Yeah, last sermon. Well, we'll see how things go from here on out. Yeah, turn with me to Matthew chapter 21. Again, this is the Lord's Day, and especially in kicking off Palm Sunday, Passion Week, it would be appropriate for us to just look over the Palm Sunday account. And so in Matthew chapter 21, verses 1 through 11, that's where we'll be.

And even as I come up here, I know you guys have been at this church for about almost 10 years now. And every year, there's a Passion Week. So you read the Palm Sunday account. You read about Jesus clearing the temple. And the question that I come to is, how do I make something that I already know new?

Isn't that the struggle that we have when we read the Bible? We read the same things over and over again in Paul's letters. And it's like, we've been set free. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And you read it, and you're just kind of like, okay, I know that already.

And I remember one thing that Pastor Peter would always remind me, especially when it comes to scripture, is it's the living Word of God. It's designed to tell us something new each time we come to it. And so with this Palm Sunday account, what I'm hoping to accomplish is to have you guys look at the Palm Sunday account from a new perspective.

Not necessarily my perspective, but from the perspective of someone who has been transformed, has been changed because he and his friend encountered Christ. And so what makes Palm Sunday unique in my mind is not necessarily the account of what took place, but what took place before Jesus entered Jerusalem, right?

So in Matthew chapter 20, verses 29 to 34, you have the account of the healing of two blind men in Jericho. Now I want you to consider that. They were blind. I mean, they can't see anything. They're at the mercies of their friends and of strangers. I mean, they can't see anything.

But in Matthew chapter 20, verses 29 to 34, what we have here is this encounter that these two blind men have with Jesus Christ. They're calling out to him, "Son of David, Son of David," trying to get his attention. And they do. Despite the crowd trying to suppress them and say, "Hey, just be quiet.

You're nobody." They yelled out more, "Son of David, Son of David, have mercy on us." And so Jesus called for them and he gathers the two blind men to him and he asked him, "What do you want me to do?" And simply put, they ask him, "Give us back our sight." And in verse 34, it says, "Jesus, in pity, touched their eyes and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him." In Mark's account, we know that one of these blind men was named Bartimaeus.

And I'll reiterate his name throughout this message. And imagine being in their shoes. They've been blind for, I don't know, for how long, but for whatever period of time, they had no sight. All they saw was darkness. And then they encountered the Son of David, Jesus Christ. And now their eyes have been made open.

And what is the first things that they see as they follow Jesus? The Passion Week. They're seeing, for the first time, Jesus going through Palm Sunday, going through the cleaning of the temple on Monday, Silent Wednesday, and finally Good Friday. And so what I want to do this morning is pick up three observations of Christ as he goes through Palm Sunday from the perspective of Bartimaeus and his friends.

Okay? And so what we'll do this morning is instead of reading the whole account, we're just going to read verses four and five in Matthew chapter 21, and then we'll pray and we'll get started. Matthew chapter 21, verses four and five. This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, "Say to the daughter of Zion, 'Behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.'" Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you again for this time to exalt Christ through your Word. And especially, Lord God, in light of Passion Week, this is a time where all of your people, believers who have confessed Christ as their Lord and Savior, this is a time for us to recalibrate and refocus, Lord God, on what is most important, on who is most important in our lives.

And so God, I pray, and I know the leaders are praying and people in this room are praying. We pray, Lord God, that this Passion Week will not just simply be another week that just goes by, but rather this would be a week in which our passion and our focus for you could be reignited, that we would see with much more clarity how different we are to be from this world.

And Lord God, as we study about Christ this morning, again, Lord, help us to be in awe and wonder of our Lord and Savior. And so we thank you. In your name we pray, amen. Alright, so if I was Bartimaeus and his friend who just recently received sight, I'm coming up to Palm Sunday, and I'm looking at what's going on, and I see Jesus, and the first observation that I would take note of if I was Bartimaeus is that he is a commander.

He is a commander. Alright, look at verses 1 and 2. Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, the mountain of olives, then Jesus sent two disciples saying to them, "Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her.

Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, 'The Lord needs them,' and he will send them at once." And so the first observation that Bartimaeus and his friend would notice is that Jesus is a commander. He gave a command to his disciples, and it's an imperative here in the Greek.

It says, "Go into the village, untie and bring them to me." Again, the time was coming for Jesus to accomplish his purpose on earth. From Luke, in Luke 9, 51, it states that Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem. Now again, when you hear that phrase, "set his face," it brings about an image of just determination.

There is a purpose, and Jesus will not fail to accomplish it. He is setting his face towards Jerusalem to accomplish his ultimate purpose. In Mark chapter 10, verses 32 to 34, it describes Jesus and his disciples walking towards Jerusalem for the final week of Jesus' life. And Jesus walked ahead of his disciples.

And for whatever the reason, in Mark chapter 10, verses 32 and 34, the disciples noticed something different about Jesus. In fact, it was so different that they were amazed and afraid. Something holy was taking place here. I mean, they've walked with Jesus for three years, so what's so special about this time?

Like, did Jesus have a special cloak on him? Did he have extra swagger with him that day? I mean, what was different that would make the disciples amazed and afraid? And I would argue that the reason why is because they understood, maybe partially, but they understood that something great was about to happen.

Something tremendous was about to happen. Something life-altering was about to happen to the world. And these are important details because we know Christ was purposeful. That he wouldn't just simply send his disciples into this village, commanding them to take the donkey and the colt, for no reason. There was a reason behind his commands.

And all throughout the Gospel accounts, and even throughout Scripture, we find Jesus was not afraid to give commands. He was not afraid to act upon his role as a commander. In Matthew chapter 4, verse 17, he commands the masses to repent and to believe because the kingdom of God is near.

In Matthew chapter 4, verse 19, he commands his disciples to follow him wherever he goes. In Matthew chapter 5, verse 27 to 30, he commands the kingdom people not to lust. In Matthew chapter 28, verse 18, he commands his church to go and make disciples of all nations. So Jesus is not afraid of passing off commands.

And all the commands of Christ, found not only in the Gospel, but throughout the Scriptures, they are designed to draw God's people nearer to him. Right? Again, whether they're drawing near to God through salvation, right, when they hear Jesus' command to repent and to believe, or whether they're obeying some sort of command that is designed to sanctify the individual, like love your neighbor as yourself.

All these things, all these commands that Christ lays out before us, these imperatives, all have a purpose. I know, when we hear the word command or commander, it conjures up a negative type of reaction, right? Sometimes when we hear the word command, we get the idea of it being burdensome or unwanted, right?

You know, I moved back in with my mom, and I love my mom to death. I mean, I love her a lot. She's invested in me so much. But even this morning, as I got up this morning to just, you know, kind of finalize this sermon, she was giving me my commands, like, "Oh, you need to clean up before you go.

Oh, you need to eat this vitamin. It's good for you." You know, and, "Oh, you do this, do that, do that." I'm just like, "Okay, Mom." I'm 31 years old. I know what to do. At those times, when she's passing out those commands, it's burdensome. It's unwanted. But I think that it's not the commands itself that are burdensome.

I think oftentimes it's who the command is coming from that can make the commands burdensome and unwanted, right? So for example, when I was in high school, I played a year of high school football. And our freshman team, I mean, our freshman team was pretty good. I mean, we were almost undefeated.

We lost one game. And it was fun. You know, I mean, whenever the coach told us to run a play, we ran the play. When the coach told us to do something, we would go and do it. And we wouldn't just simply do it. We would do it with passion, with conviction, with focus, to execute the plan to be complete.

Now, I came a little bit late into the season. And so obviously all the positions that I would want to play were already taken. But the JV team needed spots. And so I didn't get promoted to JV. I was just simply sent there to be like an extra body, you know, just to be used.

Now that JV team was, it wasn't as awesome as our freshman team. I mean, the record was pretty bad. They're winless. And you know, you could tell by the players on the JV team that when the coach was giving them a play to accomplish or to execute, that they weren't as eager or they weren't as focused or they weren't as precise in executing that play.

When the coach would tell them to do something, you could tell they were dragging their feet. All because they didn't trust the coach. The coach has led them into this path where they were winless and they didn't have anything to be proud about. And so they didn't listen to him.

So his commands became burdensome, became unwanted. In the same way too, depending on who gives the commands affects our focus, affects our passion, affects the way we want to execute these commands. And we know with Christ as the great commander, that he will never lead us astray. I don't think there's anyone in this room that will come up and say that Jesus led me astray.

I followed Jesus and my life turned out being the worst for it. I think all of us could safely say that Jesus is good. And what he commands us to do is going to be good for me. And it's going to be honoring to God. And so we need to understand that Jesus is a commander.

He will command us however he sees fit and it will be good. So Bartimaeus and his buddy, they're looking at Jesus and saying, "Okay, he's a commander. Great." Now the second thing that I would assume Bartimaeus would observe is that Jesus is a fulfiller. He is a fulfiller. Jesus keeps his word.

He will keep his promises. Unlike politicians and other world leaders that we may know of, or maybe even our bosses at work, sometimes they may say one thing, but then they do something else, right? Well with Jesus, we understand that he will keep his word. He will fulfill it to the very end.

John 1.1, right? Jesus is the word of God made manifest in the flesh. And Jesus was very purposeful in selecting Zechariah 9.9 as the text to be fulfilled on this day. Again, Matthew refers to Christ fulfilling some portion of Old Testament prophecies at least 15 times in the gospel account.

And so when you consider the timing of this entrance and you consider the word, the promises found in Zechariah 9.9, again, it is another time in which Christ is declaring, "I am your Messiah. I am your Savior." Now we read in verse 4 and 5, you know, that he did all these things to fulfill what is spoken by the prophets.

It says, "Say to the daughter of Zion, 'Behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.'" And so I think it would be good for us to unpack what Zechariah 9.9 is trying to get at here.

And then we'll come back to Matthew chapter 21. So again, flip your Bibles over to Zechariah chapter 9. Again, it's just two books before the book of Matthew. Zechariah 9.9. Again, to give us a little context here, Zechariah was a book written to the nation of Israel when they returned from their exile.

Right? For 70 years, they were gone. They were kicked out of their land. And so now being part of the, under the regime of the Persians, they allow, King Cyrus allowed them to come back to the land and to kind of like rebuild it, to restore it. And so Zechariah was a book written during this time.

And Zechariah, the book itself, is filled with a lot of hope and a lot of positive prophecies as a means to motivate the Israelites to continue to rebuild the temple, to rebuild their lives in this land. And specifically Zechariah 9. Zechariah 9 starts off with this judgment upon, not Israel, okay?

I know we read a lot of the Old Testament prophets and we just simply assume all judgment is on Israel because they're just a bad, bad people, you know? But this time, no, it's judgment upon Israel's enemies. Okay? Again, this prophecy is designed to be hopeful for the nation of Israel at this time.

And so here we have God basically prophesying, "Your enemies will be judged. They will be punished. They will be, um, um, they will no longer exist." And then after all that in verses, chapter 9, verses 1 through 8, we go to verse 9. In verse 9, here we have a positive prophecy.

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. Full and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey." Remember, during Zechariah's time, they did not have a king.

In Israel's, in context of Israel's mindset, having a king, having a Davidic king on a throne was essential. That's how they knew they were God's people. They look at the throne and there's no one sitting there. They have a governor, but he's not a king. And so, put yourself in the shoes of these Israelites.

They're coming into a land. They have to rebuild everything. They don't know how their, how their government's going to be, what their government's going to look like. And here's a prophecy that a king is coming to them. And he's going to be identified as one riding on a young colt.

Again, that image of riding on this colt or this young animal indicates a peaceful transition, right? It's supposed to indicate that there's peace coming. Victory is coming. And so, you know, putting ourselves in Barnabas' shoes, we're seeing that Jesus is a commander. He commands His disciples to do stuff and they follow and obey.

Great. Oh, look at this. He's asking for a colt. And that's fulfilling Zechariah 9.9. Great. Maybe with our newfound eyes, we could actually go back to Zechariah 9.9 and let's read a little bit here. Oh, look, there is a king that is coming, right? And so, that's my third observation here.

If I was Barnabas and his friend, newly given sight, I would take notice that there is a king. Jesus is the king. And there are three characteristics that are listed off for here, listed off to us in Zechariah 9.9 that I want us to pay close attention to. The first characteristic of this king is he is righteous.

He is a righteous king. The Hebrew word is "zaddik," which means to conform to a moral or ethical standard. And as believers of the Word of God, we know that all human beings, mankind, has been created in the image of God. And so, the standard, the moral and ethical standard that all mankind is under is not man's own making.

We all affirm that the standard, the moral and ethical standard that we live by is set by the Creator Himself, God. And so, that is the standard in which this king that is coming in Zechariah 9.9 is living up to. He is righteous. He lives up to the standard of God's righteousness.

In other words, the king that is described here in Zechariah 9.9 is someone who knows how to respond rightly in all and every situations. He knows how to respond rightly. If the situation calls for mercy, the king will show mercy. If the situation calls for correction, the king will correct.

And this is something that should really stand out to us as sinners, right? Because all of us are in different situations, in different areas of our lives. And sometimes we respond correctly, but I would say most of the time we don't respond correctly, right? And so, this is an amazing characteristic that this king has.

He is righteous. He knows how to respond. If we contrast this to Israel's kings, right, then we know that Israel's kings, even though they strive after righteousness, they were never righteous completely, right? Saul, the first king of Israel, not righteous at all, right? Even though he was the first king of Israel, he led Israel astray.

David was the second king. He had his moments of righteousness, but ultimately we understand that his life was not characterized by righteousness completely. Solomon, the man with wisdom, right? We have so many stories in the Old Testament where his wisdom allowed him to respond rightly to different things. And yet, when you look at his marriage, and you look at where his heart was given over to, we know that fell short.

He wasn't righteous. And every king afterwards that came after Solomon, you know, first kings 1422, first kings 1526, so on and so forth, there was a phrase that described these kings. And the phrase is, "They did what was evil in the sight of the Lord." They were unrighteous. They did not live up to the moral and ethical standards of God.

If you want to put another phrase, another spin to it, they didn't live up to God's holiness. Again, as these blind men regained their sight, they noticed that he is righteous. He does everything rightly. Christ's righteousness is consistent and it never wavers. Unlike Israel's kings, Christ's righteousness is consistent and never wavers.

He responds correctly to the masses with needs. He responds to the religious leaders by with correction. He responds to his disciples with compassion and sometimes correction as well. All in all, that's how his righteousness is manifested, the way he responds. So this king is righteous. Secondly, this king is a saving king.

He saves. Zechariah 9.9 says, "Behold, your king is coming to you. Righteous and having salvation is he." The word salvation here, saving, right, in the Hebrew depicts an image of making something wide. Right? Making something wide. It pictures an individual surrounded by enemies, dangers, being oppressed. And finally, someone from the outside comes in, making wide a path of salvation to save them, to have a path of escape.

This happened to Israel, literally speaking. Right? It's not, we're not, I don't want to jump ahead to the theological truth, but literally this happened to Israel. Right? Deuteronomy chapter 20 verse 4 in the NASB, it says, "For the Lord your God is with, is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to save you." Again, that word there, save, it refers to making wide.

And we see in Joshua, right, in the book of Joshua, the whole entire book is about this conquest that Israel partakes in with God's help. Right? These cities were occupied with other people. Israel was utterly afraid that these other cities are going to destroy them. And God promises them, "I will save you by making wide the path of victory." And what happens, right?

Jericho, the walls fall down. So again, salvation is making wide. The image of making wide is also a good picture to illustrate the spiritual truth of our salvation. Right? I mean, when we think about our lives before we met Christ, we were surrounded by sin. Not just outwardly, but inwardly, entangled in it.

We were depraved. And on top of that, we knew that we were depraved. And so we were guilty by our own sins. And what do we do with this guilt? This world tells us to suppress it, to ignore it, move on, focus on happier things. But God says, "That is not the answer.

If you want to be saved from your sins, I'm going to make wide this road of salvation." And when you take on that road of salvation, you're not walking on it alone. Christ will be there with you, walking every step of the way. That is salvation. Making wide in a world messed up by sin.

And we know that the only way in which that path was made wide for us is because of what Christ has accomplished on the cross. I mean, think about it. Think about when this phrase of making wide, I mean, the sensation that comes with it. You have freedom. There's space.

There's space to breathe, to move around, to do stuff. Think about China. Think about the buses there. And the buses are always packed with people. You know? And I think the greatest feeling in the world is when the bus comes packed with people to your bus stop, and when it stops at your bus stop, all those people leave the bus, and you get to go in to an empty bus.

It's wide open. That is salvation. You know, I get, like, singing this song about amazing grace, you know, like, I've sang this song so many times, but for today, it was just a different, it was just a different feel to it. Being understanding that we have been, you know, our chains have been set free.

That we have salvation. And it's made wide for us, for us to enjoy. Salvation. That is what this King is bringing. Behold, your King is coming to you, righteous, and having salvation. The last characteristic of this King, Zechariah 9, is humble. He is a humble King. Definition of humility in Hebrew, I'm just going to read it, but it says, "This adjective stresses the moral and spiritual condition of the godly as the goal of affliction, implying that the state is joined with a suffering life rather than with one of worldly happiness and abundance." In other words, humility is choosing the hard path of suffering because it is the path that will enhance and draw the believer closer to God.

Humility does not mean we are passive. Humility does not mean we are limp, like a wet noodle. Humility means we make a purposeful decision to no longer live for ourselves, but to live for Christ. Because we know that path will draw us closer to God. There is no other motive in choosing this harder path of suffering other than to have God and no one else.

I mean, when you look at Zechariah 9, 9, and you can go back to Matthew chapter 21 for the rest of this sermon, but in Matthew chapter 21, notice that Matthew does not really put the full content of Zechariah 9, 9 in here, right? Verse 5 says, "Say to the daughter of Zion, 'Behold, your king is coming to you.'" Okay.

Humble. Wait a minute. Zechariah talks about righteousness and bringing salvation. Where's that? Did Matthew make a mistake? Did Matthew, was he trying to like, you know, did he just have a bad copy of the Old Testament? No. Matthew wanted us to focus on the fact that though he is being triumphantly received by the people of Israel, that this path, this entry was a humbling entry.

Jesus is taking the hard path of suffering. Though the crowds are cheering, he is about to suffer. He is humbling himself. Christ suffered prior to all this as well. He suffered by putting on human flesh. He suffered by forfeiting perfect fellowship with the triune God to come to this earth.

Christ suffered by having human limitations like sleep and hunger and pain. Christ suffered by having enemies that threatened his life. Christ suffered being used as a tool by the masses. Right? You remember, he fed the 5,000 and what did they want? They just wanted more food. They didn't want Christ.

They wanted his blessings. Remember those 10 lepers, but only one came back? Jesus was being used as a tool and he suffered. So we can understand Jesus when he states in Isaiah chapter 49 verse 4, and that's one of the servant songs, and we know that Jesus is the suffering servant in those songs.

It says, "But I said, I have labored in vain. I have spent my strength for nothing in vanity. Yet surely my right is with the Lord and my recompense with my God." And again, we know, if you've been, if you're reading the Bible, you know that the ultimate expression of humiliation, the ultimate expression of humility that Christ received at the hands of mankind was the physical torture, the mockings, the beatings, and ultimately the crucifixion upon the cross.

That is what Zechariah 9, 9 is pointing us to. That is what Matthew is trying to point us to in Matthew chapter 21 verse 5. That when Christ came on Palm Sunday, he came not to be exalted, but he came to be humbled, to suffer, to die for the sole purpose of redeeming his people of their sins.

Christ is the humble king. And so I want to conclude with this question, and again, I titled this sermon, "Who are you fixing your eyes upon?" Because imagine Bartimaeus and his friend. They had just regained sight by encountering Jesus. And so you can imagine the excitement, the joy that they have in knowing that this man just gave them their sight back.

And so they follow Jesus. They're fixing their eyes upon him on Palm Sunday, and they're seeing him being exalted and celebrated. People are saying, "Hosanna in the highest. Glory to God for the son of David has come." And Bartimaeus and his friend are like, "Yeah, man, that's the guy that I want to follow.

I want to fix my eyes upon this guy. I want to do whatever he does." Monday comes around, and blind man Bartimaeus and his friend observe Jesus clearing out the temples and rebuking the Pharisees and the religious leaders of their time. And so maybe Bartimaeus and his friend are starting to think, "Oh, what's Jesus doing here?

He's upsetting a couple of folk, some people here, some religious leaders here. I don't know. Let's just keep our eyes focused on him. Let's just keep following him and see what happens." Again, I'm reading into the lines here, but maybe Bartimaeus and his friends were able to hear some of Jesus' teachings to his disciples.

And perhaps in hearing the teachings, they're beginning to hear Jesus is leaving them? Where is Jesus going? He's talking about this helper that he's going to send back to them, but we don't want the helper. We want Jesus. I don't know. Should we keep our eyes fixed on him?

And finally, Good Friday comes along, and they see Jesus just five days before being exalted and celebrated, but now being mocked, being beaten, being tortured, being spat upon, ultimately being crucified. So now blind man Bartimaeus and his friend have to ask, "Are we going to keep our eyes fixed on this man who gave us new sight?" Again, I don't know.

I mean, Bartimaeus was named in Mark chapter 10, and so perhaps he was a prominent member of the church after all this happened. I don't know about his other friend. But the question that we have to ask ourselves this morning, are we fixing our eyes upon Jesus? Not the Jesus that is all cuddly and is there at our side, but are we looking at the Jesus who is a commander, who is a fulfiller, who is the righteous king, the king that brings salvation but also the humble king?

Are we fixing our eyes upon that man? And if we are, are we following him? I pray that our church will not become a church characterized by people who fixed their eyes upon Jesus at a distance. I pray that our church will not go in that direction. But as we fix our gaze upon Jesus, as our gaze upon Jesus becomes clearer because of our sanctification, because of the sanctification that God brings into our lives, that we would say in our hearts and in our eyes, "I want to follow this man." You know, it's such an easy principle.

Fix your eyes upon Jesus. When I was in college, that was the principle I wanted to live by. And at that time, it just sounded cool and godly, right? But as I continued to grow and practice this principle, it became more and more real to me that this is a principle that I need to live by.

It is not just a cool saying that I can post up on my Facebook wall, but rather it needs to be a characteristic mark in my life. To be known as a man, to be known as a family that fixes our eyes upon our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, going wherever He goes, doing whatever He does.

And as a church, are you ready to answer that question? Who are you fixing your eyes upon? So go ahead and bow your heads and pray as the praise team comes up. Passion week is a great opportunity for us to ask this question on a daily basis. Am I fixing my eyes upon Jesus?

Am I fixing my eyes upon the right Jesus? And as we go through the passion passages, I pray that it will not simply be old news, but rather you will understand that everything that takes place in the next seven days is designed to draw us closer to God, is designed to sanctify us so we can see Christ more clearly in our lives.

So go ahead and pray as the praise team leads us in our response.