back to index2019-04-14 Palm Sunday, The Day Jesus Wept
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All right, if you can turn your Bibles with me to Luke chapter 19. 00:00:09.200 |
And I'm just going to read from 41 through 44, because I'm going to be dealing with not 00:00:14.160 |
just this text, but the other Gospels about Palm Sunday. 00:00:20.900 |
When he approached Jerusalem, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, "If you had known 00:00:24.720 |
this day, even you the things which make for peace, but now they have been hidden from 00:00:31.080 |
For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against 00:00:34.760 |
you and surround you and hem you in on every side. 00:00:38.440 |
And they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not 00:00:41.720 |
leave in you one stone upon another because you did not recognize the time of your visitation." 00:00:49.880 |
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your patience. 00:00:56.480 |
We thank you, Lord God, that only by your grace that we're able to be sustained, persevere. 00:01:06.480 |
Help us, Lord God, to have our eyes open, to see you as you are. 00:01:11.740 |
We pray, especially this week, help us, Lord, to recalibrate our thoughts, our mind, our 00:01:18.940 |
Help us, Lord God, to be able to confess our love for you, not simply with words, but 00:01:25.200 |
May this week be a blessing, Lord God, upon your church, as we are blessed and reminded 00:01:30.800 |
that we would return it, Lord God, to you in glory and worship and praise. 00:01:39.020 |
As I mentioned, this week, this Passion Week, is set apart so that our natural tendency 00:01:47.860 |
So we've been studying the book of Hebrews, and the first two chapters is a warning against 00:01:51.840 |
the church to simply not to neglect our salvation. 00:02:00.120 |
Drifting just simply means you sat on the boat and you're just enjoying the current. 00:02:04.380 |
And when you do that, you find yourself a day, two days, a month, a year later, you 00:02:11.900 |
And the word of God that you confess to believe is God's word no longer has any effect in 00:02:20.860 |
The gathering of the church is just a social place. 00:02:24.320 |
You've lost your purpose, you've lost your drive, you've lost your passion for Christ. 00:02:28.800 |
And it didn't happen because a particular event, it didn't happen because you confess 00:02:33.440 |
and say, "You know, I don't know if I believe this or not." 00:02:35.760 |
You just got caught up with life, and you began to drift, and you didn't catch yourself 00:02:44.240 |
That's why times like these are important for us as a church. 00:02:47.800 |
To take some time to reflect, take additional time to catch. 00:02:53.440 |
If I've been drifting away from Christ, to take a deeper look about what he has done 00:03:01.760 |
So hopefully by the end of the week, that again, that we would recalibrate our thoughts, 00:03:06.520 |
our mind, our lives, that we would live our life in a reasonable response to the things 00:03:13.240 |
Palm Sunday is a day that we typically celebrate the coming of the Messiah into Jerusalem. 00:03:19.560 |
But we already know what happens at the end of this week. 00:03:23.440 |
This huge celebration turns into the crucifixion of Christ, where the disciples were scared, 00:03:29.360 |
they're scattering, and it leaves the community in utter confusion until the resurrection. 00:03:37.240 |
And then even after the resurrection, there's a lot of confusion, but the disciples are 00:03:41.360 |
So we know what happens today, and we know how it concludes. 00:03:47.720 |
You know, if you look at the Ten Commandments, the first commandment is, "Thou shalt have 00:03:54.760 |
And it's the first and the most important commandment, because this was a commandment 00:04:02.960 |
At the core of human rebellion is desiring to worship a god of their own creation. 00:04:10.800 |
But the second commandment is a commandment that I think is more tangible, that people 00:04:19.000 |
"Thou shalt have no graven images, and worship it." 00:04:25.000 |
Don't make God in a graven image and then worship it. 00:04:28.440 |
If you look at it initially, it sounds redundant, doesn't it? 00:04:34.040 |
It basically sounds like, "Don't worship any other gods," and then, "Don't worship any 00:04:42.480 |
Because every single one of the Ten Commandments is very unique. 00:04:48.520 |
Why does it seem like it repeats the same thing? 00:04:50.360 |
Is it simply because worshipping other idols is important, and so he says it twice in a 00:05:01.200 |
When I looked at it a bit more carefully, I realized the second commandment is probably 00:05:05.080 |
the most tangible, is the most realistic and most practical of all the commandments. 00:05:12.600 |
Because if you look at the church, how many of you really wrestled with the temptation 00:05:21.120 |
Maybe some of you guys came from a Buddhist background and you converted. 00:05:24.060 |
But after your conversion, in your walk with God, how many of you at even one time wrestled 00:05:32.840 |
Or, "I wrestled with wanting to be a Muslim." 00:05:38.240 |
Now there are stories of very few people who may have walked with God at one point and 00:05:44.000 |
converted to the Islamic faith or became a Buddhist. 00:05:50.280 |
But for the most part, 99.9% of professing Christians don't wrestle with this thought. 00:05:58.320 |
When God says, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." 00:06:02.000 |
So we don't wrestle with that, for the most part. 00:06:04.820 |
That is not something that we have a conversation. 00:06:07.320 |
I don't think I've talked to a single person in the years that I've been in ministry trying 00:06:12.000 |
to convince somebody not to convert to Buddhism or something else. 00:06:17.500 |
But the second commandment, "Thou shalt have no other graven images and worship it," is 00:06:22.120 |
a commandment basically prohibiting worshipping God in your way. 00:06:28.480 |
To declare God as God, but then creating this God into your image and worshipping a God. 00:06:34.200 |
You may be calling him God, you may be calling him Yahweh, you may be calling him Jesus, 00:06:39.360 |
but the Jesus that you follow or the people follow is a Jesus that they've created in 00:06:48.960 |
That's where the rubber meets the road for most of us. 00:06:52.960 |
You can confess Christ and you can sing songs about the gospel, but the way that we live 00:06:57.320 |
our life, the way that we live our life, we can see that it is not the Christ of the Bible 00:07:05.080 |
that is being worshipped, but it is a Christ that we've created in our own mind. 00:07:09.880 |
I want a God who forgives us of sins, and no matter what I do, he forgives." 00:07:14.360 |
And so they live their life pursuing the world, and then they've embraced certain aspects 00:07:21.020 |
And then when the Bible begins to talk about warning about sin and about judgment, it's 00:07:24.400 |
like, "Well, that can't be the God that I worship." 00:07:27.600 |
And so the Jesus that is being worshipped is a Jesus that they've created in their own 00:07:35.760 |
We can be in danger in the other direction where Jesus is just a moralist and looking 00:07:40.360 |
at everybody's behavior, "You're not doing this right, you're not doing that right," 00:07:44.280 |
and constantly thinking that they're going to earn their righteousness before God, not 00:07:48.640 |
realizing that it is not by our righteousness. 00:07:51.120 |
We cannot possibly get to God by our own righteousness, and that's why he came. 00:07:56.520 |
And so the God that you may worship at that end is also not the God of the Bible. 00:08:01.760 |
He is a God who is perfectly righteous and perfectly gracious at the same time. 00:08:07.320 |
And any God that you've created, that you and I have created, that doesn't fit the God 00:08:11.600 |
of the Bible, it is not the God that we're talking about here. 00:08:17.160 |
And the reason why I mention all this is because the Jews had an idea of who the Messiah was 00:08:25.120 |
They were so excited about Jesus coming in that we call this Palm Sunday because palm 00:08:30.160 |
branches were shaken and put on the ground, much like the way that we would celebrate 00:08:41.200 |
We don't see that when we see the soldiers coming back from the Vietnam War or the other 00:08:45.840 |
wars, but you probably saw footages, black and white footages of World War II after they 00:08:50.640 |
defeated the Nazis, and you see confetti coming down all over Manhattan, and the soldiers 00:08:57.840 |
And so the palm branches, waving the palm branches was their version of confetti being 00:09:08.120 |
Now up to this point, nothing has happened yet, but there was that kind of excitement 00:09:15.920 |
This man raises people from the dead, he walks on water, he tells the storm to calm down 00:09:23.460 |
If there was anybody that was going to give them hope, it was Jesus. 00:09:29.080 |
And he made that very clear when he came in riding on a donkey because that was a fulfillment 00:09:33.920 |
of a prophet that was given over 500 years before he showed up, that when the Messiah 00:09:39.320 |
comes, he will come to you like a king riding on a donkey. 00:09:43.360 |
So he was declaring to the nation of Israel that he was that Messiah, he was that king 00:09:51.240 |
But not only were they shaking the palm branches, in Matthew 21 verse 8 it says they took their 00:10:00.920 |
What that basically meant was that they were surrendering their lives to this king. 00:10:06.360 |
The cloaks, remember, the cloaks at that time, most people, if they owned one, only owned 00:10:13.120 |
So to take that and put it on the ground basically means that they're surrendering. 00:10:21.000 |
In fact, in Matthew chapter 21 verse 10, Matthew describes the crowd as being stirred up. 00:10:28.080 |
The word for stirred up in Greek is "saizo" where we get the word seismic. 00:10:32.920 |
Basically he's describing a shaking of the ground. 00:10:37.960 |
Now this was all taking place during the Passover week, where even without the excitement of 00:10:43.920 |
Messiah coming into town, it was the Passover week, it was the Jewish Independence Day. 00:10:49.840 |
So even in a regular Passover week, there would be, according to Jewish historians, 00:10:56.960 |
But now because of this extra excitement of Christ coming in, and especially right before 00:11:02.480 |
he enters, he raises Lazarus from the dead, and this word began to spread. 00:11:08.520 |
And so now people are coming into town to see if Jesus really is this Messiah that everybody's 00:11:16.320 |
And did he actually raise Lazarus, a prominent member of a prominent family? 00:11:23.120 |
So we don't know exactly what the number is, but if the average number was over a million, 00:11:30.320 |
So to say that there was a stir, an excitement over Jesus' coming, it would probably be an 00:11:39.280 |
But to really understand the excitement of the nation of Israel, you have to understand 00:11:45.840 |
When was the last time that you really wanted something and you had to wait for it? 00:11:50.960 |
And the excitement of the day that when it came. 00:11:53.140 |
Maybe when you were a teenager and you were going to get a car, and it could have been 00:11:57.080 |
a piece of junk, but you were waiting because that car represents freedom, and maybe you 00:12:01.880 |
went to go get it, or maybe you were going to get it, a used car, whatever it may be, 00:12:06.800 |
to you it meant freedom, and you had to wait. 00:12:13.840 |
Whatever it may be, maybe it was your wedding day, maybe it was the coming of a child, first-born 00:12:18.320 |
child, maybe it was a vacation, whatever it may be, it's something that you really long 00:12:26.240 |
So you can imagine or relate to a small degree possibly what the nation of Israel may have 00:12:35.320 |
You have to remember that Israel was a covenant people. 00:12:38.120 |
As soon as they started, when God started, God had a specific purpose for the nation 00:12:42.920 |
God promised Abraham and his descendants that he was going to bless them, make their land, 00:12:48.320 |
he's going to give them land, he's going to give them descendants that they can count, 00:12:51.960 |
and then through them he was going to bless all the other nations. 00:12:55.920 |
There was a very special covenant anointing upon Israel and their descendants. 00:13:02.360 |
That's why when you read the story of Jacob and Esau, remember Jacob is a slippery one, 00:13:09.200 |
he comes and he kind of maneuvers and gets his older brother to give him his birthright, 00:13:15.360 |
and Esau being a hunter comes in and he's hungry and famished, and because he wants 00:13:19.760 |
the porridge, he said, "Well, what is my birthright to me when I'm going to starve to death?" 00:13:26.920 |
And so he trades his birthright in order to get the porridge, and as a result of that, 00:13:32.120 |
there's a curse that comes upon him and his descendants for centuries. 00:13:36.920 |
If you look at that, if you look into the New Testament, it says Esau was evil for doing 00:13:43.160 |
But when you look at the actual story, I mean, how many of us would have thought, it's like, 00:13:48.640 |
yeah, I mean, because inheritance, a birthright, is not going to be, you don't know, it could 00:13:53.400 |
be 50 years from now, 100 years from now, but I'm starving now. 00:13:57.560 |
We could relate to Esau, in fact, Jacob is the one, he's the weasel who's like, you know, 00:14:03.920 |
maneuvering and lying and conniving to get the birthright. 00:14:07.420 |
But the reason why Jacob, even in his maneuvering, was considered righteous and Esau evil for 00:14:12.920 |
what he did was because of the anointing upon this family. 00:14:17.440 |
See, this inheritance that was supposed to come to the firstborn was not just simply 00:14:29.200 |
What Esau was rejecting was the covenant promise that God made with this family. 00:14:35.900 |
So when he says, "What is my birthright when I'm hungry?" 00:14:38.660 |
He's basically saying, "All the promises of God, what is it good to me when I'm hungry 00:14:49.120 |
There was an anointing upon this nation that everybody knew, but God told them as they 00:14:55.560 |
enter into the promised land, "If you keep my covenant and my commandments, God will 00:15:00.840 |
But if you do not, there will be a curse upon you." 00:15:05.380 |
They go in, they begin to compromise, they chase after other gods, and as a result of 00:15:13.000 |
First the Assyrians come, they drag their best men and women, and they literally torture 00:15:21.000 |
The Babylonians come, and whatever was left of Israel, they take the other two tribes, 00:15:27.400 |
There is a brief period of revival where King Cyrus, the Persian king, allows them to go 00:15:33.840 |
back and reestablish the temple, reestablish the nation of Israel, but only a very small 00:15:38.440 |
portion of Israel ever come back from Babylon. 00:15:43.040 |
And it was nothing like what they were hoping for. 00:15:46.480 |
Now if that wasn't enough, after that the Greeks come in and they conquer them, and 00:15:50.640 |
after the Greeks, the Romans come in and conquer them. 00:15:55.920 |
During this whole period, in their frustration, in their dominance by secular nations, parents 00:16:03.080 |
and grandparents kept on reminding each other. 00:16:06.720 |
No matter how hard it gets, every prophet in the Old Testament reminds them that though 00:16:13.260 |
you are judged now, God will send a king, and when he comes, he's going to establish 00:16:22.200 |
There's going to be honey that's going to overflow from the ground, that the beast, 00:16:26.880 |
the lions in the land, will be lying in the ground, and without any turmoil. 00:16:36.720 |
And so they reminded each other, no matter how hard the economy got, no matter how much 00:16:42.720 |
they were suppressed, their hope was placed on this Messiah. 00:16:49.080 |
When he comes, everything is going to get better. 00:16:53.880 |
You have to understand that in the midst of all the hundreds and hundreds of years of 00:16:59.440 |
frustration and hundreds and hundreds of years reminding each other from great, great, great 00:17:05.480 |
grandparents telling them one generation after another, when the Messiah comes, God's going 00:17:19.320 |
So you can imagine the excitement about Jesus. 00:17:25.600 |
It was about the fulfillment of a nation that's been suppressed for generation after generation 00:17:34.400 |
Now Romans were not the cruelest of all the other secular nations. 00:17:45.800 |
They raped and pillaged villages to scare any other nation that would say, "If you mess 00:18:01.600 |
They set up an altar for their god at the temple that they were supposed to worship. 00:18:06.760 |
Romans, on the other hand, on the surface, looked like they were kind of allowing certain 00:18:14.020 |
But you know, one of the things, I'm not going into too much detail about what it was like 00:18:18.920 |
to be a Jew during the time of the Roman Empire, but remember in Matthew chapter 5, verse 41, 00:18:24.240 |
Jesus says, "If someone asks you to go a mile, instead of just going a mile, go the extra 00:18:29.760 |
And the reason why Jesus gives that reference was there was a law that said that if a Roman 00:18:35.040 |
soldier saw you on the street and he asked you to carry his armor, his sword, whatever 00:18:42.080 |
it was that he was carrying, you were required by law to carry that for him. 00:18:48.160 |
You can imagine how easily that can be abused. 00:18:50.880 |
A Roman soldier comes in and you're taking care of your children, and he says, "Take 00:19:03.160 |
Instead of being angry over the situation, he says, "Go an extra mile. 00:19:11.000 |
But again, it's easier said than done, but imagine if that happened on a Sabbath. 00:19:17.000 |
You're trying to keep the law, and you feel like you've kept the Sabbath well for so many 00:19:22.320 |
years and all of a sudden a soldier comes on a Sabbath day and says, "You carry this." 00:19:27.080 |
And so there was this tension between serving God and being obedient to Israel. 00:19:32.760 |
And if you look at all the questions that are asked of Jesus, it relates to that tension. 00:19:39.080 |
We're trying to obey God, but then Romans won't allow us. 00:19:48.560 |
And so all the questions pertain to this tension. 00:19:54.120 |
It was miserable for the nation, especially if you were concerned about being obedient 00:20:01.400 |
And that's why the Pharisees, you know, they all kind of figured out how to maneuver this. 00:20:10.200 |
It says when Jesus came in, people were crying out, "Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest." 00:20:16.440 |
And the word Hosanna literally means, "Save us. 00:20:22.400 |
And he's not simply talking about saving from the Romans. 00:20:28.360 |
Their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents told them every time, 00:20:39.440 |
When the Messiah comes, when the king is established, all of this is going to be wiped out. 00:20:47.320 |
God is going to fulfill what he says to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. 00:20:56.560 |
In the midst of this celebration, confetti, cloaks being thrown on the ground, this excitement 00:21:03.560 |
of finally, finally God has heard our prayers. 00:21:16.440 |
And the ground is stirring because of excitement. 00:21:18.960 |
And then right in the middle of all that, in Luke chapter 1941, it says, "When he," 00:21:22.600 |
Jesus, "drew near and saw the city, he wept over it." 00:21:30.760 |
Everybody else celebrating, euphoria, excitement about what he's going to do. 00:21:34.480 |
They all were imagining what it was going to look like. 00:21:36.600 |
I mean, here's a man who could raise people from the dead. 00:21:41.600 |
A countless number of times that the Jewish leaders wanted to catch him, and he just walks 00:21:49.480 |
Storm comes, and the disciples think that they're going to die. 00:22:05.960 |
If there was any period of Israel's history where they had hope, it was now. 00:22:11.860 |
And yet, the one that they placed their hope on in the middle of the celebration, this 00:22:22.080 |
There's only two places in the Bible where it says Jesus wept. 00:22:27.760 |
The first time is when Jesus was standing in front of Lazarus' tomb, and after he died, 00:22:33.840 |
he saw the weeping of the people, which is also very strange because he went there late 00:22:44.000 |
And he actually told them that he was going to raise him from the dead. 00:22:47.220 |
And yet, when he stood in front of Lazarus' grave, Jesus wept. 00:22:56.380 |
This is the question that if we do not answer, don't know the answer to this question, you 00:23:00.360 |
can worship Jesus all your life and completely miss the point. 00:23:05.920 |
If you were at a birthday party and everybody's singing "Happy Birthday," and the birthday 00:23:10.280 |
boy is sitting there crying, it'd be weird for you to keep singing. 00:23:15.240 |
"Happy birthday to you," and then the guy is crying. 00:23:24.160 |
Maybe you'll just write it off as he's happy. 00:23:32.180 |
Like, how many of us would just keep singing and then go cut the cake and smash it in his 00:23:43.840 |
An average person would stop and try to figure out what's going on. 00:23:53.240 |
You try to at least ask and find out because clearly there's something you don't understand. 00:24:01.840 |
But here, Jesus in the midst of this celebration, people going wild, throwing their clothes 00:24:07.320 |
on the ground, and the Bible says that he was weeping, and yet nothing happens. 00:24:17.960 |
Nobody stops to ask the question like, "Jesus, what are we missing?" 00:24:22.680 |
Maybe people must have seen him because it's recorded here, but my guess is they saw him 00:24:27.880 |
They didn't understand, so they just kind of kept going. 00:24:32.080 |
So they probably had that in the back of their mind, and they really didn't realize what 00:24:36.680 |
was happening until after, later on, they looked back and said, "Yes, Jesus did weep, 00:24:49.800 |
Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace, but now 00:25:00.560 |
Scripture says that he was weeping because they completely missed why he came and who 00:25:10.120 |
They thought they knew why he came, and they were projecting all their hopes and dreams 00:25:16.520 |
But the reason why Jesus was weeping was the Messiah that they wanted was not the Messiah 00:25:23.920 |
And he knew that they would end up rejecting him when they found out that this was not 00:25:30.280 |
They have been breaking the second commandment all along. 00:25:34.940 |
They made a graven image of God, and they were worshiping the false God all along in 00:25:42.420 |
They were waiting and eagerly anticipating of the coming of the Messiah, but the Messiah 00:25:46.840 |
that they projected was a Messiah that they've created in their own minds. 00:25:52.120 |
It was not the Messiah that was promised in Scripture. 00:26:08.080 |
How many of our Christian faith in our generation, in the name of Jesus, in the singing of the 00:26:16.440 |
Gospels, in our membership in churches, is a pursuit of a God that we've created in our 00:26:24.180 |
And the reason why it's so deceptive is because it seems close. 00:26:28.380 |
And that's what the danger of the second commandment is. 00:26:32.840 |
Either you are with God or you are against God. 00:26:34.940 |
But the breaking of the second commandment, it happens when we are deceived. 00:26:39.320 |
We give in to our own passions, our own desire, our own passion, our own pride. 00:26:50.240 |
We pursue seemingly on the surface, sing the same songs. 00:26:54.780 |
Yet at the core, we make him into something that we want, rather than what the Scripture 00:27:02.000 |
You see, the Israelites constantly greeted each other by saying "shalom." 00:27:11.060 |
But the word for shalom, the Hebrew word, shalom, basically means completion. 00:27:17.100 |
And that's what they were looking for, a God to come and make them complete. 00:27:22.520 |
In fact, the Midrash, Midrash basically is a commentary of the first five books of the 00:27:28.280 |
The Jewish scholars basically was helping interpret the meaning of their laws. 00:27:33.480 |
And in the Midrash, this is how the law of God is summarized. 00:27:38.000 |
All that is written in the Torah was written for the sake of shalom. 00:27:46.200 |
Because he's not saying a part, he's not saying a certain part of the law. 00:27:51.280 |
In fact, the nation of Israel prided themselves of being the people of the law. 00:27:58.760 |
So when the scholars studying the Old Testament says, "All of the law was written for the 00:28:09.520 |
That kind of gives you some context of why the Israelites were saying shalom to one another. 00:28:16.240 |
It was all their hopes wrapped up in this word shalom. 00:28:20.720 |
That when Messiah comes, he's going to bring the shalom. 00:28:26.520 |
And again, the root word for peace, for the word shalom, is shalem, which means completion. 00:28:31.560 |
In other words, when he comes, he's going to bring perfection. 00:28:36.800 |
Whatever is lacking in our nation, whatever is lacking in our family, whatever is lacking 00:28:42.940 |
in our education, whatever is lacking in our temple, in our worship, when he comes, he's 00:28:54.440 |
You know what's interesting is, at the core of this word, peace and completion, is directly 00:29:03.700 |
In the Old Testament, in the book of Genesis, when God created and he worked for six days, 00:29:09.040 |
what does he do on the seventh day when the work is complete? 00:29:14.840 |
So the idea is work that leads to rest, completion. 00:29:20.920 |
So the idea of Sabbath is to bring us to completion. 00:29:25.420 |
And that's how the Bible describes our salvation, that because of what Jesus has done, because 00:29:30.760 |
he finished his work, he takes us into his Sabbath. 00:29:35.600 |
That's why he says, "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you 00:29:40.480 |
That's why it says in the book of Hebrews later on, "Work hard to enter the what? 00:29:47.280 |
So in this word, shalom, contains the Old Testament version of all that we know of the 00:29:56.440 |
So the word shalom basically was a description of the Messiah who's going to come and fulfill 00:30:02.640 |
But the problem was, what they thought to be shalom was off. 00:30:10.140 |
If they only knew what was going to bring peace, if they only knew what was truly going 00:30:17.280 |
to bring peace, then judgment would not be coming. 00:30:22.080 |
After that, he describes the destruction of Israel in AD 70, that is fulfilled exactly 00:30:28.620 |
And that's why he was weeping, even in the midst of celebration and this euphoria, because 00:30:33.800 |
he knew that at the end of this, judgment was coming upon Israel, not deliverance. 00:30:40.040 |
The scripture describes, Isaiah 54 10, that the covenant he made with Israel was a covenant 00:30:48.720 |
Judges 6 24, Jesus is called, God is called the Lord of peace. 00:30:54.400 |
First Thessalonians 5 23, God is called the God of peace. 00:30:58.260 |
The preaching of the gospel, according to Paul, is preaching of peace to those who are 00:31:04.480 |
Romans chapter 5 1 describes our salvation as having peace with God. 00:31:09.080 |
And Jesus ultimately is called the Prince of Peace in Isaiah 9 verse 6. 00:31:15.800 |
This Palm Sunday is a very, very important day for Christians. 00:31:20.120 |
It's not just the resurrection, because this day sets off the day that is going to either 00:31:27.400 |
lead us to the cross and celebrate the resurrection of Christ, or Palm Sunday is the day that 00:31:38.960 |
Either the Jesus that we worship is the Jesus of the Bible, or it is a Jesus that we created 00:31:48.580 |
It doesn't matter how we got to the cross, because in the end, it doesn't change what 00:31:56.200 |
You can live your whole life in church, calling his name Jesus, praying to Jesus, worshiping 00:32:01.960 |
Jesus and have the same response of Christ weeping over our souls, because we did not 00:32:22.760 |
Everywhere he went, there was a lot of activity. 00:32:25.760 |
Some followed him because they thought they were going to benefit from his fame. 00:32:32.320 |
But in the midst of following him, many missed him. 00:32:35.200 |
In John 1.10, it says, "He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the 00:32:44.200 |
I think the greatest tragedy of being in a Christianized nation is that that line between 00:32:52.520 |
following the Christ of the Bible and the Christ that we've created has been blurred 00:32:57.400 |
to the point where it's difficult for us to tell who is and is not following Jesus. 00:33:12.640 |
Am I following Jesus, or am I following the Jesus I've created in my mind? 00:33:17.080 |
Is this a cultural Christ or Christ of the Bible that I worship? 00:33:21.420 |
Is this Christ that I worship, if I follow him, do I follow him to the cross, or do I 00:33:31.160 |
Acts chapter 13.27, "For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did 00:33:35.400 |
not recognize him, nor understand the utterance of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, 00:33:49.480 |
A few he anointed, and it is by the testimony of the few that we have the gospel here today. 00:33:57.720 |
But as it says in Acts 13.27, "Because they did not recognize him, they also fulfilled 00:34:02.040 |
the prophecy by rejecting him, condemning him, and by their hands they crucified him." 00:34:10.280 |
You and I will either be the recipients of what Christ has done on the cross, or we will 00:34:15.840 |
participate in the sins of those who crucified him on that same cross. 00:34:21.320 |
In Isaiah 53, 4-6, it says, "Surely our grief he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried, 00:34:27.280 |
yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 00:34:31.520 |
But he was pierced through for our transgression, he was crushed for our iniquities. 00:34:35.840 |
The chastening for our well-being fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed. 00:34:41.360 |
All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us turned to his own way, but the Lord 00:34:45.740 |
has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him." 00:34:53.840 |
All the activities that we're doing this week, again, it's for the purpose of reminding us, 00:34:59.240 |
If you've already drifted, it'd be a great opportunity this week to kind of catch yourself 00:35:03.520 |
and recalibrate your heart and your life to get right with God. 00:35:07.520 |
And those of you, maybe you're doing fine, but to strengthen what you already have so 00:35:12.120 |
that it doesn't become weak and begin to stray. 00:35:17.680 |
But all of this, all of this that we're doing, everything that we do on Sunday, everything 00:35:22.800 |
that we do this week is for the purpose of reminding us, this is not our home. 00:35:29.360 |
Jesus did not die to make your business better. 00:35:33.360 |
Jesus did not die to feed you because you're hungry. 00:35:37.840 |
Jesus did not die so that you can have a better marriage. 00:35:41.960 |
Jesus did not die so that you can have a better career. 00:35:46.520 |
Jesus did not die so that you can have better friends. 00:35:51.120 |
Jesus did not die so that you can have a better retirement and you'd make wise choices in 00:35:56.360 |
your investment so that you can get ahead in life with the help of Jesus. 00:36:05.200 |
He didn't save us from having a hard life in this world. 00:36:11.520 |
He saved us so that we would not have a hard life in eternity. 00:36:15.980 |
That even if our life during our period here is difficult, all of that to ultimately result 00:36:23.320 |
in glory when He comes is not about this place. 00:36:29.280 |
I pray that our Lord would open our eyes to see that we're just sojourners just passing 00:36:36.000 |
And the main thing that He saved us from is ourselves. 00:37:04.600 |
And until we recognize that, when we say, "Save us, O God! 00:37:09.280 |
Save us, Hosanna!" we will be proclaiming the same thing that the multitudes did. 00:37:15.200 |
And Jesus will be weeping over our souls because we completely missed the point. 00:37:20.400 |
I pray that each event of this week would cause us to see the depth of our sin that 00:37:28.040 |
So that when we come into communion on Friday, that that communion table would break us. 00:37:38.640 |
The significance of what He has done on Friday would not simply just pass us by like any 00:37:46.160 |
That we would weep with Him, that we may celebrate with Him. 00:37:49.600 |
Let's take some time to pray as we invite our worship team to come. 00:38:00.840 |
My prayer is that today would prepare us for what's coming. 00:38:05.960 |
I don't want you guys to think of it as like, "Okay, Sunday is over and then now what?" 00:38:10.200 |
But the whole purpose of today's message is to get you ready for what's coming and to 00:38:20.040 |
Whatever it is that you normally do, it may not be sinful, but to commit this week to 00:38:24.040 |
really get right and get on the right track with God. 00:38:27.800 |
So let's pray and ask God to reveal those things.