SPEAKER_00: Here's where we're at.
SPEAKER_00: We are in Palm State.
SPEAKER_00: So we've been going through 2 Timothy, right?
SPEAKER_00: We typically work verse by verse through books of the Bible here at Sacred Mission, but today we're switching gears and we're looking at very specific gospel accounts of the final week of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're going to be preaching this morning on the triumphal entry out of Luke 19.
SPEAKER_00: Now, at the beginning of the passage, Luke says that when he had said these things, the beginning of Luke, he says, when he had said these things, we enter this passage this morning right after Jesus had radically changed the life of Zacchaeus the tax collector.
SPEAKER_00: You might remember Zacchaeus, right?
SPEAKER_00: Zacchaeus was the we little man, we little man was he.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody remember that song in Kids Church, right?
SPEAKER_00: He climbed up the sycamore tree so that he could see Jesus more clearly.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many more times I can rhyme without making myself nauseous, but uh this is what happened.
SPEAKER_00: As Jesus was passing through the city of Jericho, he stopped in the midst of a crowd and he looked up in this sycamore tree and he saw Zacchaeus.
SPEAKER_00: Zacchaeus was trying to get a good look at this man whom the entire city had gathered around just to be able to see.
SPEAKER_00: After this experience, Jesus then went to Zacchaeus' home, and there Zacchaeus says that he repented of his sin and Jesus declared that salvation had come to him that day.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jesus began to teach those who were near a parable.
SPEAKER_00: This was a very common teaching mechanism that Jesus would use, these parables, these stories to help them understand deep spiritual truths.
SPEAKER_00: And he tells the parable about ten servants and their ten mina or talents.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the parable itself, like the content of this teaching, doesn't dictate much for us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: What we're preaching through doesn't have to do with the parable itself, but there is a key statement that's actually made by Luke that helps us to understand the mentality of Jesus' disciples, and what we discover throughout the gospel story is this perpetual tension that was always present in their relationship.
SPEAKER_00: Luke 19, 11 says this.
SPEAKER_00: There was this expectation that his disciples had.
SPEAKER_00: And it was an expectation about who Jesus was as this promised king and the promise of his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And they were operating, most of their relationship with Jesus, they were operating out of their own perception of what he should be as a king and what his kingdom should look like here on earth.
SPEAKER_00: You see, they continually failed to see the true portrait of this king and his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: This idea of immediacy, it plays itself out in the passage and in the following days of Jesus' life, leading all the way even through his resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: So when it says, and when he had said these things, he went on ahead, the time with Zacchaeus, the teaching of the parable, that's what Luke is referring to here at the beginning of the passage this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus prepares to make his first purposeful public appearance, right?
SPEAKER_00: Up until now, Jesus had tried to stay relatively hidden out of the limelight.
SPEAKER_00: If he would heal someone, he would tell them, don't go and tell everybody what just happened, right?
SPEAKER_00: Or if he cast out a demon, he would tell them, hey, look, keep that kind of to yourself.
SPEAKER_00: He would try to stay undercover by and large.
SPEAKER_00: But here, in this triumphal entry, there was this purpose public appearance that he was making.
SPEAKER_00: And this appearance was meant to draw attention to himself because this was the journey to the coronation of the king.
SPEAKER_00: Think about this for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to reveal himself for the king he truly is, and he's going to have the in-breaking of his kingdom truly happen.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's making his way into the city on the back of this donkey for his coronation.
SPEAKER_00: How would you begin to prepare such an entrance?
SPEAKER_00: Such a declaration of your majesty?
SPEAKER_00: Would it be with banners of brilliant colors and loud celebratory fanfare?
SPEAKER_00: Would it be marked by celebrity and prestige?
SPEAKER_00: Not for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: For Jesus it would be humility, because that attribute would be one that resided in the king himself.
SPEAKER_00: For much like his crowning would not be with gold, but with thorns, his journey into Jerusalem would be on a donkey and not on a steed.
SPEAKER_00: His only fanfare that would be heard would be his disciples crying out, Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven and glory in the highest.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus sends two of his disciples to get a donkey and bring it to ride into Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why a donkey, right?
SPEAKER_00: Why is this so critical to the narrative?
SPEAKER_00: Because over 500 years earlier, the Spirit of God would show this prophet Zechariah that this is how the king would come.
SPEAKER_00: We see in Zechariah 9:9, rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem, behold, your king is coming to you, righteous and having salvation as he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the full of a donkey.
SPEAKER_00: Now, possibly, possibly, God chose this entrance of his coming king simply as a sign that we would know it was him who had come.
SPEAKER_00: We see this even in Jesus' virgin birth.
SPEAKER_00: It was a sign.
SPEAKER_00: It was so that we would know.
SPEAKER_00: What did the role of the virgin birth play with inside redemptive history?
SPEAKER_00: So that we would know without any hesitation or any sense of doubt that this was the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: He came by these means.
SPEAKER_00: And so maybe the Spirit of God is showing Zechariah the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to know how this is my anointed king?
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to know what he will look like?
SPEAKER_00: He's going to ride into Jerusalem on this donkey, on this lowly, humble beast.
SPEAKER_00: Or possibly it was to help us and his disciples see the type of king that Jesus really was.
SPEAKER_00: The first possibility was that we wanted to know and understand that he truly was a descendant of David.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is also a prophecy about the king who would come.
SPEAKER_00: It would be that he would descend from the very line of David himself.
SPEAKER_00: And donkeys were considered royal animals before and even during the reign of King David.
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't actually until after David where they were considered unsuited for royalty and were replaced by horses instead.
SPEAKER_00: This donkey displayed for all to see that he was the king of the line of David who they were waiting for.
SPEAKER_00: The prince of Judah, whose scepter would not depart from his hand.
SPEAKER_00: But the second possibility that we might see in this reality is that he would truly be poor in spirit.
SPEAKER_00: A defining attribute of the king who was to reign forever.
SPEAKER_00: He was humble and mounted on a donkey.
SPEAKER_00: This was their king.
SPEAKER_00: Not someone who prided himself in celebrity and fanfare, but it would be one who came in humility.
SPEAKER_00: Not the king that they expected, but one who counted all of his royalty and his majesty and fortune as nothing to hold on to, so that he might gain us.
SPEAKER_00: Philippians 2, 5 through 6 shows us the very nature of this king.
SPEAKER_00: Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.
SPEAKER_00: You see, if he held on to all of that majesty, if he held on to all that glory, he would have had to let go of us.
SPEAKER_00: But he counted it all.
SPEAKER_00: Something to not be white-knuckled and grasped hold of so that he might gain us.
SPEAKER_00: Now we have to understand the real scene taking place here.
SPEAKER_00: There's a ton of people surrounding Jesus as he rides into this city.
SPEAKER_00: There's an estimated two million people there as pilgrims in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover at this time.
SPEAKER_00: We can't fathom what is happening here as he's riding in on the back of this donkey.
SPEAKER_00: There's a historical account of Jerusalem during Passover that was recorded just 10 years after Jesus' triumphant entry.
SPEAKER_00: And it states this this historical record states that there were 260,000 sheep slaughtered for sacrifice that year for Passover.
SPEAKER_00: So if we can understand the magnitude of this situation, right?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus isn't riding into town and there's just a couple of dozen people around him crying out Hosanna, crying out, blessed be the name of the Lord, right?
SPEAKER_00: No, he's surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people as he rides into the city.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why were they there?
SPEAKER_00: Why were they crowding the streets to declare his praises?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the text tells us.
SPEAKER_00: It says, for all the mighty works that they had seen.
SPEAKER_00: You see, their motives for praising him were misplaced.
SPEAKER_00: And we can see, right, their perception being formed of who this king is and what this kingdom would look like because they were there in that moment because they had seen and heard of all the great miracles that he had performed, of all the mighty deeds and works that he had created.
SPEAKER_00: Their motives for praising him were misplaced.
SPEAKER_00: They were praising him for the king that they wanted.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't praising him for the king that he truly was.
SPEAKER_00: And we see that just later in the text when these shouts of praise turn to deafening silence.
SPEAKER_00: As the same king who rode in on the back of a donkey under all of this celebration is the one who carries the rugged timber down the Via Della Rosa to the Mount of Galgotha.
SPEAKER_00: They're silent.
SPEAKER_00: Where were their praise then?
SPEAKER_00: This wasn't the king that they were looking for.
SPEAKER_00: This wasn't the kingdom that they had expected.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the triumphant entry into Jerusalem was purposefully and sovereignly leading to a shameful exit out of it.
SPEAKER_00: Though their motives were misplaced unbeknownst to them, their praise was true.
SPEAKER_00: The declaration of praise.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.
SPEAKER_00: This was a statement that they could not even fully understand themselves.
SPEAKER_00: What was this peace that they were talking about, and how would it actually be attained for them?
SPEAKER_00: You see, this declaration of praise, it's so similar to that of even the angel's pronouncement to the shepherds that the lowly child Jesus was born.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the road to Jesus' coronation would be marked with humility in the same likeness of his journey to us that night in Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: As Jesus lay in a manger as a newborn, the scriptures tell us that a multitude of angels would sing, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those whom he has pleased.
SPEAKER_00: And now, as he rides on the back of this cult, the crowds of people shout true praises, even if they're filled with misplaced motivations to do so.
SPEAKER_00: Then the Pharisees come in.
SPEAKER_00: Like we gotta love it when the Pharisees show up.
SPEAKER_00: They're angered.
SPEAKER_00: They're angered at this lavish praise that they hear coming from the people.
SPEAKER_00: This praise that is for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They could not imagine such a response of worship given to just mere man.
SPEAKER_00: So they call for Jesus to rebuke the people.
SPEAKER_00: They call for him to admonish them for their behavior.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus corrects the Pharisees by saying, This, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this statement.
SPEAKER_00: This statement, it may be rightly understood as a thought or reflection on the praise and worship that truly Jesus deserves.
SPEAKER_00: It might also be understood for the longing of all creation for the salvation that He brings to them.
SPEAKER_00: You see, in the Gospel of John, we're shown that among these praises were also the shouts of Hosanna.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: That word Hosanna, we just sang it a moment ago.
SPEAKER_00: It literally means save us.
SPEAKER_00: When we're crying out, Hosanna, Hosanna, we're crying out, save us, save us.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe amidst all the shouts, all the praises, Jesus was telling the Pharisees that there is nothing that can keep creation from declaring both their need for him and his ability to truly save them.
SPEAKER_00: You see, this isn't just simply some anthropomorphic language being used where we're trying to ascribe human qualities to inanimate objects.
SPEAKER_00: No, this is an authentic statement of the nature of the relationship between God and his creation.
SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul helps us understand this mystery in Romans 8, verses 19 through 22.
SPEAKER_00: He says, For the creation waits with this eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.
SPEAKER_00: For the creation itself was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Jesus is telling the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: I can try to shut them up.
SPEAKER_00: I can admonish them to be quiet, but you don't understand what's happening here.
SPEAKER_00: My salvation is coming.
SPEAKER_00: It'll liberate not only the sons of man, it'll liberate creation itself.
SPEAKER_00: If I shut them up, the rocks will cry out.
SPEAKER_00: So, Pharisees, why don't you just get out of my way?
SPEAKER_00: Because this is my coronation.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the true King, Jesus, he deserves our true praise.
SPEAKER_00: The true King deserves our true praise.
SPEAKER_00: The people were all gathered because of the miracles and works that they had witnessed and heard of.
SPEAKER_00: They believed their king had finally come to give them peace, to deliver them out of the oppression of a foreign ruler.
SPEAKER_00: But see, they ultimately missed the source of their conflict.
SPEAKER_00: Their ultimate conflict was not with Rome, it wasn't with the foreign tyrannical empire.
SPEAKER_00: No, they had their gaze fixed on the wrong war.
SPEAKER_00: Their true conflict was seething in their own chest.
SPEAKER_00: Because sin and idolatry had oppressed them infinitely greater than Rome could ever have.
SPEAKER_00: The people surrounding him with praise and adoration would just a few days later be at best hopeless and distraught, silent, that their king was dead.
SPEAKER_00: Their shouts of praise would soon turn to silence as Jesus would breathe his last upon the cross and give up his spirit to the loving hands of his father.
SPEAKER_00: You see, they would be a people filled with doubt.
SPEAKER_00: Doubt that they had misunderstood who he really was.
SPEAKER_00: We thought he would be this king.
SPEAKER_00: We thought he would have this kingdom, and this is all now just gone.
SPEAKER_00: We seem hopeless and defeated.
SPEAKER_00: They'd be filled with this sense of defeat and despair that they were still under the bondage of the tyrant Rome.
SPEAKER_00: And this peace that they were just declaring had come would have seemed to elude them while their champion lay dead in a sealed-up tomb.
SPEAKER_00: You see, ultimately, they didn't understand the peace that was to come.
SPEAKER_00: The peace that they truly needed.
SPEAKER_00: The peace of the true king that demanded his true praise.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't understand the one who would be bringing their peace.
SPEAKER_00: And they definitely didn't understand the means by which it would come.
SPEAKER_00: And I think we can often be just like this crowd.
SPEAKER_00: So often allowing our praise and our peace to be disrupted, silenced, by a false perception of the King Jesus is and the war that he came to win.
SPEAKER_00: You see, many of us, I believe, our praise is rooted in our perception.
SPEAKER_00: Our praise is rooted in our perception.
SPEAKER_00: You see, we're very eager to praise Jesus when his work is stacked up to our benefits, when we have been the recipients of his greatness and his miraculousness, right, and his power.
SPEAKER_00: When we've witnessed and been the recipients of his mighty work in our life and the lives of those around us, it is so easy to open our mouths and declare his praise.
SPEAKER_00: When we are experiencing his blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Or at least we're experiencing his blessing in the way we want to define his blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Then we're very eager to praise him.
SPEAKER_00: But often God's blessing looks radically different from our perception.
SPEAKER_00: And when that's the case, when God doesn't give us what we want, we give him the silent treatment.
SPEAKER_00: Like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
SPEAKER_00: Daddy, you didn't give me what I wanted, and now my mouth will be closed to you.
SPEAKER_00: You see, when God doesn't give us what we want, our mouths are too often filled with ridicule, bitterness, doubt, and disbelief.
SPEAKER_00: We're like the people who praised him during the journey into Jerusalem, but was found silent and even abandoning and denying him on his journey to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: You see, but the cross was a greater blessing.
SPEAKER_00: We don't understand that.
SPEAKER_00: The miraculous works for which they were praising him for paled in comparison to the blessing that the cross was.
SPEAKER_00: Our perception of blessing, our perception of favor and peace, often lead us away from the true praise that Jesus deserves rather than deeper into it.
SPEAKER_00: We fail ultimately to trust in the knowledge, wisdom, and mystery of God.
SPEAKER_00: Because too often our praise is tethered to our perception.
SPEAKER_00: For some of us, though, our praise is unmatched to his peace.
SPEAKER_00: Our praise is unmatched to his peace.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the peace that Jesus offers is eternally better and more transcendently true than any peace that we could ever, ever fathom for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: There is no greater fight, battle, or war than contending against our own sin.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came to bring peace.
SPEAKER_00: Not with sword and spear and shield.
SPEAKER_00: No, he came to bring peace by conquering death itself, by destroying our sin and by ending the enmity that stood between us and God.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, there was a war, but it wasn't against Israel and Rome.
SPEAKER_00: The war was against mankind and their creator.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus makes peace by the blood of his cross.
SPEAKER_00: You see, we walk around muffled by lesser battles and meaningless wars that we feel are defeating us.
SPEAKER_00: Waiting for Jesus to be the champion that we want him to be.
SPEAKER_00: Yet our lives are so often absent from the praise that His peace alone deserves.
SPEAKER_00: And so, too often murmuring and complaining fill our mouths.
SPEAKER_00: But when we rightly understand His peace, then we will not be able to contain our praise.
SPEAKER_00: Because if the rocks can cry out, can't we?
SPEAKER_00: But church, our hope is in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Christ Jesus, who was silenced so that we would be filled with praise.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was silenced so that we would be filled with praise.
SPEAKER_00: The crowds praise of Hosanna, the crowds praise of save us.
SPEAKER_00: They would soon turn to cries of condemnation as they would call out, crucify him.
SPEAKER_00: Yet Jesus himself, he would be altogether silent.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 53, the suffering servant songs of Isaiah, declares this about him that he, being Jesus, was oppressed.
SPEAKER_00: He was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shears is silent, so he opened not his mouth.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the king was going to war.
SPEAKER_00: He was going to war to bring peace to his people, but he wasn't going to unsheath his sword.
SPEAKER_00: No, he was going to bear his cross.
SPEAKER_00: He was going to make war against sin and death.
SPEAKER_00: And the only shout of the king that would be heard that day would be the cry of, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_00: And when the true enemy was defeated, and all of our sin, guilt, and shame was laid upon him, his head would fall.
SPEAKER_00: And the king would be dead.
SPEAKER_00: You see, he had accomplished what he set to do: to make peace by the blood of his cross.
SPEAKER_00: The king was dead.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was silenced.
SPEAKER_00: The war was over.
SPEAKER_00: But three days later, the victory over all of his enemies would be obtained in his glorious resurrection unto everlasting life.
SPEAKER_00: You see, it's his finished work.
SPEAKER_00: His complete work of not only his death, but his resurrection also.
SPEAKER_00: That has brought us peace.
SPEAKER_00: And it has brought us peace so that we would be a people filled with praise.
SPEAKER_00: And so my hope for us, sacred mission, is this that we would be a people of proper praise.
SPEAKER_00: This is all about perception and understanding, right?
SPEAKER_00: When we seek to truly know Jesus as the King He truly is, when we seek to embrace His kingdom for what His kingdom truly is, when we understand peace rightly and the wars that wage against us has been ultimately overcome in Christ's finished work, then we become a people of His praise.
SPEAKER_00: Praise that is rooted in who He truly is and what He has truly done for us.
SPEAKER_00: Because He alone is the king that we have always needed.
SPEAKER_00: He alone is the conqueror of our true enemy.
SPEAKER_00: So we must not allow our praise to be disrupted by lesser battles.
SPEAKER_00: We cannot allow our praise to be muffled by meaningless wars of this world.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's when we understand where our war truly resides in the victory that has been accomplished by King Jesus alone, will we be able to walk in unshakable peace and unstoppable praise?
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.