibited to calm the sea, to walk on water, to create food, to heal the sick, to forgive the sins, to raise the dead would be on their side as they conquered Rome. See, we can't confuse this excitement that they had for true faith. Back to the concert analogy. Imagine you're going to your favorite concert, I'm not gonna name the concert, you're going to this concert, and the artist walks out on stage, everyone is screaming, hands in the air, they got their cell phones out. You know, you've seen the scene, you know what it looks like, right? Completely engaged in what was going on. But as soon as that concert ends, everyone goes home unchanged. You see, that is the triumphal entry. The crowd is loud but not loyal. The volume is not the same as devotion. You see, you can shout Hosanna on Sunday and still walk away by Friday. So the question is, is it possible to welcome Jesus outwardly but not surrender inwardly? Well, the text today is going to point to this concept that we that is batted around in theology. There is this concept, it's called the munis triplex, m-u-n-us-triplex. It's Latin basically for the triple offices of Christ. What does that mean? The triple office of Christ. It means that he is both a prophet, a priest, and a king. And you see that in the text, the prophet. We're going to see some of that in Zechariah and Isaiah and Exodus as we as we go and look, but you're also going to see the priestly duties. We're going to see the sacrificial lamb coming. Not only is he the priest, but he is also the sacrifice. And then last, what we're going to kind of look at a little bit is the king, the office of the king. So the first section we want to tackle today is the prophecy. We want to look at the prophecy, the fulfillment of that. Verses 14 and 15, talk to this. And it says, and that Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just it has been written, Fear not, daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt. That is taken directly out of Zechariah 9:9 in the Old Testament. Almost word for word. Shout aloud, daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming to you. Righteous and having salvation is he. So he's proclaiming who is coming in is gonna bring salvation. They're gonna bring salvation. Gentle and riding on a donkey, clear as day. Now, mind you, this was written in 498 or BC. So about 520 years before Christ came. So it's hard to predict what was gonna happen that long. We don't know what we're doing next week. But this was written 520 years before, and then we see him coming in exactly as it was written. And we have to understand that there's there's importance when we look at prophecy and scripture. It's very important to understand that because the prophecy that is that is written in the Old Testament, if it doesn't come true in the New Testament, then it's false prophecy, right? It's a false prophet. That's the that's the test of it. But we know there's over 300, approximately 332 prophecies in the Old Testament that have come true and have been proven historically. Not just a bunch of Christians who wanted to agree on it, but even others who were not Christians said, yeah, that actually happened. And so it's important for us to recognize the likelihood of that happening. And there is there is this thing called the Stoner calculation. So if you've heard this, please hear me as I walk through this for those of us who like numbers a little bit or need a little bit of help. So the stoner calculation was written by Peter Stoner, who was a mathematician. He wrote a book and he talked about the the probability of one individual fulfilling just eight prophecies. The fulfilling eight prophecies. If you've heard this, you know you know I'm going with this. All right, so we have eight prophecies. Now, well, how many I tell you? There was 332 approximately. So let's just take eight. Pick your favorite eight that you want virgin birth, John going before him. You can use Zachariah's depiction of him, but just pick eight. Okay, you take eight of them. And what is the probability of that actually taking place? Well, it is one and one quintillion. That's the number. So take a look at this. See, we're underlined, that's millions. We can we can understand that, right? We kind of get our grasp around that. There's some like MLB and ML and Major League Baseball contracts that are that are dabbling around that number, right? Then we go up to a little bit of the billions, we got some um little bigger money there, and then you got the the Jeff Bezos and the Elon Musk's in the trillions, maybe in the baby part of it. Then you have our national debt there somewhere. But all the way to the end, we see this quadrillion. Now that's just if eight prophecies, just eight of them out of the 332. If you were to say 48 of them, it'd be one with a 10 with 157 zeros after that. I can't even write it down here. Illustration for your mind, because it's it's hard to understand what that looks like. And you've heard this one before, probably if you've been around the church long enough. This stoner wrote this about probability because we needed visualization. So say you take the state of Texas, all right? Caleb's not here, so don't tell him I use Texas. But if you ever drive across the state of Texas, 10 to 17 hours at best, depending on where which direction you're going. But it takes forever to get through Texas. And say you were to take a silver dollar, it's not a silver dollar, but something around this size, okay? And I would take an X and mark an X on this silver dollar, and I were to take it and place it and throw it into the state of Texas, but it was covered with these things for two feet. Two feet, the entire state of Texas. And I marked this X on this one coin or this one silver dollar, and I threw it randomly inside of the state of Texas, and I grabbed one of you, any of you out of the audience, and I put a blindfold on you, and I said, pick the coin with the X on it. That is the probability of just eight coming true. But here we see 332 prophecies, a couple of which we're looking at today, coming true, proving that this king was the savior, proving that this is what it was supposed to be before the birth of Christ. And as even proven later on, if you like more history, the Dead Sea Scrolls were kind of found in the 1940s, but written a couple hundred years before Christ, because some skeptics would say, Well, wait a second, maybe the prophecies were written in here, and then later on in the New Testament, after Jesus came, we can go back in the writings and change it to make it look like Jesus is the Messiah. But the problem is they found these Dead Sea scrolls that were wonderfully preserved, that were written still 200 years before Jesus came, that told us that this was true. That no one changed it. It was perfectly accurate the way it was written down. It's amazing to think of all these different revelations between. So Palm Sunday is revealing who the promised Messiah was. And I'm going to walk through just a couple things in the Old Testament with you. And I said, We talk about Passover quite a bit here because we like to do the Lord's Supper, and we'll be doing that again on Friday. But I'm going to go a little different version on here. If you look at Exodus 12, right? This is kind of a foreshadowing of what is going to happen today on Palm Sunday, not here physically in Chesapeake, but what is happening in what we're studying today. So if you just humor me for a second, Exodus 12, 3 says, the 10th day take a lamb. So remember, this is when they were trying to, um, the tenth plague had come, and they were doing what God told them to do in order for them to be saved. This is right. So we got the, it says, on the tenth day take a lamb according to your father's house. So the tenth day you're supposed to take a lamb. It's gonna be unblemished, it's gonna be perfect, it's gonna be one that you select. Jesus is coming in on this triumphal Sunday, the day we're celebrating on what? The tenth day of the Hebrew calendar of Nisan. Coincidence? Hold on. Says 12.5 in Exodus 12.5, the lamb should be without blemish. We know hundreds of verses in the New Testament talk about the perfection of Christ. Just one, first Peter 2.22 says, He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. Over and over and over we see the perfection of Christ. So they're supposed to hold this lamb for four days, right? That's what it says. You take this lamb for four days, and it says in 12.6 in Exodus, keep it until the 14th day when you will sacrifice it at twilight. So you come in on the tenth day, the Lamb of God is coming in on the tenth day, and it says, You will keep it until the 14th day, which is Friday. We're getting ready to settle, uh celebrate Good Friday. When the day that it tells us to sacrifice that lamb, way back in Exodus, 1440 years earlier, to sacrifice that perfect lamb. But yet Christ will be sacrificed on Friday. Exodus 12:7, this is good. It says, take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts. We all know the story, and the angel of death will pass over, for the blood shall be a sign for you that when I see the blood, I will pass over. So we have blood on the doorpost, the two doorposts. Now picture this on Friday, right? The crucifixion, the 14th day. Imagine piercing your skin, piercing your body through here, piercing your feet. Do you think by chance that there's gonna be blood on that wooden cross? Do you think by chance that there's gonna be blood on that cross, signifying that anybody who falls under the blood, anybody who falls under the blood who believes in Jesus will be what? Saved. And death will pass over. Are you seeing the connection between what he was getting ready to celebrate that week? What happened 1400 years earlier, and now seeing it coming right before our eyes. So we have these prophecies, then we see we have a different kind of king. As our text continues there in 16, it says, The disciples didn't understand at first. So here are these people that have been with them for three years. And they've and they have these books, they have Exodus, they have Zechariah, they have this stuff, but they didn't understand because the problem is the crowds, the leadership, and the disciples weren't expecting what kind of king was to come. See, we need to understand we need to receive Jesus as king on his terms and not on ours. So you ever download an app on your phone and it has like terms and conditions, you know what I'm talking about? Or like you have to scroll down because you want to buy something or or sign a lease or uh you buy a house with like 3,000 pages that you have to read. You're just like, yeah, I agree, I agree. Initial, initial, initial. You know what I'm talking about? Well, see, we want the benefits of whatever that is. We want the benefits, but we're not really submitting to the authority of the agreement. We want all the good stuff, but not the authority of the agreement. And this is how many treat Jesus today. You see, I want salvation, I want the salvation part of it. I want the blessings, I want the peace that comes from a relationship with Christ, but I'm not interested in the surrender. Oh, you mean I gotta give up my time? The things that I prioritize, these things that bring me enjoyment. I gotta I'm not interested in the surrender. And it makes me wonder do we even understand who Jesus is ourselves? Do we have the wrong impression of who Jesus is ourselves? Is he kind of our genie in a bottle for when we need it, we can go to him? When troubles are bad, we can go to him. When friends ask for prayer, we can go to him. Is he our spiritual guide that we're just gonna seek some guidance and meditate on? Is he our passenger in life? Or is he our savior? People expected this political liberator, this person who's gonna come and conquer, but instead they got this humble, suffering servant, ultimately fulfilling another prophecy that we find in Isaiah 53. Now, Isaiah 53 has been a fun one for me, and it's it's something I'm really reading this year, but it's so it's so good. It's so good. So here's this other book that was written again, hundreds of years earlier, 500 some years before Christ has come, and it's gonna be a picture of what to expect. Again, verified in the Dead Sea Scrolls 200 years before Christ, Isaiah was one of the books that they found that was virtually intact. It's amazing. So there the Jewish people would have the Torah, which Isaiah would be included in that. And so remember that as we're thinking about our history. And they had this thing called the half-Torah, and that they would read it on uh at the temple on days. It was like their weekly readings that they had. One weekly, one text that they omit in their weekly readings is Isaiah 52, 13 through 13, 12. And maybe you'll see why. Read this with me. Humor me on this. Verse 1 says in Isaiah 53, who has believed what he has heard from us, and whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Basically, hey, the Messiah was not believed. When he came in here, he was not believed. He was he was all over the place. In fact, it says in Matthew 26, when Jesus is trying to explain to the high priest, he says, Hey, you have said so that I'm God. You have said so, but I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power coming on the clouds of heaven. And then what does the high priest do? He tears his robe and said, He has uttered blasphemy. What further witness do we need? This is this is where they're taking him the crucifixion, right here. This is where they're saying, You're guilty. They did not believe who he was, just as verse one would say. Verse 2 and 53 says this for he grew up before them like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground, had no form or majesty, and that we should look at them with no beauty and we should not desire him. The Messiah was unremarkable in all earthly aspects. He was all he was unmarkable. In fact, so much so they said, little regard for authorities because he was from Nazareth. What good comes from Nazareth? His ideas were unpopular. Isaiah says he has no stately form or majesty. He was altogether unimpressive on this earth. This is where it gets good here. I'm just gonna read a couple more. Verse 3, Isaiah 53, it says, He was despised and rejected from men. Tell me you can't see Christ's life in this. He was despised and rejected by men. He was rejected in his hometown in Luke. He was hated by the Pharisees in Matthew, he was arrested and beaten in John, betrayed by his own people in Mark, and mocked and executed throughout the gospels. He was despised by the same crowd that shot at Hosanna. There had to have been some mixture of people saying, crucify him. And this is the one that I don't think anybody can deny. Isaiah 53, 5. Read that with me. It says, But he was pierced for our transgressions. 540 years before Christ came to the cross. He was pierced for our transgressions. That's that's pretty specific. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastmi chastisement that brought peace. He bore our sins. And then this. And with his wounds we are healed. Is that not the picture of the cross? And you continue to read down Isaiah, and I'll let you do that as a homework assignment. Over and over and over, pointing back to Christ and what Christ has done and what he was doing this week. Hundreds of years earlier. So just like the Exodus account, this text in Isaiah shows all these parallels of what is happening. You see, scripture is not written in a vacuum. It is not. If you're not familiar with Iwanas on Wednesday night, these kids are learning scripture like you wouldn't believe. They'll embarrass you. Maybe don't go because you'll be embarrassed. But when you start awanas, you get a thing called the start zone. And it gives them an overview of the Bible that a lot of adults don't know. That the Bible is written by over 40 men, over 1,500 years. He has 66 books, 39 and 27, perfectly written by the Holy Spirit, complimenting itself, no error found within it. And the Old Testament points every single time to Christ and what is happening today. The exact moment of him entering in Jerusalem is his fulfillment of that. And it's just the beginning. This is a big triumphal thing, right? He's coming in as a victor, but it moves quickly into suffering, as we see throughout this week. Monday, so tomorrow, as we're thinking historically of what happened, we know that Jesus goes into the temple. When he clears the temple, he says, You're making this place my father's house. This is a den of robbers, and you guys are flipping tables and casting out all the other sacrifices that were there. Um, the prices were being jacked up, and they were taking somebody's sacrifice, saying, No, no, that was not good. You have to buy one of these. You can think of all that kind of stuff was going on. So here's this righteousness in here. There's a commentator, he says, I'm not sure how true it is because it's not in scripture, but the imagery is phenomenal. He talks about he flipped all the tables and he cast everybody outside the temple. He alone stood when they all left as the last and final sacrifice, the last lamb that was gonna lose its life for the forgiveness of sin. And it makes me wonder about our own church, about our own family here. Is do we have the same perspective? Are we just going through the script? Playing church. It's Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter. We'll have some more people here on Easter, we'll get some more chairs. Without any change on the Monday after. Are we captivated and changed and allowing Christ to move us? Are we unable to be quiet about the goodness of what he's done in your life? After Monday is Tuesday, we all have gone to kindergarten and Jesus is there teaching in the temple. Understanding, hey, they're not mad at what he's teaching, but they're mad at what authority he was teaching from. So we start seeing some groundswell of them trying to get rid of Jesus. Wednesday, we see that Judas agrees to betray him for 30 pieces of silver. Thursday is the wonderful celebration of Passover in the upper room, washing of the disciples' feet, ultimately ending in the arrest in the garden. Friday is the trial, the crucifixion, and the burial. All painted out in Exodus before, foreshadowed again in Isaiah 53, and now coming to light in this time. Saturday he's in the tomb, and Sunday he wins. And we're going to celebrate that here. Verse 19 says, the world has gone after him. The world has gone after him. Such an important statement because you see, they were looking at the outside. They were looking at everything that was happening, the obvious rejection by even his disciples as they scattered. But what they missed was the plan, intentional duty in which Christ was doing. Exactly what he had depicted. What he wanted to do, he did. All being played out before their eyes. They're just seeing the obvious outward appearance of people leaving. So just like the people there for the triumphal entry as he's come in. But why does this all matter? What does it matter to us here today? A few things. This text reminds us that he was declared the king. Coming in, waving palm branches, yelling, Hosanna, come and save us on a donkey in victory. Come save us. It shows his humility. It shows his humility as he came in in that way, not on a war horse with an army. He came in humbly, suffering. It also reveals the fickleness of human praise. I know we get puffed up when people compliment us and we think it's good, or you get likes on your posts, or whatever they call in that world. But that's fading. And it can turn on a dime. It can turn on a dime, just as this crowd. So it invites us to ask the question: Is he truly the king of my life? Is he truly the king of my life? You see, as we look at this text that we were reading and try to see what matters to us, there's a couple questions that we need to be asking ourselves, especially today and this week, is who do we say Christ is? Who is he? Is he your genie? What is he your spiritual guide? What is Christ to you? Who is he to you? Are we just making a verbal proclamation and kind of living out of our Christian ease? Or are we actually having a life-changing personal relationship with him? And after looking at the evidence today and how the Old Testament points to the New Testament, proving this is right, and this narrative that has hundreds of prophecies that have been fulfilled before our eyes. What is keeping us from believing in Christ and not allowing him to change you? Is it your struggle with belief, like your intellectual struggle, like you have questions if God exists at all, your doubts about the reliability of the Bible? Well, I just gave you some reliability today, the difficulty of accepting miracles. Is it that you don't want to deal with the moral constraints? You don't want to follow Christ, but that's going to require some obedience? May have to get rid of some of the stuff that you're doing. You don't like the teachings on sexuality and forgiveness and humility. Maybe some of you in here are like, I don't want to live life on his terms, but I want to do on my own terms. I've heard people say before, I'll do that when I get older. Notre Damas? Alright, we'll see how that works out for you. Maybe you had a bad experience in church. You've seen the hypocrisy of the people who go, well, guess what? We're all hypocrites. Maybe you got hurt. Maybe there's some judgment cast on you. You're rejected from a community. Maybe you've seen scandals by some church leaders. We are a place of grace. Which means that is a place of grace for you and also for the leadership. Maybe there's emotional barriers in your life. You're angry at God because of suffering and loss that you've experienced in life. Maybe there's a little bit of pride. Maybe there's fear of change or losing control in your life. Maybe you have guilt or shame saying, How can a good God accept me for doing all the bad things that I have done? But over the next few days, as we reflect on what took place, coming in on Sunday, raising again on the following Sunday. Remember why Christ came. Remember why he came. Christ came that you may have life and have it more abundantly. John 10, that's why he came. Not have mediocre life, not have so-so life or okay life or just life, it's more abundantly. In a paper written by U.S. Senate chaplain, Richard Halverson, this is what he wrote. The fact is the birth, crucifixion, and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is celebrated worldwide by folks of every race, language, color every year. And believing in Jesus, they have been delivered from the most evil, disastrous, frustrating, debilitating habits and life forms possible. The real problem is that Jesus Christ is not the folk that can't believe in him, it's that folks won't believe in him. So back to our example as we close from earlier in the concert. The question I asked you this morning is: did you come here for an event or a performance? You know, this we call this the platform if you didn't know. Because the stage is where you do performances on. And what I will tell you that each and every week we strive and we pray and we hope that we deliver the word of God. We preach it as true as we humanly possibly can. And our hope and desire is that it changes your life. It doesn't just fix your circumstance that you walked in here with, but it changes you internally. From your heart out. Like the crowd. Are we looking for a change in circumstances? Because the truth is, when we walk out of these doors, what we walked in with, we're gonna have on our way out. This is a sinful, broken world. When someone treats you wrongly out there, it's because they're a sinner in need of a savior. So are you looking for someone that's gonna change your circumstances? Or are you willing to seek Jesus so he can change your heart? Pray with me, Lord. I thank you for this morning. I thank you for your word. I thank you for this picture that you've painted both throughout time over these 1,500 years that this was written, Lord, that the Old Testament points to you and it's come true. It's been revealed every single time. And Lord, we're we're grateful for that, that we can take this book as the truth and the words in it. So that means that we have to understand that your blood has the saving power for those who want to believe in you, those who want to accept in you and follow you, admit that they were sinners, repent of it, and believe in what you have done. And Lord, in a moment we get to sing and we get to pray, Lord, and we get to come and respond if we if we want. We all need prayer, so there is a response there. Either the prayer is thanking you for what you've done, saying, Hosanna, save us, or the prayer is repentance of God. I am sorry for what I have done. Please forgive me. Allow me to follow you as I walk forward. And Lord, and everywhere in between. And so as we sing, I ask that if people need to come forward, they come forward on this altar and they just they give it to you. They they cast their sins at the foot of the cross, just as that blood is at the top of the cross, and you say everything under that blood is covered in my sacrifice. Maybe they just need to come and pray with someone up here on the altar to their right. Lord, if that's the case, Lord, I pray that you you prompt them. But Lord, ultimately, we thank you for coming on that triumphal entry, becoming the atoning sacrifice once and for all, dying for our sins, rising again on the third day. And Lord, we thank you for having the opportunity to be part of your family. And Lord, we just ask you and pray for this and all in Jesus' Christ's name. Amen.