Okay, thank you. If we can turn your Bibles with me to Luke chapter 19. I want to read Luke chapter 19, verse 28 through 44. And then I'm not going to read it, but the text that we're going to be in this morning is in Zechariah. Okay, Luke chapter 19, verse 28 through 44.

Reading out of the NASB. After he had said these things, he was going on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he approached Bethphage and Bethany near the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples saying, "Go into the village ahead of you. There as you enter, you will find a coat tied on which no one yet has ever sat.

Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' You shall say, 'The Lord has need of it.' So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the coat, its owner said to them, 'Why are you untying the coat?' They said, 'The Lord has need of it.' They brought it to Jesus and they threw their coats on the coat and put Jesus on it.

As he was going, they were spreading their coats on the road. As soon as he was approaching near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the miracles which they had seen, shouting, 'Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.

Peace in heaven, glory in the highest.' Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, 'Teacher, rebuke your disciples.' But Jesus answered, 'I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out.' When he approached Jerusalem, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, 'If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace, but now they have been hidden from your eyes.

For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw a barricade against you and wrestle around you and hem you in every side. And they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.'" Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we pray for guidance. We pray for your Holy Spirit to convict and lead us. I pray that your word would make sense. It would cause us, Lord God, to see the depth of your grace and love for us. Lord, as we begin this Passion Week with Palm Sunday, help us to understand what you were doing, what you are doing, that our hearts may be surrendered to you.

We pray for your blessing over this time. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. As I've already said, this is a very busy week, probably the busiest week out of the whole year for us as a church because every single day we have something filled. And so at the end of it, usually Sunday night, especially the pastoral staff and the leaders are pretty exhausted.

And I'm sure you guys are exhausted. Sunday morning, we wake up early in the morning, give our devotion, and then there's a lot of things going on this week. And the reason why we do this every year is because our natural tendency is to drift. You know, the whole thing that we've been talking about in Hebrews is because our natural tendency is we get caught up and tangled with, you know, everyday things and raising children, paying bills, concerned about what's going on, whether it's political, economical.

And so our natural tendency is to just kind of drift from God. So God tells the nation of Israel all these things that he plays, all these rituals and sacrifices and festivals in order to cause them to stop, break into their normal routine, and for them to remember what God has done because their natural tendency is to forget, especially this year, right?

Because the pandemic, you know, when we survey the church, when we survey what's going on outside the church, we hear a lot of people saying that they're fatigued, they're tired, they're distracted. And I'm sure most of you are sick and tired of being on the Zoom. You know, we're just waiting for us to get to, what is it, orange and then hopefully yellow soon, you know, and then whatever normal is to get back to normal so we don't have to be wearing these silly masks, you know, that we'd be done away with.

But in the midst of all that's been going on, and it's not just because of the pandemic, our natural tendency is when we are not striving after God, we don't drift toward God. We don't sit there and get entangled and get busy and take care of our children and then wake up six months later, it's like, "Oh, I feel this passion for Christ." We don't drift toward God.

We drift away from God. So if we're not deliberate about keeping our heart focused on Christ, if we're not deliberate about anchoring ourselves to Christ, we naturally have a tendency to drift. And so these times are very important for us in order for us to renew our first love.

We can go through the rituals, like, "Yeah, I've been coming up to Bible study. I haven't missed church, and I haven't missed this, and I haven't missed that." But again, our natural tendency is to the minimum. We just kind of go through the motion. We check out the box, but at the end, we find our hearts so hardened away from God, and sometimes we get so hardened that we even question, "Do I even believe this?" So we want to take this time this week, Monday through Friday, going over each day, and I hope that what you get out of it this week is not simply logically, "Oh, this is what happened in history.

This is what he did in the first day, second day, third day." Hopefully through each of these events that you recognize that Christ was deliberately walking toward the cross and how each one of these events led him to that point. So that when we come and have communion on Friday, that communion, that we really have a rich understanding of what it is that we're participating, and we're hoping that by next Sunday when we come to celebrate Easter, that our singing would be louder than normal, right?

That our praising will be louder than our usual way of singing, that hopefully it'll kind of cause us to be focused and to renew our first love toward Christ. So today is Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday is the kickoff of the day where Jesus is deliberately riding on his donkey headed toward Jerusalem.

And the reason why this is so significant is up to this point, Jesus was very, very quiet about his identity. Even though the crescendo of excitement toward him has been growing and it's headed toward that place, his riding on the donkey was a very deliberate act where he's going to start the, you know, knock the first domino, and then each domino that, again, that's going to fall is going to ultimately lead him toward that cross.

You know, in the Bible, in the four Gospels, there's maybe about 10 to 12 major events that are recorded on all four Gospels. So we know that every one of these events are extremely important because as you guys know, each one of these Gospels are different eyewitnesses, different testimonies, where you have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John giving different, a Jewish angle, a Gentile angle, you know, Jesus's humanity angle, his deity angle.

And so each one of these angles highlight different aspects of Jesus's identity and what he has done. That's why even though they're talking about the same life of Jesus, that you're going to hear different things. So when something is repeated, you know it's important. It was important enough that they all highlighted it.

The triumphal entry is one of those events, one of those dozen events that are highlighted. But among, even among the same events, if you look at the four Gospels, you will notice that there are certain things that one person emphasizes and certain things that another person does not include.

This triumphal entry, even though they have, they talk about different angles, there's one event in the triumphal entry that is mentioned in detail in all four Gospels. And that detail is Jesus getting the donkey and riding that donkey into Jerusalem. So all the things that could have been highlighted in him coming into Jerusalem, telling his disciples to go get the donkey, and then to tell them, they're going to say, "Why are you taking my donkey?" He said, "Well, the Lord has need of it." And it's all okay.

That's recorded in all four Gospels. So what is the significance of this donkey that is highlighted in this detail in all four Gospels? So what I want to go over this morning is to go over the three aspects that Jesus was declaring and he was fulfilling in the riding of the donkey.

There is, it is not some random event that takes place. "Oh, he came into Jerusalem. He just happened to be riding on a donkey." Right? No, there's something about this riding of the donkey that was highlighted for us that we are to take some time to examine carefully what is its significance.

So first one, why did he ride the donkey? Number one, Jesus rode the donkey to fulfill biblical prophecy. In Zechariah 9, verse 9, it says, "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you. He is just and endowed with salvation, humble and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the fold of a donkey." He was fulfilling that particular prophecy.

He was declaring to all the people who have gathered together, "I am that guy. I am the Messiah." Up to this point, Jesus was very hush-hush about his identity. Remember, every time he would fulfill some sort of miracle, he would tell his disciples to keep it quiet. Remember the very first miracle of turning water into wine?

Jesus tells his mother, "Why do you involve me? It is not my time." So up to this point, he would perform these miracles and people would say, "He must be. He must be." But he never clearly said publicly to everybody that this is who he is. He kind of kept it quiet because he knew once his identity came out, that the first domino falls that it's going to lead him directly to the cross.

But this prophecy of him riding on a donkey was not just in Zechariah. In fact, even before that, all the way up to Genesis 49, verse 10 through 11, Jacob at the end of his life is giving blessing to his 12 children. And in his blessing, he gets to Judah and he says this, "The scepter shall not depart from Judah." In other words, you're going to be a kingly line.

"Nor the ruler's staff between his feet until Shiloh comes." And Shiloh is in reference to the Messiah. "And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. He ties his fold to the vine and his donkey's coat to the choice vine. He washes his garments in wine and his robes in the blood of grapes." Did you see that?

Even as early as his blessing to Judah, it's clearly spelled out that when the Messiah comes, he's going to be riding on a donkey. He's going to, again, talking about the vine and the wine, meaning his blood being spilled, that he's going to come and to take his place.

So this was not new to the Jews. They've been saying, "How are you going to recognize the Messiah?" Well, he's going to have the words of God. He's going to perform some miracles. But when you see a man coming into Jerusalem riding on a donkey, you know that that is going to be fulfilled.

So Jesus, for the first time in ministry, is publicly declaring to everybody there, "I am that man." See, it was a very deliberate act. What happens this week didn't happen to him. It wasn't that he made some poor choices and maybe he shouldn't have cleansed the temple and he got the leaders angry and that's why they did that.

Maybe he shouldn't have chosen Judas and betrayed him. Maybe he shouldn't have been praying out there at night. It didn't happen to him. Jesus says, by his own words, "No one takes my life. I lay it down on my own accord and I take it up." He says he did it.

He planned to do it. In fact, the Bible has over 300 different prophecies about Jesus' life, his disciples, his birth, the place of birth, betrayal, crucifixion, how he's going to be crucified, his resurrection, over 300 prophecies that were given in the Old Testament that Jesus fulfilled in his birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection.

Meaning every part of what Jesus was doing was planned and was very deliberate. In Numbers 23, verse 19, it says, "God is not man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent. Has he said and will he not do it, or has he spoken and will he not make it good?" Whenever you go on a job interview, you want to know, is he faithful?

Can we rely on that person? Does he say what he says he's going to do? Or maybe you have friends or maybe you have people in your community who say, "If he says it, you can trust him. If she says it, you can trust him." So this statement in and of itself is a beautiful statement that God does what he says he's going to do.

So without any context, that statement alone is a very honorable, respectable character to have. But when you put that in the context of Israel's history, when you put that in the context of our own history, that because God said he will do it, think about how many times in Israel's history that God would have had every right to revoke his promise.

I mean, we don't have to go that far. Every single king in Israel's history, almost every single king, was evil and they led them astray. They committed horrendous acts of idolatry. Any part of Israel's history during the kings, he could have just stepped in and said, "That's not true." The book of Judges, any one of those times, was that, "Oh, maybe through the desert they were faithful." Have you read the book of Numbers?

If you look at Israel's history from the moment that they are conceived until the end of the Old Testament, every part of it is a list of every curse that they deserve. So before they go in, God said, "If you live righteously, here's a blessing. If you live unrighteously, here's a curse." And so if you look at the history from that point on, it's curse after curse after curse after curse.

So when you look at the statement, Numbers 23 verse 19, in the context of Israel's history, not even when they were in Egypt were they faithful. Not even prior to Egypt were they faithful. Even the patriarchs, if we study them carefully, they weren't necessarily great men. And yet God says, "Because I made my promise, I will fulfill it." We don't even have to look at the Israelites.

Look at ourselves. Look at ourselves. Not only before we met Christ, after we met Christ. When you look at your life carefully, how many events in your life can you examine and say, "You know what? I didn't deserve the grace of God. God shouldn't have been patient with me." How many times in our lives could we stand before God saying, "You know what?

I did good. I am righteous. I deserve the grace of God." If we're honest with ourselves, we're no different than the Israelites. And the only reason why we celebrate this week is because God said He would be faithful despite us. And so everything that takes place in this week is God's intentional plan to go to the cross for our sins.

See, this Palm Sunday is the first domino that falls. You know, it's kind of like the cat's out of the bag, right? When we have DTR, the determining the relationship, those of you who are young and cool and hip, okay, DTR, when you have feelings for somebody and you contemplate, "Should I tell her?

Should I not tell her?" And then so you say, "When's the right time? Should I? Am I going to get rejected?" And so you contemplate all of that and you weigh the pros and cons and, you know, you gear up and then, because you know once it comes out of your mouth, you can't take it back, right?

So again, I've shared before about how I approached Esther. And so I waited a year and a half of praying, "Is it the right time? Not right time?" Resisting, and then finally she's going to go to Boston to go to some dumb college. And so I thought maybe this is the right time.

And thinking that maybe we're on the same page, maybe she's dropping hints. And so, okay, okay, I'm taking her. And then I asked her, "What are you thinking about me?" And she's like, "Like a brother." Right? It wasn't what I wanted to hear. And so there was obviously misunderstanding.

But I remember when she said that, my heart just dropped because I prepared for so long. And it's like, man, if I knew that this was the answer that was going to come, I probably wouldn't have gone through the trouble to say this. But too late. The cat's out of the bag.

So I used to have a discipler. He used to always say, "If a guy takes out a sword, he should at least cut his toenails." You have to let it sink in. In other words, if you're ready for battle, you should at least cut your toenails. You should use the sword.

Anyway, if you don't understand what that means, I remember him saying that and saying, "Well, the cat's out of the bag. Might as well go forward." And so that's how we got started. And I just told her, "Well, it's too late now. So this is how I feel, and I want to marry you." What do you think about that?

So I went forward, and that's how we got here, by the grace of God. So this Palm Sunday is God deliberately knocking down the first domino. And this is going to cause the crowds to be stirred, the leaders to pay attention, because they've been trying to get to Him for a long time.

But now Jesus is saying, "Here I am." And there's a reason why He goes to the temple as soon as He goes to Jerusalem, because He's challenging the leaders and publicly saying, "I'm here. You've been looking for me. I'm here." This is Palm Sunday. Jesus deliberately and willfully walking into danger because He knows that this is going to lead Him to the cross.

He's riding on His donkey to fulfill that promise, that prophecy, to let people know that it's time. Secondly, Jesus rode the donkey to establish His kingdom. You know, people often think like Jesus is the humble servant, right? But in Zechariah 9, verse 9 and 10, it says, "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!

Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you!" Your King is coming to you. He is just and endowed with salvation, humble and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the fall of a donkey. "I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem, and the bow of war will be cut off, and He will speak peace to the nations, and His dominion will be from sea to sea and from the river to ends of the earth." See, during times of war, typically the King would be riding on His horse to exemplify power and authority.

But in times of peace, the King would be riding on a donkey. So it wasn't unusual for a King to be on a donkey. In fact, in 1 Kings 1.33-34, when David is anointing his son Solomon to be king, he puts him on a donkey and parades him. In 1 Kings 1.33, it says, "The king said to them, 'David said to them, "Take with you the servants of your Lord, and have my son Solomon ride on my own mule, and bring him down to Gihon.

Let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint him there as king over Israel, and blow the trumpet and say, 'Long live King Solomon.'" So it was a very common practice in Israel to have the kings riding on the donkey to be anointed. So when Jesus came on a donkey, He wasn't simply refusing His kingdom.

He was actually declaring the King has arrived. He was making it very clear that that's who He is. You have to understand that the people were very eager to make Him king. See, they weren't resisting Him as a king because they wanted Him to be king. Remember, after He feeds the 5,000?

They're so enamored with Him, they wanted to forcefully make Him king. So Jesus had to break away from them. So they didn't have a problem with making Him king because they thought if they made Him king, I mean, He's opening the eyes of blind people. Women who are hemorrhaging for years get healed.

Lepers who couldn't join their families were walking back into their homes and able to go to the temple. Anybody who's hungry, He just breaks the bread and just give it to them, and they eat. You get free Medicare. You get free food, right? You get to go back into the temple.

You're restored to your family. I mean, if this guy's our king, we're set. In fact, when Jesus came in and He was under the trial with Pontius Pilate, He said, "They are saying that you are the king of the Jews. Are you He?" And Jesus says, "It is as you say." Jesus was not forsaking His kingship.

Jesus is actually publicly declaring, "I am the king." But the problem is what they wanted from their king was to come and fight for them because they thought that if their king came, just like Moses delivered the Israelites from the Egyptians, that our Messiah and our king is going to come, and He's going to fight for us, and He's going to put us in this right place.

But Jesus says in John 18.36, "Jesus answered, 'My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews, but as it is, my kingdom is not of this world.'" Think about how much energy is being poured right now to make this kingdom, this earthly kingdom a better place.

Because we think if we love Jesus, we need to unite and fight for these causes because we want this kingdom to be the place that we want to live. See, that's exactly what the Jews were wanting and begging. Because they thought that when Jesus came, whatever oppression that they felt, whatever disenfranchisement that they felt, because they were being treated as second, third, fourth class citizens in the Roman kingdom.

So if Messiah comes, He's going to deliver us from that so that we can have the same benefits as the Roman citizens. We can go where we need to go. We can have our children go to the schools that they want to go. So we need the Messiah to make this right.

And that's why they were so excited. In fact, the book of Matthew says the excitement was so great, there was a seismic stir, where we get the word seismology, an earthquake. In fact, they said there, many historians think that there were probably close to 2 million people in Jerusalem.

And the way that they calculate that is they have a record of how many lambs were killed during the Passover. And so there's 10 people. Usually you would need one lamb for every 10 person. And so they calculated all of that, and they said it could have been as many as 2 million if they go by the number of the lambs.

The lowest number I've seen is somewhere around 250 to 500,000 people. Whether you believe it's 250,000 or 2 million people, there was a tremendous number of people in Jerusalem. And on top of that, Jesus just healed Lazarus, a very prominent person. And so this rumor started to spread. Is He the Messiah?

Is He the Messiah? And they said, well, He healed Lazarus. He actually even raised somebody from the dead. So all these people came into town thinking, finally, our king is coming, and He's going to overthrow the Romans and put us in the right place. See, Jesus came, and He wasn't resisting His kingship.

But the problem was His kingdom is not of this world. They wanted to get going. Remember Peter himself. That's what was in his mind at Gethsemane. When the guards of the temple came, remember Peter? That's what he was thinking, too. He took out his sword. He was ready to fight.

He's a fisherman. He doesn't know how to wield a sword. So he swings, and he misses, and he cuts the ear. It's very comical. And all it says is Jesus picked it up and put it back on. Peter was ready to fight, because that's what all the Jews were thinking.

Now. Is it now? You want me to take the sword out now? And Jesus said something weird that they didn't understand. "He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword." Okay, so we're not going to use swords? Maybe spears? Like, what? What are we ... We're about to fight.

We have our general. We have our king. They didn't understand. And when Jesus said, "If this was my kingdom, I don't need you." You guys can't even get along. I don't need you. I will bring angels of my own and wipe them out. I don't need a tiny sword that can't even hit the middle of the head and cut off people's ears.

I don't need soldiers like you. He said, "But this is not my kingdom that I came to fight for." Colossians 1.13, "For he rescued us from the domain of darkness, transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son." We're in the kingdom of his beloved son. He's our king now.

See, this kingdom that we are a part of is already perfect because we have the perfect ruler. This kingdom is already economically perfect because he's our ruler. The only problem that we have is we keep reaching back to the old kingdom. We keep wanting to live in both kingdoms.

But Jesus says, "I have come to establish my kingdom." Hebrews 4.16, it says, "Therefore, let us draw near with the confidence to the throne of grace so that we may receive mercy and find grace and help of need." Notice here he says, "To draw near to what? To the throne of grace, to the kingdom where our Lord reigns." We get into so much trouble because we think that the greatest need of our generation, greatest need for us, for our children, for our future, is to make the right decision, have the right leaders, have the right people, have the right family.

And if we do that, then we will be good. You remember in 1 Samuel 8, verse 7, where the Israelites are demanding a king for themselves? And Samuel is offended by that because God was ruling through his prophets. But he said, "No, all of our problem is because we don't have a king like they do.

If we had the king that they had, we wouldn't have this problem." So they demanded to have a king of their own. And God says to Samuel in verse 7, the Lord said to Samuel, "Listen to the voice of people in regard to all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them." This is why they miss Jesus.

Because the kingdom that they were thinking about, and they thought the solution was that somehow God helped us to get the king that we want. Sometimes we think of lordship as, these are the things, this is what I think is going to make me happy. And then we come to Jesus like, "Please help me.

Help me pay my bills. Help me to have peace. Help me for my family. Help me to do this." And Jesus becomes nothing more than a cosmic bellhop that comes and is just waiting to serve us. He's a holy servant just waiting. What do you want? Oh, what's going on?

Oh, you're sad? Are you hungry? He came to establish his kingdom. And that's what the riding of the donkey was. I am the king. See, if we're not careful, we embrace Jesus as our savior, but we reject him as our king. Because a savior doesn't demand undivided loyalty, because he saves us.

He just comes to save us. He just forgives us. What a king does. A savior does not judge your spending habits, but the king does. A savior does not ask for obedience, but the king does. If you do not know King Jesus, you may not know the Savior Jesus, because they are the same person.

You don't embrace the cross and then reject his kingdom. You don't embrace Jesus as my servant, and he serves me, and he loves me, cares for me, and then you know nothing about the kingship of Christ. See, the donkey represented his kingship to establish his throne. Third and finally, Jesus rode the donkey to ultimately bring peace.

In Zechariah 9.10, it says, "I will cut off the chariots from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem, and the bow of war will be cut off, and he will speak peace to the nations." He's going to come as a king, humbled on a donkey, but the purpose of all of this, he says, is to bring peace.

In fact, remember when I read Genesis 49.10, this prophecy of the coming Messiah, he says, "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the rulers shall be between his feet, until Shiloh comes." The word Shiloh in Hebrew means tranquility, peace. In Isaiah, Jesus is called the Prince of Peace.

The irony of all of this is that that's exactly what the Jews wanted. They wanted peace. In fact, they wanted it so much that every time they greeted each other, they would say "Shalom." "Shalom to you," and then the person receiving that will say again, "Shalom to you." And so for generations after generations, they would say, "Peace, peace." But the word Shalom means more than simple peace.

It was understood that when God brings peace, when He gives you peace, that there's going to be wholeness. Whatever is broken is going to be mended. Whatever has gone wrong is going to be fixed. It means to be complete, to be whole. You know what's interesting? Is that the Muslim world, they greet each other in similar fashion.

If you have any Muslim friends, the way they greet you is "Maleka As-salam," right? Or "As-salam maleko," that's what it says. "As-salam maleko" basically means, "Peace be unto you." And then the person receiving that will say, "Maleko as-salam," meaning, "Unto you, peace," in reverse. So that's the way that the Muslim world greets each other.

So the Jews would greet each other, say, "Shalom," and the Muslims will greet each other by saying, "Peace unto you." And the irony of all of this is that even though we, you and I, may not say, "Peace unto you," when we say, "Happy New Year," or "Happy Birthday," right?

"Blessings to you," we mean the same thing. Like, we want to be whole. We want whatever has gone wrong to be fixed. If you are sick, to be healed. If you're having financial problems, hopefully in the new year, God will bless you with money. Whatever has gone wrong, God bless you.

And so that's what we mean, "Shalom," and that's what they mean when they say, "Shalom." And the irony of all of this is that as they were desperately waiting for the king, and as they were desperately waiting for peace, in Luke chapter 19, 41 to 42, as Jesus is riding on the donkey with the seismic stir of possibly up to two million people waving the palm branches, receiving their king, we find Jesus weeping in verse 41.

When he approached Jerusalem, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, "If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace, but now they have been hidden from your eyes." What they have desperately so wanted, they completely missed, and they ended up crucifying him.

So much of our lives is seeking peace. If you came from a poor family, you think, "Man, if I could just make money, and I don't want to have the turmoil that my parents went through, so if I can just have a successful business, I will have peace. If my children go to the right school, under the right politicians, I would have peace.

If I just had the right friends, right environment, and right neighborhood, and the right house, I will have peace." And so we strive from place to place, and there's so much talk right now about going to different states to find peace. And if we're not careful, if we're not careful, we will fall under the same delusion as the Jews as they were waiting for the king and wanting so much to have peace, thinking that somehow if they changed, if they moved the puzzles around and bought the house in the right place and went to the right area, our children would have peace, I would have peace, I would be able to worship God in peace, I would raise our children in peace, retire in peace.

In the middle of seeking peace, they completely missed the prince of peace. You remember in Genesis chapter 22, where Isaiah is called, or Abraham is called to sacrifice Isaiah, and we know this whole event is a fulfillment of that promise. As Abraham takes up the knife to strike him down, just as God told him to, God says, "Stop," and he says, "I will provide." And that's exactly what he's doing this week.

He's fulfilling that promise that he made, and he will take the place of Isaac to be that sacrifice. In Genesis chapter 22 verse 3, it says this, "So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey and took two of his young men with him and Isaac, his son." Isaac rode that donkey to go to the cross.

So him being on that donkey not only represented his public and specific fulfillment of his will, it wasn't just simply to him to declare his kingship, it was to bring peace that only he could bring. In Ephesians 2, 17, it says, "And he came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near." Again in Ephesians 6, 15, talking about the gospel, "Your feet will be preparation for the gospel of peace." In the last year or two years, we've been hearing that phrase, "No justice, no peace." No justice, no peace.

And we are hearing it, we're reading it, declaring it. People are united for this purpose. But be careful, because that's exactly what the Jews were doing. Because they thought that if their king came, that he was going to fix the government. He was going to fix the economy. He was going to fix their family.

He was going to fix their future. He was going to fix their standing. He was going to fix their temple. Yet in the midst of all of that, they completely missed him. Jesus says in John 14, 27, "Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.

Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful." You cannot have the peace of God without the peace with God. So this week is to get us to be recalibrated. Recalibrate our hearts, because our natural tendency, my bet is, there's not a single person in here who doesn't have some sort of turmoil in your heart.

There's not a single person in here that doesn't have something to grieve over. There's not a single person in here that doesn't have something to pray desperately over, whether we are actually doing that or not. But where do you find this peace? Do you believe that Jesus is our peace?

Do you believe that Jesus is the Prince of Peace? So we pray that this week, as we go over the details of what happened every day, that we don't look to man for answers. We don't look to government for answers. We don't look to organizations for answers. We don't hold hands and say, "You know, we're going to finally get the justice that we deserve." Because the only person who can actually declare desire or demand justice is Jesus Christ.

A sinner who demands justice is demanding punishment. It is not justice that you and I desire. It is mercy. And that's exactly what Jesus came to do, to give us mercy. I'm going to ask the praise team to come up. And I want to read a portion of this hymn that you guys all know very well.

It is "Well With My Soul." You know the story behind Horatio Spafford, who was a famous and very successful attorney who made a lot of money, and he turned that money into more money by purchasing all this property. So he became a very wealthy man. But there was a huge fire that broke out in Chicago, and he lost everything overnight.

Feeling distraught, he sent his family, his four girls and his wife, over to England so that possibly he could start over over there. But on this journey, the ship has a shipwreck, and all four of his girls died, and only his wife survived. She ends up going to England and sends him a wire saying, "All is lost.

All four of our children are gone." In his bereavement, he gets on the boat to go join his wife to comfort her. And on his journey, riding the boat, they were crossing exactly the same place where his daughters died. And on the intercom, the captain of the boat said, "This is where that other boat sank." And as he was looking upon the waters, he wrote this hymn.

And in this hymn, he says, "When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say, it is well with my soul. It is well with my soul. Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this best assurance control that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and has shed his own blood for my soul.

It is well with my soul. It is well. My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. O my soul, it is well. It is well with my soul.

It is well." How can a human being write this? In the situation that he was in, watching over the very waters where his four beloved daughters drowned, to say, "It is well with my soul. It is well with my soul." Only a man who has found peace in Christ can write these words.

These aren't words that a natural man can write in the situation that he is in. It is well with my soul. It is well. What makes you well? What do you think is going to make you well? What are you pursuing because you want peace? I pray that each one of us would take this week deliberately to walk through the steps as he goes to the cross and recognize that this is why he came.