SPEAKER_00: As we continue our time in worship, I encourage you to turn to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 19.
SPEAKER_00: We will be looking this week and next at the triumphal entry found in Luke 19, beginning in verse 28.
SPEAKER_00: Encourage you to turn there.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a Bible, there should be one located there right in front of you, and you can find it on page 878.
SPEAKER_00: Page 878 to Luke 19, 28 through 40.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to encourage you, if you don't own a Bible, please take that Bible home that's in the pew as our gift to you.
SPEAKER_00: We feel it's so important for everyone to have a copy of God's word for himself or herself, and so please take that with you at the close of this service as our gift to you.
SPEAKER_00: Luke chapter 19, beginning in verse 28.
SPEAKER_00: And when he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: When he drew near to Beth Page and Bethany at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat.
SPEAKER_00: Untie it and bring it here.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone asks you, Why are you untying it?
SPEAKER_00: you shall say this, The Lord has need of it.
SPEAKER_00: So those who were sent away and found it just as he had told them.
SPEAKER_00: And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, Why are you untying the colt?
SPEAKER_00: And they said, The Lord has need of it.
SPEAKER_00: And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they sat set Jesus on it.
SPEAKER_00: And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road.
SPEAKER_00: As he was drawing near, already on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, peace on in heaven and glory in the highest.
SPEAKER_00: And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, rebuke your disciples.
SPEAKER_00: He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.
SPEAKER_00: This is God's word.
SPEAKER_00: What did you expect?
SPEAKER_00: It's actually a really important question to ask yourself often when you're struggling with disappointment, disillusionment.
SPEAKER_00: What did you expect?
SPEAKER_00: So much of our happiness or frustration is really tied to a matter of our expectations.
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you a very simple, silly example and some more serious ones.
SPEAKER_00: When I was a little kid, I loved Godzilla.
SPEAKER_00: The movie, the all of the Japanese 50s, 60s, 70s Godzilla movies, I just love those movies.
SPEAKER_00: Every Friday on the local UHF station, you remember UHF?
SPEAKER_00: How many remember UHF?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: It's too long to explain.
SPEAKER_00: Local UHF station, uh, they would have a Japanese monster movie every Friday night.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh every Friday we would go out to McDonald's, grab hamburgers and French fries, come back home, and sit in front of the TV and watch one of these Japanese monster movies badly dubbed into English.
SPEAKER_00: And I just love these movies.
SPEAKER_00: And so when I was in seminary, I was out with some friends, and uh we were we were at the movies and they had the previews for a Godzilla movie coming out a year later.
SPEAKER_00: For an entire year, I waited for this movie to come out.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was like I was like a little kid in a candy shop.
SPEAKER_00: I just could not I was in seminary at the time and I was taking Suicide Hebrew, which is like six hours straight of Hebrew a day, and then the rest of your day you're supposed to spend studying what they tried to cram in in six hours.
SPEAKER_00: And the day the movie came out, I was so excited, I couldn't even wait to call my friends.
SPEAKER_00: I left seminary and drove straight to the movie theater and waited for the next showing.
SPEAKER_00: And the movie was horrible.
SPEAKER_00: I was just, I was, I left there feeling sad.
SPEAKER_00: I left there feeling disillusioned.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just I couldn't believe how much I had built up my expectations.
SPEAKER_00: And then when reality hit, how much they were dashed.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, this is a really insignificant, inconsequential thing, although I am looking forward to the Godzilla movie coming out May 16th.
SPEAKER_00: Um but I have a book on my shelf in marriage, and the title of it's great.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the title of the book is What Did You Expect?
SPEAKER_00: It's a book for married couples.
SPEAKER_00: Did you expect breakfast in bed every morning and flowers every evening?
SPEAKER_00: That's how our house is.
SPEAKER_00: But is that what you expected?
SPEAKER_00: What did you expect?
SPEAKER_00: And so uh one of the reasons why we have engaged couples go through premarital counseling is because we realize uh people need to be prepared for the realities of the ups and downs of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like uh the idealized uh view that so often people have going in that they'll never fight, there'll never be disagreements, there'll never be problems, uh everything will just uh go along better and better every day, and it becomes easier when you have children.
SPEAKER_00: And so one of the reasons why we do premarital counseling is to help people to have a realistic view.
SPEAKER_00: Because our expectations uh will govern often uh our view of reality, whether we are disappointed, disillusioned, discouraged, depressed, or rejecting uh something or someone.
SPEAKER_00: Or if we have realistic expectations, then we we accept and understand what is.
SPEAKER_00: And so our expectations often govern and guide how we view and interpret things.
SPEAKER_00: And I say all that because this is what we find here in the last part of Luke's gospel in the interaction between Jesus and the multitudes.
SPEAKER_00: They had expectations of the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: They had ideas of who the Messiah would be.
SPEAKER_00: And those expectations weren't met by Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They had wrong ideas of the Messiah, and they filtered their view of Jesus through these expectations.
SPEAKER_00: Uh right now, in this week and next, we're talking about as we enter into Holy Week, we're looking at the triumphal entry.
SPEAKER_00: This is the beginning of the final week of the life of Jesus, often called the Passion Week.
SPEAKER_00: Everything is coming to a head.
SPEAKER_00: In Luke's gospel, everything has been building up to this point.
SPEAKER_00: And for the remainder of Luke's gospel, we will be dealing with the events of the Passion Week and the crucifixion and the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: For three years, Jesus had been healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, cleansing the lepers, raising the dead, forgiving sins.
SPEAKER_00: Word had spread of his wisdom that confounded the wise, that closed the mouths of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
SPEAKER_00: No one had ever spoken like Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what did they expect?
SPEAKER_00: The coming Messiah would have authority and power.
SPEAKER_00: This was one of their expectations.
SPEAKER_00: The Messiah would have authority and power.
SPEAKER_00: There's a difference between authority and power, but they often go hand in hand in our thinking.
SPEAKER_00: Authority refers to the right to do something.
SPEAKER_00: For instance, if I were a police officer and I saw someone robbing a bank, I would have the authority to arrest him.
SPEAKER_00: But having the authority to do something doesn't always mean having the power to do something.
SPEAKER_00: For instance, let's say I was a police officer and I walked into the bank and there was a man robbing the bank, and uh I didn't have a weapon on me, and it happened to be a 300-plus pound professional wrestler.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I may have the authority to arrest him, but I don't have the power to.
SPEAKER_00: And when the Messiah came, the Messiah was going to come with both the authority from God and the power to defeat the enemies.
SPEAKER_00: The coming Messiah would have both authority and power.
SPEAKER_00: The coming Messiah would have majesty.
SPEAKER_00: He would be the king sitting on the throne of David.
SPEAKER_00: He would usher in a kingdom that would have no end.
SPEAKER_00: The Messiah was to be a regal, royal, majestic figure that everyone would look to and look up to and rally around, and he would be victorious.
SPEAKER_00: And it isn't difficult to understand the expectation of the first century Jews for over 700 years they'd been under foreign oppression and outright control.
SPEAKER_00: First they were under the thumb of the Assyrians, and then after the Assyrians came the Babylonians, and after the Babylonians came the Medo-Persian Empire, and after that the Greeks and the Romans.
SPEAKER_00: And they had for the better part of over 700 years been under the oppression or outright control of foreign entities.
SPEAKER_00: And there was an excitement that was building around Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Multitudes of the Jews now were pilgrimaging towards Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is moving towards Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: He had resolutely set his face to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is moving.
SPEAKER_00: And there began to be a buzz around the entrance of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Is this the time?
SPEAKER_00: Is now the time?
SPEAKER_00: Is now when he will claim the throne?
SPEAKER_00: Is now when he will rally the masses?
SPEAKER_00: Is now when he will overthrow the shackles of the enemy?
SPEAKER_00: Is now when he will set up his kingdom and rule and reign on the throne of David.
SPEAKER_00: Either Jesus would meet their expectations or else he was not the Messiah and should be rejected.
SPEAKER_00: That was their thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus wasn't that kind of king.
SPEAKER_00: In his first coming, he wasn't coming to be that kind of king.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, even the apostles didn't fully understand it.
SPEAKER_00: They were expecting the establishment of the kingdom immediately.
SPEAKER_00: And we saw a few weeks ago when Jesus gave the parables, he was setting the stage to let them know that there was going to be a delay in the full and final establishment of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: They were expecting a military leader.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, if we were to look at some of the statements of the apostles before the crucifixion and even after the resurrection, they're saying, Lord, is it now that you're going to establish your kingdom?
SPEAKER_00: But that wasn't the way of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That wasn't the way of the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came as the suffering servant.
SPEAKER_00: The way of the cross is strength through weakness.
SPEAKER_00: It's victory through seeming defeat.
SPEAKER_00: It's glory through humility.
SPEAKER_00: And we see that Jesus is not that kind of king, and we see that in two ways in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: First, we see it in Jesus' humble preparation.
SPEAKER_00: The king in humble preparation.
SPEAKER_00: We see this in verses 28 through 34.
SPEAKER_00: The king in humble preparation.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is at the end of a nine-month journey.
SPEAKER_00: He had traveled through Galilee and Samaria and Perea and now Judea and this circuitous route that he had gone ministering to over 35 different locations.
SPEAKER_00: Just prior to this, he had raised Lazarus from the dead that's recorded in John chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: Shortly before this, Jesus was in the house of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, and Mary had anointed Jesus' feet with expensive perfume.
SPEAKER_00: This was an extravagant act, but Jesus defended her, saying that it was for his burial.
SPEAKER_00: People had begun to hear about these.
SPEAKER_00: They were coming out of Jerusalem, two miles away, to see Jesus and Lazarus.
SPEAKER_00: Now Jesus was going on ahead to Jerusalem, it says in verse 28.
SPEAKER_00: As they're drawing near to Bethpage, a little hamlet between Jerusalem and Bethany, he sends two of his disciples to get a foal of a donkey.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus tells them to go into the village in front of them and untie the colt, and then they would find and bring it to him.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew tells us that the colt was tied to its mother.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus anticipates the owners of the colt will ask, Why are you untying this?
SPEAKER_00: And then they should say, The Lord has need of it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, people wonder, and we don't know, the text doesn't tell us exactly what the settings behind this, and some people speculate that perhaps Jesus set this up in advance, that there was this was pre-planned and this was set up by Jesus or his disciples, and that these were a code that was going to be given so that this uh that this foal would be released uh to uh to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Um perhaps these people had heard about Jesus' ministry and the events of the last few days.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I believe that Jesus in his perfect foreknowledge knew that these men would let him have the animals.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh there I don't believe that this was anything necessarily planned in advance, but it was just a demonstration of the foreknowledge of God, of the omniscience of Christ through the Holy Spirit at this moment in his ministry.
SPEAKER_00: But what's really shocking here is that Jesus had to ask for the animals in the first place.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_00: As such, everything in the created order is his.
SPEAKER_00: In Psalm chapter 50 it says, For every beast of the forest is mine, the kettle on a thousand hills, I know all the birds in the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible teaches in Colossians chapter 1, verse 16, that all things were created through him and for him.
SPEAKER_00: That everything in the created order Jesus owns.
SPEAKER_00: This was his property in one sense.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, Jesus in his earthly ministry hardly owned anything at all.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was homeless.
SPEAKER_00: He says to one man who wants to follow him foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus didn't own a home.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't have a place that he would go to that was his.
SPEAKER_00: He had very little property of his own in his earthly ministry.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he barely owned anything but the sandals and the clothes on his back.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we'll see in Luke chapter 20 when he was giving an illustration about paying taxes to Caesar, he had to borrow a coin from someone else.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't even have a coin with him to pull out in order to make this point about paying taxes to Caesar.
SPEAKER_00: And so in humility, Jesus borrows these animals.
SPEAKER_00: Why a young donkey?
SPEAKER_00: This was an intentional fulfillment of a prophecy given over 500 years prior.
SPEAKER_00: In Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9, it says, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion.
SPEAKER_00: Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, your king is coming to you, righteous, and having salvation, is he humble?
SPEAKER_00: And mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was making an emphatic statement about who he was here.
SPEAKER_00: This was an intentional fulfillment of a messianic royal prophecy in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus here now, through this living illustration, is declaring who he is, that he is the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: One commentator notes it's it identified him with the kings in the royal line of David, and especially with David himself, because the donkey was regarded as a royal animal before and during David's reign.
SPEAKER_00: This fell out of favor following David, and war horses were preferred, but during this time in King David that this would have been regarded as a royal animal.
SPEAKER_00: Further, Jesus chose this in fulfillment of this prophecy.
SPEAKER_00: And notice what it says in Zechariah about this, that this displays the heart of the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: In that passage in Zechariah 9:9, it says he's humble and mounted on a donkey.
SPEAKER_00: It tells us the heart of Jesus as he comes.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus wasn't that kind of king in his first coming.
SPEAKER_00: He was coming humble, mounted on this beast of burden.
SPEAKER_00: Paul writes later in Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 through 7: Have this mind in yourselves which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, and by being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was and is the king, but when he came in his first coming, he wasn't that kind of king.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't the king that they were expecting to come in in power and authority and glory and majesty and victory.
SPEAKER_00: He took the form of a servant.
SPEAKER_00: He laid aside the glory that was due to him.
SPEAKER_00: His glory, as it was, was veiled while he was in his earthly ministry.
SPEAKER_00: He humbled himself by being obedient.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was making a statement, but it wasn't only a political statement.
SPEAKER_00: It was much more than that.
SPEAKER_00: It was a spiritual statement in the heart of the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: So we see Jesus' humility as the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: He is the king, but he's not that kind of king.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't the king that the people were expecting, but he was the king that the people needed.
SPEAKER_00: And he's the king that we need.
SPEAKER_00: We see that Jesus is not that kind of king in a second way.
SPEAKER_00: We see the king now in verses 35 through 40, the king in subdued majesty.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus sends his disciples, they bring this cold back to him.
SPEAKER_00: He is mounted on it, and he begins to travel towards Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And as Jesus moves towards Jerusalem, he's the center of attention.
SPEAKER_00: All eyes were fixed on him.
SPEAKER_00: People had heard about him.
SPEAKER_00: There was a gathering multitude that was that was crowding around him.
SPEAKER_00: His disciples were laying their cloaks before him.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew tells us that others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road to make a royal procession for him.
SPEAKER_00: And in all of these subtle ways, there were indicators that here comes the king.
SPEAKER_00: They threw their cloaks on the back of the colt.
SPEAKER_00: The king doesn't ride bareback on an animal.
SPEAKER_00: They lifted Jesus up and placed him on the colt.
SPEAKER_00: They set him upon it like a king.
SPEAKER_00: And now as he moved forward in this procession, they began to gather around and over and over again rejoicing and praising God with a loud voice.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 37, it says, As he was drawing near, already on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen.
SPEAKER_00: They had gone down and they're coming over a ridge now, Luke tells us.
SPEAKER_00: And as they begin their descent, they catch a glimpse we know from the terrain.
SPEAKER_00: They catch a glimpse of the southeastern corner of the city.
SPEAKER_00: Jerusalem begins to be in view.
SPEAKER_00: And they were repeating over and over again: Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.
SPEAKER_00: There's an interesting backdrop to these verses, these statements that the multitude is making to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The first half of that, if you look in verse 38, blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's taken from Psalm 118, verse 26, that said, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That psalm is the last in a series of psalms called their praise songs.
SPEAKER_00: The word in Hebrew is halal, which means praise.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we are familiar with that word when we say hallelujah, Yah is short for Yahweh, and Hallelujah is praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we say hallelujah, we are saying praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so these halal psalms from Psalm 113 to 118 were called the Halal Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: They're also called the Egyptian Halal songs because they actually hearken back to the Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: They go back to the time of Moses and the Exodus and their allusions to that.
SPEAKER_00: In addition to that, Psalms 113 to 118 were saying during the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: They were saying during the Passover, and so these pilgrims, as they're on their way to Jerusalem, would have been rehearsing these songs, thinking about these songs, remembering the Exodus, remembering the deliverance of God's people from oppression and slavery, remembering the Passover, that they were passed over in judgment because the blood of the lamb had been covering the doorpost.
SPEAKER_00: And it was the blood of that lamb that had saved them and rescued them from judgment that had fallen on the rest of the people.
SPEAKER_00: The Passover that they were about to celebrate, they would have been thinking about the lambs that they were to purchase or the lambs that they brought with them that were going to be sacrificed, that would remind them of their sin and their need of forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: And this particular Psalm 118 would have been one of the psalms that would have been sung after the Passover meal.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, this was most likely, most commentators would say that these would have been the psalms that Jesus sang following the celebration of the Passover meal as they were on their way to the garden and they sang.
SPEAKER_00: In Psalm 118, it says, Blessed is he who comes with the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But when the people sing it, they personalize it.
SPEAKER_00: They say, Blessed is the King.
SPEAKER_00: And they attribute to Jesus as they personalize this psalm that Jesus is the king.
SPEAKER_00: And they sing, not realizing, there was so much more to the reality than what they understood.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the king.
SPEAKER_00: He was the king that was coming.
SPEAKER_00: He was the king that was coming to die on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: He was the Lamb of God.
SPEAKER_00: John himself, John the Baptizer, said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Truly Jesus was the king, but he was coming to give his life as a sacrifice for many.
SPEAKER_00: And so they sang this psalm of praise to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Blessing, blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, but there was so much more than what they understood.
SPEAKER_00: This psalm was implicit about the king going into the temple.
SPEAKER_00: It was a reference to the Messiah, and the Messiah was royalty.
SPEAKER_00: Here comes the king.
SPEAKER_00: But he wasn't the kind of king that they were expecting.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't realize Jesus was the king who was the Lamb of God, who would take away their sins.
SPEAKER_00: He was the deliverer who, like Moses, would bring his people out of slavery and into freedom of new life.
SPEAKER_00: Notice what else they sing here.
SPEAKER_00: It says, peace in heaven and glory in the highest.
SPEAKER_00: This is reminiscent in some ways of what we find in the beginning of Luke's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: If we remember the angels when they declared in Luke chapter 2, glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.
SPEAKER_00: And notice what they say here.
SPEAKER_00: They say, peace in heaven and glory in the highest.
SPEAKER_00: One author notes this: the heavenly chorus sang of peace on earth, while the earthly throng now sang of peace in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the Prince of Peace.
SPEAKER_00: He came to bring peace.
SPEAKER_00: He came to bring peace with God through the death on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: That his sacrificial death and his victorious resurrection would bring perfect peace to those who come to know him, that there would no longer be hostility between us and God.
SPEAKER_00: He secures ultimate peace on earth and heaven.
SPEAKER_00: As we were talking about this among the staff this week and among the pastoral staff, that the reality in this passage is something that we miss, that they're singing about peace in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And in one sense, there is peace in heaven, and yet there is not yet perfect peace.
SPEAKER_00: After the fall, there was war in heaven, the Bible tells us.
SPEAKER_00: And even now, here there is spiritual warfare, and it's not until after the millennium when Satan and his angels are thrown into the lake of fire, and there is a new heaven and a new earth, that there will be perfect peace.
SPEAKER_00: And so they sing, peace in heaven and glory in the highest.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the king worthy of all praise.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees, when they hear this, are incensed.
SPEAKER_00: They're offended at what these people are saying, and they tell Jesus, Rebuke your disciples.
SPEAKER_00: They said that because only God deserves praise.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus here in his response reveals to us his deity.
SPEAKER_00: Because he doesn't agree with the Pharisees and says, You're right, what they're saying is out of line, what they're saying is incorrect.
SPEAKER_00: He says to them, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus is King, He is worthy of all praise, and He will be praised.
SPEAKER_00: And that He is God in human flesh, that He must receive praise.
SPEAKER_00: Clarence McCartney beautifully observes this.
SPEAKER_00: He says, How strange a contrast to the triumphal entry of ancient warriors and conquerors into the cities which they had taken.
SPEAKER_00: This time no wall was broke down for entry.
SPEAKER_00: This time no garlanded hero standing in his war chariot, driving down the lane of cheering subjects past smoking altars and followed by captive kings and princes in chains.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of that, just a meek and lowly man riding upon the foal of a donkey.
SPEAKER_00: He is the king.
SPEAKER_00: Is he your king?
SPEAKER_00: Have you bowed your knee before the throne and recognized his kingship in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Would you join me as I lead us in prayer?
SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray this morning that we will have a clearer view of Jesus and his humility in the incarnation.
SPEAKER_00: That the King of kings and Lord of Lords left the glories of heaven to come to this earth, to be born in humility, to be born in poverty, to live in seeming obscurity, not in the halls of a palace, but in the dusty roads of Palestine.
SPEAKER_00: That he was not what they expected riding on a royal war horse, but coming meek and gentle.
SPEAKER_00: But he was and is the king.
SPEAKER_00: He was the king who came, he is the king who is coming again.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray that we will have eyes to see that Jesus is the King who came to provide victory and deliverance, that he is the Passover Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who was slain so that we might be forgiven for our sins and have a relationship with you that we might have peace.
SPEAKER_00: May we see Jesus the true King.
SPEAKER_00: We pray in His name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.