The Shepherd-King
Notes
Transcript
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Many people know about Richard the Lionheart. He is one of the more famous kings in history.
Lionheart was the great King of England during the 3rd Crusade
He spent 10 years on the throne, but was rarely in England because he was always out commanding his army
He notched huge victories against the Muslims and was an important part of establishing a peace treaty
He is generally mentioned as one of England’s two or three most heralded kings
Less people talk about the king who came after him. King John.
He has a plain name and a resume of selfishness and cruelty
He was known for greed and levying heavy taxes on the people
He murdered two of his nephews in order to protect his right to the throne
On one occasion, he took 22 enemy knights captive and instead of executing humanely, or even letting them go (as was the custom of many rulers at the time)—he starved them slowly over a long period of time.
John’s name is so associated with bad kingship that John becomes the symbol for a farcical ruler for all of England for the last 800 years.
Most famously, the villain of Robin Hood is named after him.
Two kings—a great one and a bad one.
One that defended his people and one that starved them.
One that fought for their honor and one that disgraced his country.
This morning, we have Jesus entering Jerusalem and being heralded as a King on the occasion of Palm Sunday.
It is His final entrance into Jerusalem before His crucifixion.
He has been anointed at Bethany by Mary and now the time for the culminating work of His ministry has come
It is time for Him to die.
To resurrect.
To ascend.
But what sort of King is He? What can His people expect from Him? Is He more like Lionheart? Is He more like John? Is He for His people?
What if He doesn’t give His people what they want, when and how they want it?
Is He still a good King? Might that make Him a better King?
That is what we are diving into this morning.
Let’s read the text:
The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written,
“Fear not, daughter of Zion;
behold, your king is coming,
sitting on a donkey’s colt!”
His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign. So the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.”
THE KING THEY WANT
THE KING THEY WANT
The problem in this passage are not the words coming out of the mouths of the people, but the heart behind them.
It is a heart that misunderstands. A heart that misapplies. A heart that misinterprets.
A heart too focused on the temporal and what can be seen and touched.
A heart too focused on the kingdoms of this world.
The people cry, “Hosanna!”
This word means, “Save us, we pray!” It was generally an exclamation of joy.
They say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,”
By tacking this phrase on to the end of “Hosanna,” the people clearly quoting Psalm 118:25-26
Save us, we pray, O Lord!
O Lord, we pray, give us success!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
We bless you from the house of the Lord.
In that Psalm, the Psalmist is longing to enter the gates of righteousness, which is a poetic way of saying that he longs for salvation and all its benefits—including heaven itself.
And it is just a few verses later he cries out, “Save us, we pray, O Lord!”
And this was a completely appropriate Psalm for them to quote in this moment because it’s a messianic Psalm.
The Psalm also says:
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
This is the Lord’s doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes.
The people understood this to be Messianic because the Messiah and His Kingdom was talked about like a stone in other passages:
And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
And this Messianic expectation also led them to proclaim Jesus as the King of Israel (v. 13).
So what we have is Jesus riding into Jerusalem and the people shouting Messianic praises upon Him that are referencing a Messianic Psalm. What’s the problem?
The problem is that while they are happy to extol Him as the Messiah-King, they are extolling Him as the King they want, not the King they need.
A clue to this is found in verse 13 where John says they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him.
The only time we see palm branches mentioned in the Old Testament is in Leviticus 23:40
And you shall take on the first day the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palm trees and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.
This was to be done within the Feast of Tabernacles
But when verse 12 says that the large crowd had come to the feast, that is a reference to Passover, not the Feast of Tabernacles.
Jesus has come to Jerusalem to observe the Passover and to die as the true and final Passover Lamb.
So why the palm branches?
Well, from 160-167 BC, there was a revolt led by a group called the Maccabees.
In that revolt against the Seleucid Empire, the Jewish people achieved a brief moment of independence and the temple was purified and taken back in 164 BC.
When that happened, the people celebrated in the manner of the Feast of Booths with palm branches.
So in waving palm branches, they are making a statement about what they want Jesus to do.
If He is the Messiah—which after Lazarus’ resurrection, many are speculating He is (v. 18)—then He must bring about independence for the Jewish people.
The palm branches represented their nationalistic desire to be delivered, for when Simon Maccabaeus delivered Jerusalem 150 years earlier, it was celebrated with praise, palm branches, and musical instruments (1 Maccabees 13:51)
R. Kent Hughes
In other words, they wanted Jesus to purify Jerusalem of Roman rule, sit down on David’s throne and never get up.
They wanted the physical Kingdom of Israel to be restored.
This is the King that they want.
A King to give them an earthly land, with earthly independence that rules over an earthly Kingdom.
THE KING HE IS
THE KING HE IS
But this is not the King that Jesus came to be. And we get hint of that in verses 14-15. Jesus comes riding on a donkey’s colt. John tells us that this took place in order to fulfill what the prophet said in Zechariah 9.
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you;
righteous and having salvation is he,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
The prophesied Messiah is not arriving on a war horse. He comes on the foal of a donkey.
What that tells us is that while ancient kings gained victory through force and might and brutality, this King will not.
He will win His Kingdom in humility and meekness.
The Jewish people waved their palm branches in order make their intentions known—we want a revolutionary to triumph over Rome in domination.
Jesus rides the foal to make His intentions known—I am not a revolutionary, but a Redeemer. And my triumph will come through humiliation.
John says that his disciples did not understand these things at first.
They believed Jesus was the Messiah.
They believed He was from the line of David.
They believed Jesus deserved to be glorified
But they did not understand that the path to His glory included a Roman cross
Behold, my servant shall act wisely;
he shall be high and lifted up,
and shall be exalted.
That verse is about the Messiah—the Servant the Lord will send to save His people.
The Servant shall be high and lifted up and exalted, but if you read in Isaiah 53, you learn the Servant will suffer:
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
He will be pierced before He is raised.
He will be humiliated before He is exalted.
He will ride on the back of the donkey before He breaks the back of death.
TWO KINGS
TWO KINGS
To understand this, we need to make sure we understand what Jesus came to do and why He had to come in the first place.
Let’s go back to the Garden and see what the Lord commanded Adam:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
So Adam is going to be made in God’s image
He will rule over creation
He will fill creation and expand the imprint of his own dominion and rule by doing so
As the earth is filled, the earth is subdued by the children that come from Adam’s line
When you put all of this together, what you see is that Adam is actually a king.
God is the King over all and He puts Adam on the earth to reflect the majesty of God by ruling in His place on the earth as a sort of vice-King.
And all of this would go just swimmingly as long as Adam followed the Law that God put in place.
It was a covenant He made with Adam—if you obey Me, you live and continue to rule. If you eat of the tree that I tell you not to eat from, you will die and your rule will end.
Well, we know what happened—he failed.
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—
Sin and death have come into the world now. It has infected everyone and left them corrupted from the inside out.
We are not kings now. We do not rule. We are enslaved.
We are enslaved by sin and by our flesh and its desires.
We are born cut off from God in the Kingdom of Adam and with him as our representative, we are condemned to die.
This is the problem that every human being on the earth faces.
And so Christ was sent, as the Messiah, to come and fix what Adam broke.
He came and lived under the Law just like Adam.
But unlike Adam, He never sinned.
Adam failed in his covenant of law-keeping with God, but Jesus did not.
Jesus perfectly kept the Law and then died the death we deserve at Calvary.
He drank up every drop of God’s wrath for us.
And then He rose again from the grave.
So having kept the Law, having satisfied God’s wrath for us and then having resurrected, Jesus saves His people and transfers them out of Adam’s Kingdom and into His Kingdom.
No longer is Adam our failed representative.
Christ is now our Faithful King who represents us before God’s throne.
If you are in His Kingdom, you have all His Kingdom benefits, including His righteous moral record, His Spirit dwelling in you and of course, eternal life.
But we would still be condemned in the Kingdom of Adam, if not for King Jesus being willing to humble Himself to the point of death, even death on a Cross.
And He rides the donkey to show that humiliation will come before exaltation. It says something about who He is and what He came to do.
But as the people wave the palm branches, they are asking for something else. They are saying the right things, but they are blinded by their political desires.
They want Jesus to fix what Rome broke, not what Adam broke.
But Jesus didn’t come to perform one act of righteousness to conquer Rome. He performed one act of righteousness to conquer death:
Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
One day the Lord Jesus will return. And when He does, He will make Rome submit—or whatever is left of it.
In fact, every throne of this world will tap out to the authority of Christ.
The nations are His inheritance and not a single one of them will resist the will of God in seeing His Son reign.
This was foretold in the Old Testament:
The Lord says to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”
Jesus will not just rule Jerusalem.
He will rule everything.
By the power of God’s redemption, the kingdom of this world—the Kingdom of Adam—will become the Kingdom of Christ and He will reign forever.
But until then, the Kingdom expands through the Gospel witness of the local church.
We go and spread the news that “by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous.”
We don’t build in the Kingdom of Adam—we know it is a house of cards that is going to come under the judgment of God’s wrath.
We build the Kingdom of Christ—because it will last forever.
THE CHARACTER OF THE KING
THE CHARACTER OF THE KING
And as we serve and build the Kingdom, even in the here and now, we get to live under the reign of the King.
If you are a Christian, you are not under God’s wrath anymore.
You are not in the Kingdom of Adam anymore.
You have been transferred into the Kingdom of God by the saving power of Christ’s blood.
And just like being a citizen of the United States of America comes with benefits, being a citizen of Christ’s Kingdom—being in Christ—and living under His reign, comes with benefits.
And they are superior to any rights or privileges you will find in the kingdoms of the world.
When you live under the rule and reign of Christ, as a member of His Kingdom, what you will find is that He is generous. And His generosity is never faltering or running short. His generosity toward His children matches His love. It matches His mercy.
It is an unconditional stream of endless blessing aimed simultaneously at your joy and His joy.
Jesus is not like the kings of this world.
They are not givers, they are takers.
For example, when Israel reject God as king and they cry out for a king like the peoples around them, the prophet Samuel warns them:
So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
Six different times the work “take” is used
Where it isn’t used, we see words like “appoint” and “Reap”
So while the word “take” isn’t used, those are still taking words
But this is not who Jesus is. He is a Giving Sovereign who sits and the right hand of God and pours out blessings upon His church.
He gives us justification
In fact, I start there because without justification, we have nothing.
Jesus has given us a right standing before God where we are forgiven of sin and cleared of guilt
Jesus received our sin punishment and we receive His righteousness
And now God declares us a righteous based on us having Christ’s righteousness
He gives us access to His Father by atoning for our sin and reconciling us to Him
He gives us peace with God
He gives us the peace of God
He gives us hope—the ability to believe the promises of the Gospel are true for us
He gives us the trials that He uses to produce endurance and character in us
He gives us an understanding of God’s love by coming and dying for us
He gives us the Holy Spirit
He gives us relief from the fear of dying under God’s warth
He gives us adoption into God’s family
He gives us the right to be co-heirs with Him
He gives us eternal life
He gives us a purpose for living
He gives us a condemnation free existence
He gives us mercy
He gives us joy
He gives us victory over sin
He gives us the His Body, the Church, to be a member of
He gives us spiritual gifts
He gives us victory over sin
He gives us Himself as an Intercessor in heaven and the Spirit as an Intercessor in our hearts
He gives us wisdom
He gives us a home in heaven
He gives us the gift of prayer and the knowledge of how to pray
He gives us the power of God in our witness
He gives us His authority in our mission
He gives us an Advocate
He gives us His Word
He gives us guidance
He gives us protection over the enemy
He gives us godly living, if we will be obedient
He gives us protection from Satan
He gives us a call to service and ministry
Do you see the difference in Christ as compared to the kings of the ancient world or the kings of this world?
They take in order to produce.
They take in order to defend.
They take in order to flourish.
But Jesus gives.
This is who He is—His character is undeniably generous.
Some might object to this and say, “Is He generous? He gives you all of that, but then He wants your life. He wants to take everything that you are and use it. How generous can He really be if His offer of eternal life includes denying yourself?”
To that objector I would say, “Don’t you realize that everything this King asks of you, He provides?”
You must believe on Him to be saved—but He gives the faith.
For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake,
It has been granted to you that you suffer...
We often jump right to that but miss the fact that faith is granted as much as the suffering
Faith itself is a gift from God.
In fact, you could go back even further and say that the calling of salvation that you responded to, was given by God.
One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul.
God gave Lydia the open heart to even hear before she believed.
Our faith begins with the generosity of God in Christ Jesus.
You must endure to the end—and you will, if you are truly a believer.
But as you endure and work out your salvation with fear and trembling, He never leaves you. He is willing and working in you and it pleases Him to do so.
He gives Himself to the work of your perseverance.
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
In understanding this, we can see that our faith will carry on to the end of this life because God gives us the ability to endure.
One day, Christ is going to return. And when He does, He will not come on a donkey.
He will not come for humiliation, but for exaltation, redemption and destruction.
He comes for the exaltation of the name of God
He comes for the redemption of the people of God
He comes for the destruction of the enemies of God
And He will give ultimate victory to His people and the kingdoms of Adam will belong to Christ once and for all
Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.
Not the colt of a donkey, but on a warhorse of victory.
And when that happens, the people of God will celebrate Christ the King with the right words and the right heart
And the palm branches in our hands will not be about a Messiah who is like the Maccabeans
It will be about praising the Messiah who stands alone as the image of God invisible, the Lord of heaven and earth.
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
THE KING WE WANT
THE KING WE WANT
The King they wanted did match up with the King they needed. More importantly, the King they wanted did not match up with who the King actually was.
They wanted a political leader, not a Passover Lamb.
They wanted deliverance from taxes, not deliverance from transgressions.
They wanted immediate satisfaction, not eternal salvation.
But church, are we not the same way with Jesus?
How often do we reject who He is because of who we want Him to be?
We want a King who will answer our prayers in our time. We want a King who will put our political candidates in positions of power. We want a King who will take away all pain and replace it with all pleasure.
And when the King doesn’t do what we think He should do, we turn from Him and use His wise governing of our lives as an excuse for sin.
“He didn’t answer my prayers, so I will go back to my old way of living.”
“He didn’t heal my sickness, so I will turn to idols to comfort me.”
“He hasn’t given me prosperity, so I will go and get it—even if I break God’s commandments in the process.”
So many Christians are living their lives in doubt and anxiety and fear and yes—even habitual sin.
And this would not need to be the case if they would only stop trying to conform Jesus into being the sort of King they want and instead, would once again surrender to Him as the King He is.
And beyond that, if we would recognize Him for the King that He is, we will find that He provides far better for us in His generosity than we could ever fathom in our wisdom.
Let me put it to you this way:
ILLUSTRATION: If I was able to fast-forward to the end of your life and show you two ways your life can play out:
A) The way it would play out if Christ used His Kingship to give you everything you ever asked for
B) The way it would play out if you surrendered to everything He wanted for you
If we were able to do this exercise, you would choose B.
You would look at A with disgust.
The perspective of seeing these two lives would leave you saying, “I want the life that Jesus the King wants for me.”
And that is because, the life King Jesus is weaving together for you is far better than any life you would come up with for yourself.
In His wisdom, He is generously working all things together for the good of you being conformed into His image.
And in all the valleys and peaks, He is making you look less like Adam and more like Him.
We simply need to trust in His Kingly purposes and surrender to them and trust that along the way, He will give everything we need, just as He has given us salvation.
CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
And one day, after Christ returns and the Kingdom of Adam has become the Kingdom of the Beloved Son, Christ will reign fully and finally forever.
The classic Isaac Watts hymn, Jesus Shall Reign Wher’er The Sun captures what eternal life on the New Earth will be like:
Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
Doth his successive journeys run;
His Kingdom stretch from shore to shore,
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.
To Him shall endless prayer be made.
And princes throng to crown His head,
His name like sweet perfume shall rise
With every morning sacrifice.
People and realms of every tongue
Dwell on His love with sweetest song;
And infant voices shall proclaim
Their early blessings on His name.
Blessings abound where’er He reigns:
The prisoner leaps to lose his chains,
The weary find eternal rest,
And all the sons of want are blest.
Where He displays His healing power
Death and the curse are known no more;
In Him the tribes of Adam boast
More blessings than their father lost.
Let every creature rise and bring
Peculiar honors to our King;
Angels descend with songs again,
And earth repeat the loud Amen.
Amen, indeed.
Honor to the King from every creature.
This is what the generous King deserves.
Do not let your life be silent or guilty of rebellion.
Bow your knee to the humble Shepherd-King.