Luke 19 | Triumphal Entry

Drake Daniels preaches a sermon on Palm Sunday from Luke 19.

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Go ahead and grab your seats. Um Hope you're doing well. Hey, welcome once again to King's Church. So glad that you guys are here. If you do have your Bibles, you can uh go ahead and open them up to Luke chapter 19. Luke 19 is where we're gonna be camped out at in our time together this morning. Uh because like Zach said, we're we're taking a break from the book of Acts over the next two weeks to get our hearts primed and ready for Easter Sunday, because next week we'll be right back here uh in this room celebrating the fact that there is a tomb outside of Jerusalem that is empty. And so uh hopefully you guys will join us next week for that. Uh so this is uh a pretty big week, an exciting week. Uh I don't know what you guys think about when you think about uh big, maybe transformative weeks that have come into uh your life. Maybe, maybe for you, especially you college students, uh maybe you think about when you finally left your family and friends uh and you headed off to college and to make a name for yourself and realize that all you can afford is ramen noodles. Uh maybe maybe for you what you think about when you think about a big week in your life is uh your wedding week leading up to your wedding. Uh girls, maybe you're thinking about all the times, all the finishing touches that you had to place uh on your wedding, all the little details that were going into it. Guys, not sure what you did. Maybe played Call of Duty one last time with your friends before you gently laid that thing to rest. Umbe for you when you think about some big weeks in your life, you're thinking uh about uh when your first baby came into the world and dad, you drove really slow on the way home uh and everything. And maybe you're thinking about, man, I should have slept just a little bit more uh before this baby came. I love them so much, but I missed leave. I don't know what you think about. Uh we all have like these different weeks, these different moments uh that mean so much to us and that has transformed so much of our lives. So we can all think of one. Um but I start with that because today marks what has been known for centuries as Holy Week or Passion Week, which is truly the most transformative week of all time, because this is the week that has changed everything, and it's the week that we celebrate and remember the last week of Jesus' life, all the way through Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, and the clock for this transformative week begins today with what is well known as Palm Sunday. And it's interesting, if you read the Bible, uh you're gonna find out pretty quickly as you read through the Gospels uh that the Gospel writers spend like this inordinate amount of time focused on the last week of Jesus' life. Like, depending upon uh which gospel you are reading, anywhere from 30 to 45% of the gospels are written for the last week of Jesus' life, uh which is pretty crazy to think about. Like, Jesus lived until he was about 33 years old, which uh, according to chat, would have been just over 1700 weeks that Jesus was alive, and about 35% of those weeks, the gospel writers focus on this last week, on just this one week. And so between that fact and the fact that every single gospel writer includes this story, Palm Sunday, the triumphal entry, it's almost like there's a big banner over this story saying, hey, this is important. It would be well worth your time to know what happened on this day. Because Palm Sunday, what we're celebrating today, where we stand now, is the beginning of the culmination of the work of God through his son Jesus Christ on this earth. Like this moment is huge. And so, what I want to do in our time together is I just want to journey, I want to move through this text, and in it, I'll point out some big things, but really I just hope that it moves our heart to see what type of king that we have. And then at the end, I just want to look at three quick things about how Palm Sunday will encourage us and challenge us today. And so we've been in the book of Acts, we haven't been in the gospel, so let me just kind of set the scene uh for Luke chapter 19 before we dive in. Honestly, Luke 19, it would be uh it's the beginning of Passover week, and so this would be honestly one of the most chaotic, one of the most dramatic moments in the Bible because this was Passover week. And just as a refresher for us, uh the Passover week, uh, this was one of the most important feasts. It was the most important feast for uh the Jewish people, God's people at this time, because it was a time where they would look back towards the climactic moment in the Old Testament where they were enslaved in Egypt, and yet God had told them, Hey, put the blood of a lamb on the doorpost of your home, and I will pass over you, not put you to death, which would eventually lead to them getting out of Egypt and God saving them and rescuing them in that way. And so every single year the Old Testament will say they celebrated Passover, and when they did, they had to do it in Jerusalem. And so people would travel from all over the world at this time. All of these Jewish individuals would travel from all over the world to Jerusalem, and so this town of about 25,000 people, all of a sudden scholars will estimate that at least a hundred and fifty thousand extra people would descend upon Jerusalem. Okay, like this place was packed. It was like 380 during rush hour, okay? Like every single like spot in the inn would have been filled, uh, the hillside would have been completely full with all of these tents because people are cramming into Jerusalem. There is an excitement, there is a buzz, there is an energy going on, and it's into this scene that Jesus steps on to the scene. And so Luke chapter 19, hopefully you made it there by now. We'll start in verse 28. Says this when he, Jesus, had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem, and he approached Beth Page and Bethany at the place called the Mount of Olives. He sent two of his disciples and said, Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. If anyone asks you, Why are you untying it, say this the Lord needs it. And so those who were sent left and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owner said to them, Why are you untying the colt? The Lord needs it, they said. Then they brought it to Jesus, and after throwing their clothes on the colt, they helped Jesus get on it. Okay, let me pause there. Let me just say this 33 years of Jesus' life, that's that's how many years he lived. And Luke only has 24 chapters. Okay, and so overall we see that Luke is gonna have to move pretty quick as if he's gonna cover much of Jesus' life. Like, if you're going to try to cram 33 years of the Son of God into 24 chapters, you're gonna be brief. You're gonna be pretty quick, you're gonna have to hit the high-level view of his life, and yet here it seems like Luke is almost slowing to a crawl. He's pointing out some interesting details. I mean, you may be wondering, like me, like, why does Luke, who's beginning uh to write about the beginning of the end, uh the beginning of the most important week in history, the king coming into the city, why does he spend six verses talking about a donkey? And it's a weird scene. Like, is this Grand Theft Donkey? Because, like, here's the deal. Like, if I went into the parking lot after today and I saw you hot wiring my Ford, and I said, What are you doing? First of all, you might need the car more than me, it's a jacked-up car. But, anyways, if I said, What are you doing? and you said the Lord needs it, I'd be calling 911. You know, like I'd be I'd try to get you arrested because that's a weird scene. And and then between that and like the sudden fixation on the cult, like you may be wondering, what's going on here? Like, why did Jesus come in on a cult? Because this wasn't common. Like, and in fact, outside of a few scenes where Jesus is on a boat, nowhere else in the Gospels do we see Jesus riding in on anything. Like, if you look at Jesus' ministry with his boys, they are always walking everywhere. Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, Galilee, all these places, he is always walking. And yet not here. And so Luke, he's he's slowing down to a crawl, pointing out a lot of these interesting details, and then he focuses in on a donkey, and it's supposed to be like a, hey, Jesus is doing something different here. Like we're supposed to be leaning into this moment. But why? Like, like we know, Jesus could he could have easily just walked into Jerusalem at this point, but why ride into Jerusalem? And why on a cult? Well, I think there's two reasons, and one is that it was to fulfill Scripture. Okay, Zechariah 9 9, the second to last book in the Old Testament, Zechariah says this it says, Rejoice greatly, daughter Zion. Shout and triumph, daughter Jerusalem. We're in Jerusalem, but so Jerusalem, why should you shout and rejoice? Look, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious, humble, and riding on a donkey on a colt, the full of a donkey. And so Jesus coming in on a donkey here, coming in on a colt. This wasn't an accident. It wasn't like Jesus was tired and he needed a donkey Uber for the last few legs of his journey. No, this was prophesied almost 600 years earlier, and it's clear this is God's doing. Okay, this was a divine plan here. This is all a part of his plan. This was God's son and God's city, the most important figure ever coming into the most important week ever. But it wasn't just Zachariah who actually prophesied about this moment, because in a way, like donkeys actually, cults do too. And here's what I mean. Okay, next time you go to the zoo or you come visit me out in Crumb Texas and you just see a donkey on the road, you need to look at their back. You need to look at what a donkey looks like. Because here's what a donkey looks like. There is going to be a dark strip of hair running down its spine, and there's going to be a dark strip of hair running from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. And if you can't picture it, we actually have a picture for you up here. What does that look like? That looks like a cross to me, okay? Guys, I get like uh so geeked up by this. I literally named my son Colton after this moment, okay? My first son named Tatum after a great basketball player, this guy named after a donkey, you know? But I get so fascinated by this because every donkey everywhere has this. It's not just like every once in everyone once in a while you see this. No, every single donkey everywhere has this. And I want you to see that in the same way that a donkey carries the mark of a cross on its back everywhere that it goes, soon after Jesus would be carrying the cross on his back as he dies for the sins of the world. See, Jesus rode in to Jerusalem on a cross because he knew that he was coming for the cross. And so, one, Jesus comes in on a cult to fulfill scripture, but two is that everything about this moment, all the things that are happening here, is pointing out the fact that Jesus is the king. But this cult, this animal, is showing us what type of king Jesus is. You see, Jesus, he's actually following kind of the normal assumption, the normal pattern of the day for a king. That in the old days, whenever a king would ride into a city, it would always look almost the exact same. And here's what would happen every single time is that this king, they would have their status recognized, they would have a formal entry upon an animal, they would be greeted with acclaim, they would go into the city and really into the middle of the city where the temple was, and then they would go into the temple and they would sacrifice to a god that they liked, or they would knock over the idols of gods they didn't like. And Jesus, he is following all of these cultural expectations down to a T. Like all five of those things occur in this moment. That he's coming in, Jesus, he's coming in under the banner of the Son of David. He's riding in on an animal. He is greeted, as other gospels will fill us in on, with the claim, Hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And if you know the story, right after this moment, Jesus, he's going to go into the temple and he's gonna shake some things up, he's gonna knock some things over. And so Jesus, he's coming into this moment, and every single thing that he is doing, he is showing, I am a king, I am the king. But the cult here, he gives us an insight into what type of king, and we saw it a little bit with Zachariah's prophecy. Let me go back to it one more time. It says, Look, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious, humble, humble and riding on a donkey, on a cult, the full of a donkey. And so Jesus, he comes in on a donkey, but not like the other kings of the day. Not like not on a war horse, not on an impressive stallion, but a donkey to demonstrate humility. You see, God gave Zachariah a vision of what the Messiah would look like, and it was a type of Messiah that was humble, humble enough to ride in on a humble animal. See, because the donkey is almost the perfect illustration, the perfect example of gentle and lowly, meek and mild. I mean, like, could you visualize this moment for a second? Jesus, with his disciples for the past three years, has been telling them, I am about to go to Jerusalem. Every single person in the world is about to know that I am the king. I'm the one who created all the stars in the sky. Everyone's gonna know who I am, and so go get me a donkey. I'm sure the disciples were like, Are you serious? What? No, Jesus, Jesus, like you need a PR agent because you're not gonna get elected like this. This is gonna be bad for your campaign, like the polls won't look good. Like a donkey, that might be good for a hobbit, that's not good for the king of the universe, right? And so they had to be thinking, Jesus, like your your ride here does not match your reputation. And so what they had to have been thinking, honestly, it's probably what we would be thinking if we were there, but it's not what Jesus was thinking in this moment. Because Jesus coming in on a donkey that was prophesied 600 years earlier, he's making a statement about what type of king he is and what he's come to do in this moment. You see, for the Jewish people of the day, they thought that a Messiah would come and the Messiah would start to wreckshop and overtake the Roman oppression that they were facing. But Jesus came in and he didn't want to take on the war of the Romans. He wanted to take on a different war, a bigger war, a bigger spiritual reality, the war of Satan, sin, and death. And he knows in this moment that that war, it's not going to be won through power, it's gonna be won through sacrifice. And I think that we see this on display because I mentioned earlier that this was Passover week. This was the week of the Passover, uh, and the Passover was a feast, but it didn't just happen on that night. Like there were some things that had to happen, things that these people did in order to prepare for the actual Passover. Like it was like twelve days of Christmas, okay? Little uh little moments, little things leading up to the actual Passover feast. And the most important thing that they did, as laid out in Exodus chapter 12, was that God had said, God had told them that you must choose an unblemished lamb for your family, that that lamb would be sacrificed later in the week, and it must take place on the tenth of the month. You have to choose the lamb on the tenth of the month. Can we guess what day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on? It was the tenth of the month. And so the tenth day of the month, in this moment, all of Israel is out gathering their unblemished sheep to be sacrificed later in the week, and yet here Jesus is riding in on a donkey, or in other words, while everyone else was choosing their lamb for sacrifice later that week, God was presenting his lamb. You see, the triumphal entry, it's not primarily about a conquering king coming on a stallion. No, it's primarily about an ultimate lamb coming in on a donkey. That the donkey is ushering in the lamb of God. And so Jesus, he's a different type of king. He's showing in this moment I am the king, but I'm a different type of king. And I wonder what the reaction was of the people there in the day. Well, let's look at verse 36. The original reaction to Jesus' arrival, it says this. And as he was going along, they were spreading their clothes on the ground. Other gospel writers are going to point out the fact that they were starting to cut off palm branches from a palm tree, which is why we call it Palm Sunday. And overall, we get this idea that this is basically between the clothes on the ground and the palm branches being waved. This is almost like a makeshift carpet for red carpet for Jesus. Like they are rolling everything out for him. And yet it wasn't just that they were physically honoring Jesus in this moment, but they were also verbally honoring him. Because look at the next verse, verse 37. Says, now he came near the path down the Mount of Olives, and the whole crowd of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the miracles they had seen. Said, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven. But some of the Pharisees from the crowd told him, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. I love this. He answered, I tell you, if they were to keep silent, the stones would cry out. Okay, guys, this is huge. This is a monumental shift from Jesus' life up until this point. Because before this, if you're reading the gospels, Jesus had almost been for like a lack of better words, evasive, kind of about who he was. He was almost like disguising himself. Like the favorite title for Jesus, for himself up until this point was Son of Man. And yet people were like, Man, what son of man? What does that mean? Is he saying like Daniel 7 type of son of man, like the ruler of the world? Or is he saying son of man like his dad's a dude? Like what is Jesus saying here? And then you'd also see all these moments where Jesus he heals these people miraculously, and then he'd say, Hey, go sin no more, and also don't tell anybody what just happened. Or when the demons would be like, Oh my gosh, like you're you're the you're the one, you're the ruler, you're the holy one. Jesus would just be like, Shh, not now. Don't tell anybody. But here in this moment, the crowds are shouting, not whispering, not politely talking, and they are shouting a psalm, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And so this was the hero, the royal rescuer, coming to the city to save his people, and the religious leaders of the day didn't like it because they knew this was a messianic psalm, they knew this was a messianic claim, that the people were saying, This is our hero, this is God and the flesh, basically, and Jesus is saying they're right. They're not wrong in this moment. He isn't dismissing them, he isn't being invasive, he isn't even trying to disguise anything. You know, he's saying, Every single person, what they are saying is true. I am the king. No more disguising, no more being evasive. Jesus is basically saying, You can crown me or you can kill me, but you can no longer ignore me. Because if these people don't cry out, then I'm the God of creation who the rocks will cry out for me. And it's here that I want to I want to slow down for a little bit. I don't just want to share the details of this Palm Sunday for as amazing as it is. I actually want to just show us some of the things I think Palm Sunday is is encouraging us with and teaching us with in this moment from a macro level. And there's many things I think that that we can start to point out, that we can start to see for Palm Sunday and how it should land on us today. I just want to point out three of them. And the first one is this is that the way of Jesus is the way of the cult. The way of Jesus is the way of the cult. C-O-L-T, not C-U-L-T. C-O-L-T. Write that down correctly. But obviously, if I if I name my son after this story, this story has kind of struck a chord in me. It's it's a special story for me. Because again, I think that this story, this this cult, is the perfect embodiment of our King. That's Jesus. He is the perfect combination. He is full of majesty and he is full of meekness. He is full of power and weakness. He is strong and he is gentle. And we can see what type of savior he is because he comes lowly on a cult. But immediately after this, we see like everyone else, while they were chanting Hosanna and they were excited. If we could see Jesus' face after this, he was weeping over Jerusalem. Because he he says, Man, the people are spiritually blind, that they are blind to bigger spiritual realities. And then what happens right after this as well is he goes into the temple and he clears it out. He clears out the people that were there to make a profit and he clears out all of the animals in the temple, which is a pretty odd thing. Like the temple was a place for animal sacrifice, the place where people would be get would go to be made right with God. So why why would he get rid of all these animals? Why why why would he usher all of them out? Well, it's because he's showing us something, and he's showing us, hey, I'm about to take the place of all of these animals. I'm about to take over. It's not these animals anymore that makes people right with God, it's me. You see, the essence of sin is men who are meant to be servants of God, all of a sudden they want to take the place of God and they say, God, I want to rule my life, I don't want you in the center. And yet the essence of salvation is God taking the place of man and saying, I'll take on everything for you, I'll take on all of your sins. God putting himself in the place of men. And that's why Jesus comes in on a cult, because he's saying, Yes, I am a king, but I'm a different type of king. I'm a king who is powerful and mighty, but I'm not a king who came to kill in this moment. I'm a king who came to be killed. And man, I'll just tell you is that when this type of king, when he grabs a hold of your heart and you realize how terrible it must have been for a man so holy to have to come and be sacrificed on our behalf, and makes you feel really low, and makes you feel really humble. But then at the same time, when we realize that this holy man, this perfect man, also came because he delighted to save us, oh, it makes you feel so loved. And that is the good news of the gospel is that we are far worse than we ever dare realize, and yet far more love than we could ever imagine. And man, the beauty is that when you come to know him, he starts to change you. He doesn't just leave you where you're at, but he starts to actually change you. And he changes you to start to become more and more like him. And so, my question for us today on this palm. Sunday, as Jesus came in on a cult to represent He was humble, what would it look like for us to ride in on a metaphorical cult this week? What what what does it look like during this holy week? How can we actually pursue humility? And the world is starving for people who are humble. Can King's Church be a place where we offer that to them? And to be the type of people who let someone else praise you, not coming from your own lips, to maybe make the first move and apologizing in a relationship, to serve without looking for some type of recognition or validation, to listen more than you speak, to encourage more than you can complain, to give praise and take some blame for yourself. And maybe, maybe just maybe it's the posture that I've heard like this is when you walk into a room, can you have the posture of there you are, not here I am? Can you come in with this Philippians 2 type of mindset where Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant. Can we walk into a room trying to uplift other people to be like John the Baptist and say, Man, he must increase, but I must decrease. You see, the way of Jesus is the way of the cult, but here's what else Palm Sunday is showing me. It's not just that the way of Jesus is the way of the cult to come in humility, but Jesus is actually making a pretty definitive statement right here. He's trying to almost call people's bluff. And so the second thing that I wanted to want us to see is that Jesus did not come for conditional kingship. Jesus didn't come for conditional kingship. See, I don't know if if you guys grew up in a church where, like we had the amazing blanket chips, uh having some palm branches out for us, telling people, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord as you guys came in. Did anybody grow up in a church where you had palm branches? Like that was like a thing for you, Palm Sunday? I just thought it was like to hit my friends. You know, I wasn't totally sure what why are we doing it? And I remember like even asking people, why are we waving palm branches? It's like, well, for Jesus, it's like, okay, but why? And it's just wave the just wave the palm branches, you know? It's like, Jesus, this seems a little bit weird right now. You know, I'm not totally sure what is going on. Well, let me let me fill you in. What were these palm trees? What were these palm branches? Well, the palm tree was actually supposed to be kind of uh representative of Israel at the time. And Israel, again, was under this Roman uh dominion, Roman domination, and for the people to kind of pull out these palm branches and wave them, it was almost like the people during this triumphal entry, they were waving these palm branches and basically saying, Take this, Rome, our king is here. Right? And so, and and you see, everything that they begin to say, all of these words, they're true. They're saying he is like he's the son of David, which is true. They're saying he's the great Messiah that we've been waiting for, which is true. And other places we see them uh chanting Hosanna, Hosanna, which means save us, and that's what Jesus has come to do. And yet we see, as the last week of Jesus' life begins to roll out, is that the crowd, and in this moment, they weren't looking for someone to be humble. They weren't looking for someone to call them to repentance, they weren't looking for someone to lead them to humility. They were just looking for a political leader to crush their enemies. That's what they were looking for in this moment. And so, yes, absolutely, they're they're shouting Hosanna, which means save us, but really in this moment they were chat they were chanting Hosanna, save us in the way that we want. That's what they were saying. See, they were cool with Jesus, but only if he came to do with what they wanted. And man, when they realized a little bit later on in the week that Jesus didn't come in the way that they wanted, they turned on him. You see, here's the reality, I think, that we see is that one of the greatest dangers in your life is to make Jesus into your own image. Saying in your heart what the people did in Jerusalem that day is that I want my king to be like this. I am my own king, and so my king needs to act like this. You see, we can have a tendency to not worship Jesus as he is, but worship Jesus as we want him to be. That we all of a sudden start to give Jesus these conditions for his kingship in our life. And so for us, the thing that I'm wondering on this Palm Sunday is does Jesus, does he have conditions that he has to meet to be the king of our own lives? Like, do do some people in this room, do I at moments do we say, Jesus, you are my king as long as I don't get sick? Or Jesus, you are my king as long as you provide a spouse for me. Like, what might that condition be for you? Jesus is my king as long as he blinks. What might it be for you? You see, in this moment, in this triumphal entry, it's pretty clear what the people of Jerusalem wanted. It's clear what the crowds are asking for. Jesus is our king as long as he defeats Rome. And so, what is it for you? Jesus is my king as long as I'm financially stable. Jesus is my king as long as he doesn't mess up my future. Jesus is my king as long as he doesn't get a say into who I date or to how I date. Jesus is my king as long as he aligns with my political views. Or maybe a better way to say it or to ask it is that what's the thing that if Jesus doesn't provide for you, you're gonna leave him over. And if you can fill in that blank with anything, the reality is that Jesus would have conditional kingship in your life. And here's what the triumphal entry I think is really showing us is that Jesus didn't come for that. He didn't come for this like conditional kingship in your life. He wants to for him to come into your life and say, Hey, I am the king of your life with no strings attached. I if you like if you can fill in the blank with anything, again, it's conditional kingship. So Jesus, he wants to come in and he wants to say, you would just say, Jesus, I'm giving you my speech. Jesus, I'm giving you my work, Jesus, I'm giving you my relationships, Jesus, I'm giving you my kids, Jesus, I'm giving you my marriage because he has authority over all of it. But when we try to make Jesus into our own image, it leads to dangerous places, which is exactly what we see. And exactly the last point that I think we see for Palm Sunday, and it's this it's be careful that your Hosanna on Sunday doesn't turn into crucify him by Friday. You see, Luke tells us as much as these people were shouting and celebrating Jesus coming in uh on this donkey, and they thought, man, he is our savior. Again, if we if we got to take a look at Jesus' face in this moment, he is weeping because he says this right after Jerusalem, Jerusalem. If only you knew the things that would make for peace, but you don't. You see, these people they were looking for, they were looking for peace in some type of political rule or they were looking for peace in a new economic realm, they were looking for peace and all these other things, and Jesus knows peace only comes through me and repentance. And that's why when Jesus comes and the people quickly realize, hey, this guy, he's not gonna save us in the way that we want the crowds that gathered in excitement on Sunday chanting Hosanna. Many of them people believe are the same ones chanting Crucify Him by Friday when he's standing before Pontius Pilate. You see, I think it's easy. We can read our Bible, we have this privilege point in history where we can look back on these moments and we could easily start to think that wouldn't have been me. I would have been one of the few people, if anybody, who would have known what was going on in this moment. But I think there's a pastor who talked about this evolution of Christian maturity with respect to watching other people sin. And I think it plays into this because he says this is that you can learn a lot about God and you can learn a lot about yourself when you watch how you respond to the sins of others. You see, early in your Christian walk, you may approach it and you may think, oh man, I would never do that. But then just with a little bit of experience, a little bit of maturity, you start to think, man, I could have done that. And then you get to a place where you realize through a little bit more experience, a little bit more maturity. It's not, it's not just that I have done that, but I still do that. And it might look different, it might dress, you might dress it up, be able to dress it up with some Christian lingo, and it may not be as bad, but we still do that, and we still sin in some other ways. Like it could have been me, and it still is me in a lot of ways. And I think we quickly quickly realize that, as it's been said before, that the same cries that shouted out to Pilate to crucify Jesus, we can hear our own voice in those as we hear our own voice and as we look at our own life and thinking, man, I really have denied Jesus by the way that I live. Every act of jealousy, every word or slander of gossip, every greedy decision, every secret sin is an example in a way today where we're still saying, crucify him in our hearts. As Augustine would say, we've underestimated how deep the stain goes. That just because we can offer some Christian lingo and look apart now, man, man, the sin in our own lives, we are so tainted with sin, and we've underestimated how deep it goes. It was our sin that held him there. Not just the people 2,000 years ago, but us today. And so, man, there's a lot of things that I hope we dwell on as we let Palm Sunday kind of kick off this Passion Week. The intentionality of Jesus here, the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled, and perhaps most importantly, the humility of Jesus on display. Because Palm Sunday, we get to celebrate like crazy next week with Resurrection Sunday, but we at least have to get to a point. Resurrection Sunday, Easter Sunday, is good news because we have to deal with the fact of the bad news on Good Friday, where it was our sin that held them there. You see, it was a it was an unbelievably humble thing for Jesus to enter into Jerusalem on a donkey. But that wasn't even second place for the most humble things that Jesus did that week. Because four days after this moment, Jesus would gather in the upper room with his disciples and he would wash their dirty feet as he is being a servant for them. That the Son of Man came to serve and not to be served, he would wash their feet. All these people who would abandon him, one would betray him, one would deny him, and yet even then, just the day later, he stoops even lower. Because just a day later on Good Friday, he actually, five days after he goes down the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem, he would actually go up a mount carrying a cross to Golgotha. And the cries that shouted Hosanna on Sunday turned into crucify him by Friday. And yet the good news of the gospel, the good news of the gospel is that Jesus, even though we sin mightily against him, he was faithful to the end for us. He was faithful to the end. And with that, with his final breath, in this moment, he could have been there on Good Friday. He could have been there hanging on the cross, and with his final breath, he could have yelled down curses at these people and ultimately us. But instead, with his final breath, he says, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And then with his very last breath, he says, It is finished. The bill is paid in full. I've taken it on the cross. That the defining moment of their life won't be the sin that they are dealing with now, but it'll be right here in this moment when I die for the sins of the world. That's the defining moment of your life. No longer your sin, no longer the dark places that you go to, no longer it's what you've seen or what you felt or what you touched or what you've done in your life, the defining moment of your life because of Good Friday could be on the cross 2,000 years ago. And that's the good news. That's why we get to celebrate Resurrection Sundays, because that is the payment. Jesus paid it all in full on Friday, and then he ushered it in on Sunday, saying, I've done it. You couldn't, we couldn't, but I did. And that's what we get to celebrate. And so I hope even this week, as we kind of usher into this Passion Week, this holy week, is that we let this land on us, is that we we can see, yes, it was my sin that held him there. The stains of my life is deeper than I could ever imagine. And yet the good news of the gospel is sweeter than I ever dreamed of. Because he went to the cross and he would rise again to take our place. That's good news for us. And we're going to celebrate that even uh even with communion right now. And so let me pray for us before we take communion together and come to the table.