[SERMON] Hosanna: Don't Just Wave the Branch

On Palm Sunday, the crowds shouted "Hosanna" — a word meaning "save us" — as Jesus entered Jerusalem, yet within days most had disappeared when the cost became real. Drawing from John 12, Luke 19, Psalm 118, and Zechariah 9:9, this message calls us to move beyond emotional celebration and surface-level worship toward genuine surrender. The true meaning of Palm Sunday isn't louder praise — it's a life changed by the Jesus who came not just to perform miracles, but to save us from sin and into eternity.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Today is Palm Sunday. Now, 2,000 years ago, uh, there was this moment where Jesus entered into Jerusalem and he was celebrated as the Messiah. That's Palm Sunday. And so every year we get to talk about Palm Sunday on Palm Sunday. And uh I want to go to the Bible to John 12 and I want to look at a Bible verse. Oh, and I forgot to tell you, I I told you a couple weeks ago, we did our 3:30 update. We do it the third Sunday of every month, kind of staying with our threes and 30s. There was a big surprise coming. This is the big surprise. So for those of you who are new, this is not a surprise because this is the first time seeing it. Everyone else, this is the first time. And for those of you who've been coming for years and didn't recognize there's a giant LED wall, I'm sorry. Um, so talk to your doctor about your vision. So uh um so yeah, but um so, anyways, John John 12. Let's go to John 12. In John 12, it says, uh remember the yellow part is yours, read that out loud. So they took branches of palm trees and they went out to meet him, crying out, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the king of Israel. So there's this moment that was prophesied in the Old Testament. We'll get to that Bible verse later. But people were waiting for the Messiah to come. The Jews were waiting on this prophesied savior, this prophesied Messiah who would come and would rescue them. And so the reason that they're out there with palm branches is they were anticipating the Messiah would come. They believed the Messiah would be would be a warrior. Some of them believed he'd be a warrior and he would lead a great army and he would create some military victory over the Romans. Others believed that he would come and he would save them in politically in different ways. They had all these beliefs about who Jesus was. And so they were waiting for this moment. People, just like we've waited our whole lives for different things. So yesterday I was watching basketball, and I had happened to tell my one son, I said, it would be great to see Michigan win the national championship in my lifetime, right? Now, here's the thing. I know some of you, you know that Michigan has won the basketball national championship in 89. I didn't realize it because I wasn't a fan until 1997 when I went to Michigan. So soon after, within minutes of me saying this and having this conversation, the announcer comes on, Jalen Rose, who's from Michigan, and says, This could be the Michigan's greatest team since 89 when they won the championship. I'm like, I'm a dummy. So um, but sometimes we get we wait for things. Like some of you are waiting for the Lions to win a championship, right? Yeah, yeah. So we're we're we wait for things and we get excited, and when that moment comes, you think it's almost there, it's like, oh my goodness, it's almost there. That's what was happening to these Jews when Jesus enters Jerusalem. They've been waiting for this their whole life, their grandparents have waited for this, their grandparents' grandparents had waited for this moment. It had been prophesied, and they're there. It's like when Detroit was 14 and oh, playing Washington, and then you know, everybody was ready. We had the palm branches, we were ready, they're gonna go. No, they lost. Um but we have those moments when we celebrate, and and I've been able to be part of a couple championships in my life, and it was great to have that moment. People shout and they cheer and they say all kinds of things. And we humans, we say a lot of things when we're excited, when we're mad, when we're frustrated, we we use words, right? And I want to go over some of these words. I'm gonna I want to share some words with you. They're from different generations, from boomers all the way to Gen Alpha. So I want to see who uses these phrases. All right, so here's the first one. The first one, I'm fine. Who says I'm fine? But when you say I'm fine, you're not actually fine. You're actually not fine. It's like you stub your toe, you walk away, you're mad, it hurts, and someone says, Are you okay? I'm fine. I'm fine, right? You're not actually fine. So that's that's like a boomer one, right? Uh what is it? Gen X boomer. Uh, what about this one? Whatever, right? Who uses whatever? Who said it today? Uh you're gonna make us late for church, whatever. So right? We when we use whatever, we don't actually mean whatever. We're we mean we're frustrated. Shut up and leave me alone, whatever, right? Whatever, whatever, don't talk to me about it, right? Uh what about this one? I hate you. Oh, yeah, some of you like you never said this word. You have definitely said this phrase, many of you, right? Like, I would never say that. I'm a Christian, right? But who uses I hate you in the way it's used currently? Like, oh, that like that was really neat, like in or funny, like, oh, that's so funny, I hate you. That was so funny. I'm like, I hate you, right? Who does that? Anybody? Oh, you bunch of liars out there right now. Either that or you guys are just all super old. So um, what about this next one? Shut up, shut up, right? This is supposed to mean like shut up, talk, stop talking. That's what the words mean. Who uses this in like, oh, you're so silly? Just shut up, right? Like, anybody do that? Now, last message, last last sermon, Pam Moore, who's a bus driver, is in here, and she's like, I I say this word, I'm like, I think she might actually use it the right way, right?

unknown 5:15

Right?

SPEAKER_00 5:16

All them kids in that bus. So here's more of a Jen Alpha one. I'm dead. I'm dead. Who uses this one? Where's my young guys? Where's my young Jen Alpha? Yeah, I've seen, I've I've heard kids say this to me, man. I'm dead. That just means like that's just unbelievable. That's just so fantastic. I'm dead, right? Some of you have no idea that that means that. Um, what about this one? Some of you know this one, right? Six, seven. Who uses this one? This is like everybody now. Gin alpha's quitting to use this one because uh all of you old people ruined it. So um, and then here's I didn't put this on a slide, but this one has been coming up so much lately. And I've been hanging out playing games with my my boys and their friends, and so they're all like kind of in an age bracket of middle middle school gin alpha age. Uh aura. Aura. You guys, when you don't when you don't raise your hands, you guys mess with my aura. Just telling you that. Like, all right, right, kill the aura here. So, aura. So, some of you have no idea what that means, and that means you're old. So, uh, yeah. So we've trained ourselves to say powerful words without powerful meaning. We use words the way we use words, and and then we wonder why words like Hosanna don't actually change us. Because Hosanna, the word that they're saying, when they're saying Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Word, they're literally saying the word save us. That's what it means, save us. They believed the Messiah was coming to save them. When they were waving the palm branches and they were laying their cloaks down, they were shouting out to Jesus, save us, save me. The Romans are oppressive, right? They they they don't like us, they want to kill us, save us from the Romans, save us from the world, save us from sin. They believed Jesus was gonna save them. And they were saying all these words and shouting all these phrases. The problem was only in only five days' time, Jesus was gonna be put to the cross. And the people who were shouting, save us, they necessarily weren't the people who were saying crucify him, but they were nowhere to be found. Jesus, one of his closest friends, betrayed Jesus three times on the night he was arrested because he ran for the hills. I don't want anything to do with that guy. I'm save, who? Save, save, I'm out, right? I'm dead, right? No, that's the proper way to use it. So Jen Alpha taught me later. All right, but ultimately, that's how some of us worship Jesus. We have these big emotions, these big words, and we can celebrate and praise Jesus until it gets tough, and then we're nowhere to be found. And that's the way that we use language. We can say a lot of things, but do we really mean what we say? See, you can celebrate Jesus and still completely miss him. You can celebrate him, you can praise him, you can sing songs, you can send emojis, you can do all that stuff and miss the real Jesus. 2,000 years ago, they waved branches, they laid down cloaks, and they missed it. They missed it. Because Palm Sunday, it's loud worship with hidden misunderstanding. People were worshiping Jesus in that first Palm Sunday, but they didn't really understand what he came to do or who he was fully. They just thought he was gonna be this warrior who would lead them into great victory. And one of the things I love about Palm Sunday is one of the few stories in Scripture that's in all four Gospels because it's so important for us. And I want to go to Luke 19. I want to look at Luke 19 here, and it says, And and he, Jesus, 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. See the crowd that was worshiping Jesus on the way into Jerusalem, those were his people. Those were his followers, those are the people who saw the miracles, who heard the stories. And when I when I think about Jesus in Palm Sunday, I always think about the movie Braveheart. And I know that's that's way old for some of you. But the movie Braveheart, there's this guy, William Wallace, and he was an actual real historical figure, and he he basically allowed Scotland to get its freedom from England for a short period of time. And because of that, he became legendary. In the movie, there's this moment where he keeps having small victory and small victory and small victory in all these battles, and people start talking about him, and they start saying, hey, this guy, he won this great overwhelming victory versus overwhelming odds, and so he's kind of like mystical and amazing. And so what happens in the movie is like this legend of William Wallace grows, and so he can shoot lightning out of his eyes, right? And he can do all these miraculous things. People had followed Jesus from place to place, they had seen the miracles, but then the stories traveled from place to place to place. And so people had heard and they had seen all these great things about Jesus and his miracles. He made the lame walk, he made the blind see. And so they're praising Jesus when he comes into town, they're praising the miracle worker. He's done all this miraculous stuff. And the problem is they praise what Jesus did, but they didn't understand what he came to do. The miracles weren't the purpose, they were just part of the plan. And what we have to recognize is we always tend to want Jesus to give us our blessings and our miracles and Lord, just give me the stuff that's for me. We miss out on the real purpose of Jesus, that he came to save us. And when when the followers of Jesus were celebrating and they were waving the palm branches, they were laying on their cloaks, they were actually reciting a psalm from the Old Testament. Actually, a song that would be sang, recited at powerful moments in the history of their culture, of their of their people. And that psalm was 118. And Psalm 118 says this save us, we pray, O Lord. O Lord, we pray, give us success. Blessed is he who come in the names of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord. So when they're saying Hosanna, they're saying save us. They're saying Old Testament words because they believed in the prophecy. They had waited on it for generation after generation after generation, and this was their moment. This was when Jesus was coming into the world. And they were saying these words because the people had waited and they had spoken about it and they had preached about it for this moment. And so Jesus comes in Jerusalem. And with all the miracles and all the things they had seen, they were excited for what it would mean for them. And in Matthew 21, it says, They brought the donkey and the colt and put them on their cloaks, and he, Jesus, sat on them. And so this moment that they had been waiting on, it was before them. And uh in in AD 203, there was this famous early church father who, only about 150 years after many of our gospel writings were written, he was preaching and teaching. And just like me, he preached every year about Palm Sunday. That was the thing. Like you talk about the story, you preach about the story. I get to preach about this story every single year that I'm a pastor. Patty was saying, hey, are you ready for Palm Sunday? Yep, I'm ready. It's the same story every year. It doesn't change. I just have to figure out a new way to talk about it every year. Which amazingly, there always is a way to talk about it because the Bible is so deep. But Origin was this guy's name. And when Origin says, he says this uh this is a quote from Origen. Each of us was once like the cult, unbroken and without understanding, until Jesus sat upon us and made us fit for his service. See the story? When people come and they sing and they praise and they say, Save us, and Hosanna, they're looking for their miraculous blessing to come. But what Origen's saying, what he's preaching, is the power of the story, is that we are like the unbroken colt. And when Jesus comes to us, he essentially saves us. See, Origen saw deep symbolism in the animals. The donkey, he would preach that was the Gentiles, those that were outside the covenant. Those were the non-Jews, the people who were not followers of Jesus, who did not know the prophecy. Jesus came for the lost people, the people who were not already under the covenant with the Lord. And then the cult, he preached it was representative of the people newly under Christ's rules. Those were the followers that were there, the disciples. And so we have this juxtaposition of Jesus coming in to Jerusalem for both the lost and the found. It's deep. There's deep symbolism in this moment that people just didn't get. And when Jesus rode in on the donkey, as people were singing and praising, Jesus wept. Jesus cried because as he looked out over the crowd, he understood that they didn't truly get the meaning of what was happening. They didn't get it. And I think it's one of the most powerful parts of the Palm Study story is yes, we're here to celebrate, we're having a luau to celebrate Jesus as King, and we should. But we also don't want to miss the true meaning because in that moment that Jesus wept, I think Jesus wept for me. I think he wept for you. I think there's been times in my life where I didn't get it. I could say all the right words, I could sing the songs, I could belt it out, I could send the right emojis to people, the praying hands emoji, right? And miss who Jesus really is in my life. See, Origen didn't study Palm Sunday from a distance. He lived in a time when following Jesus cost you everything. Origin, in the year 200, you could be put to death for being a follower of Christ. There was real risk in Origen's ministry. Teaching and preaching about Jesus, it came with a great cost. We don't have the same cost. Our cost today, someone might say something mean about me being a Christian on Facebook. Ooh, right? I might get a side-eye at the grocery store. Someone might not like the way I voted, right? But back then, you could die for your beliefs. And so we have to understand that there's a deep meaning to Palm Sunday. There's deep meaning to Jesus and what he came to do. And we don't want to miss it like so many of those disciples, because the people that praised Jesus, they thought they knew who he was. They thought that they were following him, they were praising him. I took my time out. I left work to come here and celebrate this guy coming in on the donkey. Right? I waved the palm branches, but only a few days later they were they were gone when times got tough. I think there's times in our life when it gets tough, we're nowhere to be found either with Jesus. We're gone. I think the call of Palm Sunday is that we're we're supposed to get who Jesus is in the good times and in the bad times. Because Jesus didn't just ride into Jerusalem, He rode into lives. He wrote into my life, He wrote into your life. He came to truly save us. Those words had meaning. They just didn't really get what the words meant. But Jesus has come to save you from yourself, from your sin, from the world, from being broken. And he came to save you into something great and powerful. Eternity. And this moment that we talk about on Palm Sunday, it comes from Old Testament prophecy, which we find in Zechariah 9:9. And in Zechariah 9.9, it says, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you. Righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. This is the moment that people have been waiting on for generations. It's here. And I think the problem for us is we have 2,000 plus years of perspective, and we still miss it. We still miss it. I had had, let's see, it's 2026. That means what 11 years plus 26. I've had 37 years to try to figure out that Michigan won a national championship in 89. I missed it. I missed it. I probably knew that at one point, but forgot it. How much have you missed? How much have you forgotten about the goodness of Jesus? How much have you missed? Because you're out there praising and waving your branches, but you're not really giving your heart to Jesus. Because Jesus came humbly. But the people they still wanted him on their terms. They wanted the miracles, they wanted the blessings for them. Jesus didn't come for your terms or my terms. He didn't come to give us the miracles and blessings. That's a benefit, that's a bonus. Those are things he came to do also. But the real purpose was to save us from sin and save us to his family. Life everlasting with him. And so what does this mean for you? Why are we talking about this? Because I think you can say the right things about Jesus and still reject the real Jesus. I think Peter proves that, right? Peter was a guy that Jesus said, on this guy is the rock that I will build my church. The rock ran three times. Three times. He betrayed Jesus three times in one night. Is that the kind of rock you want to be? We have to truly understand who he is and live for him and choose him, even when times get tough. And so you can quote Bible verses, you can sing songs, you can send praying hand emojis and still miss Jesus. You can. I just did it last service. I'll pull up my phone now. Look, look how easy it is. People, Christians, I think, send praying hands emojis so much they made it a feature on all phones. So I can go here, Joe crawl. He sent me a message, and I'm gonna do a praying hand emoji back to him. This is how quick I can do it. Done.

unknown 18:38

Right?

SPEAKER_00 18:38

We can do that on Facebook all the time, too. Quick, boom. Praying hands emoji. I'm praying for you. We can say all the stuff, we can do all the stuff, but do we really love Jesus and follow Jesus? And this is our heart for him. Are we just really good at the words? See, God is not looking for louder worship, he's looking for real surrender. I think that's the thing this Palm Sunday. I don't think God wants us to be raising our waving our branches and laying our cloaks down and miss out on the truth. And if the goal is that we understand the truth and we wave the branches and we lay our cloaks down and we worship him and we send the pray hands emojis as our response to our heart is for him. And then we understand that he's here to save us, and only through him can we be saved. So don't just wave the branch, surrender your life. I mean, that's the thing. This week you want to know how to do that? Surrender. Take time this week. It's holy week. Take time this week. Start at Matthew 21. Every day, read a different chapter until you get to Matthew 28. Read all, read seven chapters this week in the Bible. Take time to read seven chapters. You're essentially gonna get the holy week story there. If you're in Matthew 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27. You'll get the holy week story. You get the journey all the way to Jesus ascending into heaven. Take time to do that. Can you sacrifice just that much of your week? It'll take you five to ten minutes a day. Some of you you won't because you're too busy with you. Some of you will, because you say, you know what, this week this year I'm gonna do it differently. I'm gonna read it. Who cares if you read it so many times? I read it every year. That's just part of my life, right? My job. Read it every year, over and over again, because if we don't, we don't really get it. Because we don't really mean it when we say save us. See, Jesus didn't come to meet your expectations. He truly came to change your life. James came to change your life. He didn't come to give you all of the things you want, give you all your blessings, give you all your miracles. That is part of a relationship with Jesus. It's not the purpose of the relationship with Jesus. The real purpose is he came to change your life and to give you life everlasting, to make you born new, so that the old you is dead and the new you has been born, and it's been born in Jesus. And for some of us, this is Palm Sunday, we really need change. We need to surrender. We need to choose Him, we need to do something different to change. And if you know you're struggling and you know you're at that place where you get excited about Jesus, but that's it. As soon as the party's over, you drop your cloak, you drop your branch, and you go back to your regular old life, and Jesus doesn't really matter that much. If that's you, it's time to change. Try and choose something better. I'm gonna just tell you, there's more joy when you stay connected to Jesus, when you truly understand who he is and what he came to do in your heart and in your life and in your eternity. And if you know you need a change, I'm gonna just encourage you just write on the back of your connection card, just write the word change. We'll pray for you. Just do something proactive. Say, that's me. I need to change. And as a church, we can pray for you this week. We can pray that God moves in your heart because it is time to change. And we want to be a church where, yeah, we can have fun, we could be silly, we can have lualds, we can do all this stuff, we can have yard signs, we can have a big LED screen. This is all. Oh, great. But all that is is just waving palm branches and laying down cloaks if we don't actually have life change as part of it. We want to be a church of life change. And if you know it's time for you to have life change, write down change, and we'll pray for you. Because this season should be about Christ and Christ alone. But not just this week. Every day of our life should be about Jesus Christ and the change that comes to our heart through Him. And if you know you need that, then don't leave today without acknowledging Jesus Christ as Lord, as King, and then we'll help you figure out the rest of it. And if that's you, come talk to me afterwards. Just say, hey, I need help. I need help figuring this thing out. We will be glad to help you. That's what we're about. Life change. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, Lord, we just pray that we can be a church where we see life change happen because Jesus came to change the world, to give hope, to show grace and mercy, to allow us to have forgiveness from sin and ultimately, Lord, to be able to spend eternity with you because we have a relationship with your son Jesus. Lord, I pray if there's anyone here that knows, they just need to change. It's time to stop pretending to worship Jesus and actually live out what that worship looks like. True worship. Really understanding your son Jesus and what he means to the world, what he means to our hearts. Well, I just pray that you allow people this week to know you're with them through the Holy Spirit, Lord. Encourage people to read the story from Matthew 21 and 27 to engage with your word and engage with your son Jesus. And to stand firm in both the good seasons and the bad and know that you are with them. Lord, we just pray that we can love you more, we can serve you more fully. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.