Our Unexpected God: The God Who Shatters Our Expectations

Palm Sunday reveals Jesus as the unexpected king who defied all worldly expectations. Instead of riding a war horse to claim political power, Jesus chose a humble donkey and went to the temple rather than the palace. The crowds wanted a political messiah to overthrow Rome, but Jesus came to transform hearts through self-giving love. His kingdom operates on completely different principles than earthly kingdoms, advancing through sacrifice rather than force. This challenges us to examine our own expectations of Jesus and surrender our desire to control how he works in our lives.

Visit communitybrookside.com or facebook.com/communitybrookside for more information!

Transcript

All right, church, if you have your Bibles, I'm going to invite you to pull those out this morning. And we're going to open up with the word of God starting in Matthew, chapter 21. And we're going to read verses 1 through 17. I'll give you a second to get there. Matthew is in the New Testament, first book of the New Testament.

If you don't have a Bible with you this morning, you're more than welcome to follow along on the screen. The Scriptures will be there, but ideally, bring your Bibles if you can. Highlight, underline, make notes, Google, search, whatever you need to do, but dive in. Let's read from the Gospel of Matthew this morning. Here's the word of the Lord for us today.

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples saying to them, go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them and he will send them right away. This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet. Say to daughter Zion, see your king comes to you gentle and riding on a donkey and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the ground while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest heaven. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, who is this? The crowds answered, this is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee. Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of money changers and the benches of those selling doves.

It is written, he said to them, my house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers. The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children shouting in the temple courts, hosanna to the Son of David. They were indignant. Do you hear what these children are saying?

They asked him. Yes, replied Jesus. Have you never read from the lips of children and infants? You Lord have called forth your praise. And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night.

We all love a good parade, don't we? Right? When you think about Palm Sunday, I hope that you think about a parade. Usually there's energy and excitement and music and crowds. And if you've ever been to a parade, you know, the best part of that parade is when you catch the first glimpse, the main attraction.

So for us parade lovers here in Tulsa, it might be the vision at the of Santa at the end of Tulsa's Christmas parade. For others, it might be the fire truck at the end of Boohaha. For others, it might be the dancers or the first responders or the incredible bands or something else like that during the Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade. Whatever that one thing is, that's the thing that really brings a smile to our face, right? A couple of summers ago, I happened to be in Leadville, Colorado.

Anybody know where Leadville is? Yeah, coldest city in all the world. The highest established city in the United States. And we happened to be there on the 4th of July. And my buddy Greg and Levi and I, we got up early, we went in town to go have some breakfast at a diner, and we happened to be out on the front patio, and it was about, I don't know, 38 degrees or 40 degrees in the sun.

So it was pretty chilly. But we didn't know there was going to be a Fourth of July parade. And we got surprised by this Fourth of July parade. And as we're sitting there waiting for the parade to come by for that beautiful small town, the main attraction was just a group of people walking their dogs, and they were coming down the street, and you could hear all the people ooh and ah about the different types of dogs and things like that. But whatever those things are that make us so happy about parades, they really do something for our spirit, right?

However big a parade or small, no matter what it is that it celebrates, I bet you'd agree that standing there along the street, getting pelted by candy, sweating in the heat or freezing in the cold, seeing floats and bands and all those things just make it worth it, right? For us as believers in Jesus, Palm Sunday is the highlight of Holy Week. The crowd in Jerusalem is buzzing the disciples, and the residents of the capital city in Israel are shouting Hosanna. People are waving palm branches and they're throwing coats and cloaks on the ground. During this parade, everyone is convinced that they know exactly what Jesus is about and what Jesus is going to do.

But here's the problem with the story of Palm Sunday. They're celebrating the right person. But they're celebrating the right person for the wrong reasons. Because Jesus isn't going to be the king that they expect. He's not the king that they want.

And I bet he's probably not the guy that they would have chosen to be king. Palm Sunday is the moment where Jesus refuses to fit into the world's expectations. And he reveals to us our unexpected God. As we read this morning, the scripture opens up with Jesus sending two disciples to go get a colt and a donkey. He doesn't say, hey, there's a beautiful white stallion somewhere nearby.

Go find that so I can ride in, right? He doesn't ask for a chariot. He's not asking for a symbol of prestige or power. Jesus wants something else but a donkey. And as we've talked about in this church every year since we began, this is not how kings would have been expected to enter into a city.

But in the midst of the excitement of Jesus impromptu parade, people are declaring him king, right? After all, what else could it mean when you call somebody the son of David? As Jesus was riding into Jerusalem, he was expected to take his seat of power on the throne of his father David.

But peasants are the ones who travel by donkey.

Donkey would have been the main form of transportation for people like farmers who had to go from one village to others, trading their goods, bringing their grain to market.

But by coming into town on a donkey and on her colt, Jesus is making a statement. He is saying, my kingdom does not look like the kingdoms that you're used to seeing. So immediately, if we're really paying attention to the word of God, if we're listening to the scripture, if we're paying attention to Jesus intentions in Jerusalem that day, we can see that Jesus doesn't come to take power. Jesus comes to redefine power.

We hear that the cloaks of the crowd are spread over the road and they're waving palm branches. They shout, hosanna. Do you know what hosanna means?

No. Nobody knows. Okay. Hosanna means save us.

These people are begging for Jesus to come into town and to save them, to kick out the Romans. They want a king who's going to overthrow Rome. After all, Rome was occupiers, weren't they? They want a king that's going to restore Israel. They didn't want to pay tribute to another empire and take order from people who have no idea what it's like to be a Jew and worship the way they do and live lives in the way that they do.

They wanted to be able to rule themselves as most people do, right? They wanted a king who was going to fix the system that was set up to maintain power at the expense of those who lived on the margin.

They wanted a king who was going to make everything right. But for so long, everything in Israel had been so wrong, and they wanted somebody who was going to do it. Now they were tired of the corruption, the injustice, the crucifixion of rebels who spoke up against Rome. They wanted someone who was going to stand up for the restoration of Israel, and they thought Jesus was going to come in and fix it.

But most importantly, they wanted a king who was going to do it in the way they expected. They wanted salvation to come their own way by anointing their king after parading him through town and then bringing him into the throne room and placing a crown on his head. They expected Jesus to do all the things that they wanted him to do. The residents of Jerusalem and those who came out to see what was happening, they wanted a political messiah, a military messiah, a triumphant messiah that would kill those who had so for so long brought pain in their lives. They wanted a triumphant messiah.

Jesus didn't come into town riding on a war horse. He rode in on a donkey, right? He's not coming to crush Rome. And I think in that visual, people were really confused. You are not what we expect.

Jesus, he's not coming in to crush Rome. He's actually coming in to carry across the crowd in that town wanted victory. But Jesus instead presents the idea of vulnerability.

In Matthew's telling of the palm, sorry, Palm Sunday narrative, there's a detail that we often miss because we get so caught up in the parade. After all the shouting, after the hosannas and the cloaks being thrown on the ground and the palm branches being waved, after all those exciting moments are happening, where does Jesus go? Straight to the temple. He doesn't end up where everybody thought that he would be, right? He doesn't go to the palace, not the fortress where the guards were going to be so he could fight them all off with his bare hands.

He doesn't go to the political seat of power, not to the throne room, to claim his rightful throne from his father David. Jesus goes to the temple. He goes straight to the heart of the worship for the people of Israel, straight to the place where heaven and earth kind of come together and meet. Jesus chooses to go straight for the spiritual life of the Israelite people. And he walks in like he owns the place.

And to be fair, he kind of does, right? This is the moment the crowd begins to realize that Jesus isn't going to play the game that they want him to play. They wanted a king who was going to march into the palace and overthrow Rome, but instead, Jesus marches into the temple and overthrows their assumptions about who God is. They wanted a revolution of power, but instead, Jesus brings a revolution of holiness to the people. In Israel, we've talked about it.

The people wanted a king who's going to fix their enemies. But instead, Jesus goes straight for the palace where he can begin to fix their worship. They wanted a messiah who was going to confront Caesar, but instead, Jesus confronts the religious people for how far away from God their worship has deviated. We know that Jesus doesn't go where people expect him to go. Jesus goes where transformation needs to happen.

Because Jesus knows something that the crowd has forgotten. You can't heal a nation if a nation's heart is sick. You can't change the world if the people of God aren't being changed first. You can't confront justice somewhere out there if we're not confronting just injustices in here, right? So Jesus walks past the palace.

He. He walks past the halls of power, the places where kings rise and fall, and he walks straight to the temple because that's where the real work needed to happen. And when Jesus gets there, he starts flipping tables. Could you imagine what that looks like, right? The people that Jesus had literally spent the last three years ticking off royally.

He now comes into their home base and says, and flips over tables, money, flying doves, going crazy. Like, could you imagine what it looks like?

But in that moment, Jesus isn't mad at the temple. He's not trying to destroy the house of God. He begins in that moment to start to restore the temple to its true purpose. And if we're honest, Palm Sunday isn't a story about their temple. Then in that time, the story of Palm Sunday is also a story about our temple.

In our time, too.

Church, and I mean capital C, worldwide church, is once again in need of Jesus walking in and flipping over some tables Somewhere along the way, again, our worship has drifted. We've traded awe for entertainment.

The church has traded the presence of God for the pursuit of power. We've let political agendas shape our imagination more than the words of Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount. We've let our unwillingness to feel uncomfortable dictate our posture more than our love for people who are different. And what's worse is that we've let winning become more important than witnessing.

And I do believe that Jesus still walks into places where worship has gone off course. He still overturns those tables. He still refuses to let the church become a marketplace for power, a stage for people who just want to show themselves off, or a megaphone for our personal preferences. And I'm praying that Jesus walks into some churches here in America and does that today too. The important thing to remember is that Jesus doesn't cleanse the temple to condemn the temple.

He cleanses the temple so that he can reclaim the temple for his own. And maybe, just maybe, Palm Sunday is Jesus firm reminder that renewal has to begin here in the house of God first. If we don't have our ducks in a row, how do we expect the world to look like God if Christians can't look like God?

In this move into Jerusalem, Jesus is revealing an unexpected God who challenges all kinds of expectations. Not just what the king is going to look like, but what we as followers are going to look like.

The crowd wanted a king who would march into the palace and take the throne. Instead, Jesus marches into the temple and reclaims its heart.

The Hebrew people sought a king who would bring justice through power and rebellion. But instead, Jesus intentionally redefines what kingship looks like. And on that first Palm Sunday, Jesus is showing us that the kingdom of God doesn't advance through political power or military strength or national victory. The kingdom of God can only advance through self giving, love and man. Jesus asked me for anything else.

I will give you $30 a week for the rest of my life. I will spend an hour and a half listening to Babylon every week. But don't make me give like give of myself. I don't want to be self sacrificial. That's the hardest part about being humans is that we love us, right?

It's really hard for me to love people who disagree with me or look different than me or vote differently than me, right?

Jesus becomes the king who flips tables on Sundays and will kneel and wash feet on Thursday.

That's the king that we serve. The king who confronts corruption in the temple is going to confront sin and death when he gives of his whole life nailed to a cross. He's the king who refuses the throne room but instead climbs the hill of Golgotha to give everything he has for you and for me.

I hope you get it. Jesus is not the king that the crowd expected, not even the one that he wanted. But he is the king that we desperately still need today. Palm Sunday is not an announcement of a new political revolution. It's the announcement of the cruciform revolution.

A kingdom where victory looks like sacrifice. A kingdom where power looks like love. The new kind of kingdom where the king lays down his life for his enemies. That's hard to believe.

This is a kingdom where death itself is about to be overturned. Palm Sunday is the doorway into the most unexpected week in human history. A week where God will save the world in a way that no one saw coming.

So here we are, 2,000 years later, and what does Palm Sunday mean for us today? Church. It means that we still have to ask the question, what version of Jesus have I been cheering for? The Jesus who agrees with me? The Jesus who fights my battles in a way that I can just sit back and let Jesus take care of them for me.

The Jesus who affirms and blesses my own preferences. The Jesus who stamps a rubber seal of approval on my own political beliefs. A Jesus who never challenges me. Is that who we believe in? Church?

Now more than any time in many of our lifetimes, Palm Sunday confronts us with a Jesus that refuses to be domesticated. A Jesus who is radical in his self giving love. A Jesus who refuses to be weaponized he's not going to be used. A Jesus who will not be controlled into acting the way that we want or the way that we expect.

The same Jesus that rides into Jerusalem on a donkey is the same Jesus that comes to save us in a way today that we still don't get and we don't expect.

So, church on this Palm Sunday. Here's the invitation as we walk into one of the holiest weeks in our calendar. Lay down your expectations. Lay down your assumptions as to what's going to happen this week. Lay down the version of Jesus that you find safe and comfortable.

And let the real Jesus right into your heart this week. Because our unexpected God is the God who refuses our expectations so that he can give us something better.

Let's pray.