Mistaking Jesus’ Work

April 2, 2023 (Palm Sunday) – Zechariah 9:9-10; Matthew 21:1-11; 27:15-25 – Mistaking Jesus’ Work

When Jesus entered Jerusalem on the original Palm Sunday, He did it in a way that very consciously fulfilled the prophesy of Zechariah 9:9. He told two of His disciples to get a young donkey for Him to ride on, and then He rode that donkey into Jerusalem. Matthew 21:4–5 tell us very plainly…

4 All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying:

5 “Tell the daughter of Zion,

‘Behold, your King is coming to you,

Lowly, and sitting on a donkey,

A colt, the foal of a donkey.’”

John’s Gospel makes this same connection. Like Matthew, John describes Jesus riding the donkey and then quotes Zechariah 9:9, showing that Jesus fulfilled Zechariah’s prophecy. But then John adds a detail that’s not included by any of the other Gospel writers. John explains that Jesus’ disciples didn’t make the connection between Zechariah’s prophecy and what Jesus was doing when He rode the donkey into Jerusalem. John 12:16 says…

16 His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written about Him...

In other words, it wasn’t until after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus that the disciples began to make sense of what they had witnessed and experienced on Palm Sunday. And this was not the only occasion when that type of thing happened. We see something similar back in John 2. You may recall the occasion when Jesus said to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews thought Jesus was speaking nonsense. They said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?”

Evidently, the twelve disciples were just as baffled by Jesus’ statement as the Jews were. They didn’t realize that Jesus was speaking of the temple of His body. We know that Jesus was speaking about the temple of His body because John 2:21 clearly explains this, but the disciples didn’t understand it at that time. But then verse 22 explains how the disciples came to realize what Jesus was actually talking about. John writes…

Therefore, when [Jesus] had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.

This is very similar to their understanding of Zechariah’s prophecy on Palm Sunday. In both cases, the disciples didn’t understand what was happening in the moment, but after they witnessed the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, their theological paradigm was greatly enhanced. They knew something about Jesus that they had not known before, and this greatly enhanced their theology. Now, they could remember experiences that they had with Jesus and re-interpret those experiences more accurately. They were able to say to each other, “Now I understand what Jesus meant when He said He’s rebuild the temple in three days. He wasn’t talking about the physical temple made of stone, like we thought He was talking about, He was talking about rising from the dead.” And they were able to say to each other, “Now I understand that when Jesus told us to bring Him the donkey and we walked along side of Him and He rode it into Jerusalem, He was fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy.”

There’s a lesson to be learned here: the more we know about the person and work of Jesus, the more accurately we understand our experiences with Him. Or we state this truth in the opposite direction. The less we know about the person and work of Jesus, the less we understand our experiences with Him.

I submit to you that one of the central reasons people become bored with Jesus, disappointed with Jesus, or annoyed with Jesus, is because they haven’t grown in their knowledge of the person and work of Jesus.

The truth is, most people are carrying around a lot of misinformation about Jesus. They’ve been influenced by our culture’s caricatures of Jesus, so they’re carrying around that baggage. They may have picked up some bad theology from religious television and radio programs, so they’re carrying around that baggage. And maybe they grew up going to Sunday School where virtually every Bible story was taught from a moralistic perspective: What do we learn from Noah? To be obedient. What do we learn from Abraham? To be patient. What do we learn from Gideon? To be courageous. And what do we learn from Jesus feeding the multitudes? That even a young boy who’s willing to share the little he has can make a big impact upon the world.

Most people are carrying around a lot of misinformation about the person and work of Jesus. If such a person is not growing in biblical knowledge of who Jesus is, what He has done, what He is doping now, and what He’s promised to do in the future, then that person has stagnated. He’s like a pond of stagnant water. And you know what happens to a pond of standing water: it grows algae, it becomes a breeding ground for mosquitos, it starts stinking, and then it eventually dries up. Such is the person who doesn’t grow in his knowledge of Jesus. He becomes bored with Jesus, he becomes disappointed with Jesus, he becomes annoyed with Jesus, and he eventually turns against Jesus.

One of the shocking develops in the passion week of Jesus is how the multitudes turned against Him. On Palm Sunday, they were singing Hosannas to Him. They were proclaiming Him to be their king. But a couple of days later, they were crying out for His crucifixion, saying that their only king is Caesar. How do we explain such a radical shift? What caused so many people to go from proclaiming His kingship to demanding His death?

There are several “correct” answers to this question. We can say that it was all part of the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God. That’s the answer Peter gives in his Pentecost sermon in Acts 2. Or we can say that it was the deceptive work of principalities, powers, the rulers of the darkness, and spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. That’s the answer Paul implies in Ephesians 6. But the answer I’d like us to consider this morning is that it was the people’s misunderstanding of Jesus. And when I say “misunderstanding,” I’m referring to a very specific form of misunderstanding. The people misunderstood the nature of the work that Jesus was doing.

If you think back to Matthew 16 when Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”, that was a question about the identity of Jesus. Or we can, it was a question about the person of Jesus. Some said He was John the Baptist, some said He was Elijah, and others said He was Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. That was confusion concerning the person of Jesus. But what happened on Palm Sunday was not confusion concerning the person of Jesus, but of the work of Jesus. The multitudes correctly identified Jesus as the Son of David. They understood that He was the promised Messiah who will occupy the throne of David. This is evident in how they cried out…

“Hosanna to the Son of David!

‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!’

Hosanna in the highest!”

So the multitude was not confused about the person of Jesus, they were confused about the work of Jesus. They thought He was going to make Israel a sovereign nation again. They thought He had come as the conquering king to liberate them from Roman rule. They thought He was going to do what’s prophesied in Psalm 2; that He will set up His throne on the holy hill of Zion and then break the nations with a rod of iron, dashing them to pieces like a potter’s vessel. And they thought Jesus would do what’s prophesied in Psalm 110…

He shall execute kings in the day of His wrath.

6 He shall judge among the nations,

He shall fill the places with dead bodies,

He shall execute the heads of many countries.

So on Sunday, the multitude was waving palm branches as they rejoiced in the Son of David. But over the course of the next several days, this Son of David didn’t assault the Romans; He assaulted the Jews.

He made trouble in the temple, running around with a whip and turning over tables.

He critiqued the chief priests and elders by telling parables that insinuated they were not the servants of God they claimed to be.

He got into a conflict with the Pharisee and Herodians over taxes.

He got into a conflict with the Sadducees concerning the resurrection, telling them that they don’t know the Scriptures nor the power of God.

Then Jesus preached to the multitudes, publicly pronouncing a long series of “woes” on the scribes and Pharisees. He called them hypocrites, blind guides, serpents, and a brood of vipers.

Then, as if that wasn’t enough, Jesus said that the holy temple in Jerusalem has been left desolate and the generation He was speaking to will see it destroyed.

You can imagine what the multitudes must have been thinking. “Why is Jesus attacking us? Why is He pronouncing our destruction? Why isn’t He going after the real enemy? Why doesn’t He do what the Son of David is supposed to do?”

We often think that the reason people reject Jesus because they’re confused about His person. We think that if they could just know who He really is, then they’d have a different opinion about Him. And that’s true in a lot of cases. Many people are confused about His person, but I’m not sure we realize how many people are confused about Jesus’ work. Like the multitude on Palm Sunday, there are many people today who have properly identified Jesus’ person. They know that He’s the Lord. They know that He’s the Savior. They know that He’s the Son of God. But they’re confused about the work that Jesus is doing right now. Whether it’s because they’ve been influenced by cultural caricatures, or bad theology, or moralistic Sunday School stories, or just plain biblical ignorance, they have wrong expectations of what Jesus is actually doing today.

Paul Tripp, in his excellent devotional book entitled New Morning Mercies, has written about five ways people are mistaken about the work of Jesus. Paul Tripp has given creative names to these five mistakes. Each of the names captures the essence of what people mistakenly think Jesus should be doing right now.

The first is the Vacation Planner Jesus. Some people think that Jesus exists to make their life easier and more pleasurable. They think His work is to make them happy in this world. And while we’d probably like to think that the person who believes this is slowly responsible for confusing the American dream with the Christian experience, we can’t always put 100% of the blame on that person. The truth is, a lot of Christians have contributed to the Vacation Planner Jesus mistake by the way we evangelize. When we share the gospel with unbelievers, some Christians say something to the effect of, “Come to Jesus and He’ll fix your problems. Is your marriage on the rocks? Are your children disrespecting you? Are you disappointed with the direction your life is going? Come to Jesus and He’ll fix everything.”

This is a bait-and-switch method of evangelism because Jesus never promised that He’s going to solve all the problems we’re experiencing in our lives. What Jesus promised is that every tear will be wiped away when we go to be with Him in glory, but in this present fallen world, we’re told that trials and tribulations are the forge that our Lord is using to prepare for the glories of eternity. So we must not promise the Vacation Planner Jesus to unbelievers. We must not mislead them into believing that if they become a Christian, then everything in their life is going to get better. What we can promise them, however, is that if they believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ, then they’ll receive a new heart and a renewed mind which will enable them to better understand their purpose in this world. And they’ll also gain the assurance that Jesus loves them and is working all things for their sanctification, preparing them for a glorious eternity which far exceeds anything they can imagine. But we must also be ready to explain that to the person we’re evangelizing that their problems may very well increase if they become a Christian. This is because they presently belong to the world, and the world has no reason to oppose those who belong to it. But if the person places his faith in Jesus and is made a citizen of heaven, then the world will turn on the new Christian and begin persecuting him. 1 John 3:13 says to Christians, “Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.” Why shouldn’t we be surprised? Jesus answered this question in John 15:18-20…

18 “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.

So maybe it’s because Christians have been using bait-and-switch tactics in our evangelism, failing to be realistic about what life looks like as a citizen of heaven, or maybe it’s just because certain people read only what they want to read in the Scriptures, whatever the case, there are people who mistakenly think that Jesus’ purpose is to make their life easier and more pleasurable. And this will always lead to disappointment and discouragement with Jesus, because they’ll judge His goodness by the amount of suffering in their lives, and when they determine their suffering is more than it should be, they’ll begin to doubt Jesus’ goodness.

Brothers and sisters, if you judge Jesus’ love for you by the degree of difficulty you experience, you’ll probably end up thinking that He doesn’t love you very much. If you judge His faithfulness by how much disappointment and grief you have had to deal with, you’ll probably end up thinking that He hasn’t kept His end of the bargain. And if you judge His power and authority by how much evil you witness in the world, then you’ll probably end up thinking He’s not much of King. But that would be a tragic miscalculation, akin to the tragic miscalculation the multitude made during the passion week.

The times in your life when things don’t seem to be working as you hoped they would, or the times when you experience deep disappointment, or the times when you suffer loss, or the times when trials come upon you, these do not indicate that Jesus is asleep at the wheel or that He has forgotten about you. Nor should they make you conclude that He doesn’t love you or that He doesn’t answer your prayers. What we need to remember is that difficult times in this present world are part of our Savior’s plan. They’re the way He rescues us, transforms us, and delivers His amazing grace to us. As such, Jesus is not working in your life right now to give you the fleeting happiness of pursuing pleasure in this world. Rather, He is working to produce something much better for you, which is eternal joy and fellowship in the New Heavens and New Earth.

The reality is that Jesus has little interest in our selfish wish lists. He did not spill His blood so that I can have the things in this world that I think will make me happy. When He demanded that we pick up our cross and follow Him, He wasn’t telling us that we’re going to go from one pleasurable activity to another. When He said that we to die to ourselves daily, He wasn’t telling us that our lives will be free of trials and hardship. Rather, this present life is a time of preparation for the final glorious destination that will be our eternal home, and the reason we possess an optimistic hope as we walk through these trials and hardships is because we know that Jesus is reigning as the sovereign King and He is in the process of fulfilling all His precious promises.

The second mistake people make about the work of Jesus is the one that Paul Tripp calls the Suggestion Box Jesus. Many people don’t want Jesus to issue commands to them, telling them what they need to do with their lives. Instead, they want Jesus to give them suggestions.

This is a consequence of the fall. Our sinful human nature rebels against external authority. We don’t like it when somebody tells us what we need to do. We’d rather be autonomous; we’d rather be accountable to nobody but ourselves. One of the dark delusions of sin is that it causes us to embrace the insane idea that we might be smarter than the Lord. It’s during these seasons of delusion that we find ourselves rebelling against His commandments so we can do what we want to do. And when we persist in this rebellion, the Lord has ways of graciously reminding us that He’s the one who’s in authority. He has ways of graciously reminding us that His commandments are not suggestions. Part of the work that Jesus is doing in our lives, therefore, is bringing us into submission to His authority. Ho does this through the presence and power of His Spirit who convicts us of our sin, who gives us humble hearts of repentance, and who causes us to walk in His commandments (Ezek 36:27). Or to put it in the words of Psalm 23, Jesus is shepherding us. He’s making us to lie down in green pastures; He’s leading us beside the still waters, He restoring our souls, and He’s leading us in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.

A third mistake people make about the work of Jesus is the one that Paul Tripp calls the District Attorney Jesus. This is when we want Jesus to prosecute the people who have wronged us and made our lives difficult. This is an easy error for us to make because God has placed a desire for justice in each of our hearts. So when we face injustice, it’s tempting to want the vengeance of Jesus to be poured out on the responsible parties. It’s like the time when the Samaritans didn’t receive Jesus as He was passing through their territory on His way to Jerusalem. James and John had the District Attorney Jesus in mind when they turned to Him and asked, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?” And do you remember how Jesus responded to that suggestion? Luke 9:55-56…

55 But He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. 56 For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”

A major part of the work that Jesus has been doing, and continues to do today, is saving people’s souls from eternal damnation. Jesus is gracious calling sinners to Himself in order that they may be saved from that great and terrible Day of the Lord when Jesus will return in judgement and fury.

So when we think of Jesus’ present work as that of a District Attorney, we’re being like James and John; we’re trying to invoke Jesus’ power and authority to satisfy our own sense of vengeance and retribution. Moreover, we’re mistaking the age we live in. We’re living in the age of grace. We’re living in the age when Jesus is bringing His enemies into submission to Himself, but He’s not doing this with a rod of iron that dashing His enemies to pieces. Rather, He’s graciously converting His enemies into His friends by cleansing them from all their filthiness and idolatry. He’s giving them a new heart and putting a new spirit within them. He’s taking the heart of stone out of their flesh and giving them a heart of flesh. And He's putting His Spirit within them and causing them to walk in His statutes and keep His judgments.

There will come a day when the age of grace will end and Jesus will return to this earth as the District Attorney. On that day, He will dash His enemies to pieces with the rod of iron. He will unleash His righteous wrath and fury on everyone who has not believed upon Him by faith, compelling them through the administration of His brute force to bow their knees and confess that He is Lord. But to think that Jesus would do that to people who are living on the earth now is to mistake the nature of the work He’s doing. As He said to James and John, “I did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”

Failing to distinguish the work that Jesus began at His first coming and the work He will begin at His second coming is the mistake the multitudes made during the passion week. They correctly identified Jesus as the Son of David, and they correctly understood that the Son of David would dash His enemies to pieces with a rod of iron, but they mistook the timing of when Jesus would destroy His enemies because they didn’t account for His grace. They didn’t understand that He came to lay His life down for His friends and to give His life as a ransom for many. We make this same mistake today when we think of Jesus’ present work as that of a District Attorney. The day will come when He will prosecute His enemies, exacting justice upon all who are not in submission to Him by grace through faith. But until that day comes, Jesus continues to graciously save people from their sins.

The fourth misunderstanding of Jesus’s work that Paul Tripp writes about is the Match.com Jesus. The Match.com Jesus is supposed to give you somebody who will complete you and meet all your needs.

When God created humanity, He designed us to be social beings, which means, we’re designed to live in vertical community with God and horizontal community with other people. And the Bible makes it crystal clear that the horizontal finds its place in the vertical, which is to say, we can only know the true joys of human love when God is our first and highest love. When the Lord is in His proper place in our hearts, then our relationships with other people fall into their proper places, as well. But when the Lord is not first in our hearts, then we’ll be looking to human relationships to fulfill the needs and longings that only our Savior can fulfill. In other words, the person who views Jesus as the Match.com Jesus is looking for other people to provide the love, acceptance, and deep sense of well-being that only Jesus is able to provide. Looking to another person never works, because other people will always fail you. In some way, every human relationship in your life I going to disappoint you.

This is why it’s so alarming when you hear somebody say to another person, “You complete me.” Or, “You make me whole.” Or, “I can’t live without you.” These kinds of statements reveal idolatry within the heart because they’re putting a sinful human being in the place of the Lord. And these kinds of statements reveal idolatry within the heart because they demonstrate that the person who’s making these statements is putting all their hope and security in the loving affection of a sinful human being rather than in the loving affection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is why it’s so alarming when you hear somebody say to another person, “You complete me.” Or, “You make me whole.” Or, “I can’t live without you.” These kinds of statements reveal idolatry within the heart because they’re putting a sinful human being in the place of the Lord. And these kinds of statements reveal idolatry within the heart because they demonstrate that the person who’s making these statements is putting all their hope and security in the loving affection of a sinful human being rather than in the loving affection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

What the Scriptures teach us is that we can only be made “whole” and “complete” by the saving work of Jesus Christ. And while the Lord does intend for us to enjoy rich horizontal relationships, we must not make idols of those relationships. He may very likely give you a spouse with whom you can share many years of a deeply satisfying relationship, but if that horizontal relationship becomes the center of your thoughts and desires, then you’re making an idol of your spouse. You’re wanting your spouse to do for you what only Jesus is able to do for you. This always leads to frustration and disappointment. And when frustration and disappointment set in, you’ll be tempted to blame the Match.com Jesus for not providing you with the person who can truly complete you and make you whole. This, brothers and sisters, is not only the sin of idolatry, but it’s the source of relational dysfunction and heartache in people’s marriages and lives.

And the fifth mistake people make about the work of Jesus is what Paul Tripp calls the Neiman Marcus Jesus. The Neiman Marcus Jesus is supposed to make all your champagne wishes and caviar dreams come true.

The fact is, we all have dreams. We all have desires and ambitions that we hope to see come true. But the person who believes Jesus’ work is to make all our champagne wishes and caviar dreams come true is allowing their heart to be captured by their dreams. Their dreams become the definition of what life should be. As such, they no longer hold their dreams with open hands. Rather, what was once a hopeful desire has morphed into a demand, and it doesn’t take long before this demand is perceived as a right and a need. So this thing they once wished for has becomes a nonnegotiable that they’re unwilling to live without. Soon, they’re living in frustration and discouragement, not because life has really been so difficult for them, but because the thing that’s ruling their heart is beyond their grasp. And they know it. So they begin to question why Jesus has denied them the very thing they’re entitled to. They wonder why the Neiman Marcus Jesus has refused to give it them. Then they begin to speculate that the Lord has forgotten them, or that He must not love them. They doubt His goodness and His wisdom. And in severe cases, they will eventually begin to despair life. They’ll reason to themselves, “If this is what my life is going to be like—if Jesus is going to deny me the very thing I so desperately need—then what is there to live for?”

Brothers and sisters, when your dreams rule your heart rather than Christ Jesus, the dreams will wreak havoc on your spiritual life. Jesus will no longer be the source of your joy and motivation. He will no longer be the foundation of courage and hope. Sadly, in your mind, Jesus will be reduced to a delivery system. If He happens to deliver according to your dreams and demands, then you’ll deem Him worthy of worship, but if He fails to deliver, then His goodness and love will be called into question and you’ll have little motivation to worship Him. Perhaps this is what Jesus was describing in Revelation 2:4 when He spoke about those who have abandoned their first love. They let dreams and other desires control their hearts.

I’m sure if we put our minds to it, we can come up with many other ways people mistake the work of Jesus in our present day. I think the five that I’ve just described make the point, however. Like the multitude on Palm Sunday, it’s possible for us to properly identify the person of Jesus and sorely mistake the work of Jesus. Mistaking the work of Jesus is one of the central reasons people become bored with Jesus, disappointed with Jesus, annoyed with Jesus, and even turn against Jesus, like the multitudes did.

So how do we guard ourselves against mistaking the work of Jesus? And how would we even know if we’re mistaking the work of Jesus? Let me remind you of the biblical principle I described at the beginning of this sermon. The more we know about the person and work of Jesus, the more accurately we understand our experiences with Him. I shared a couple examples of how this worked in the disciples’ lives. There were times when Jesus did and said things that they mistook in the moment, but later, as their knowledge of the person and work of Jesus increased, their understanding was sharpened. They were able to discern things that they hadn’t been able to discern earlier. They were able to say, “Now I get it! Now I know what Jesus was doing when He did that.”

The knowledge that made the biggest difference for the disciples was that which they acquired by experiencing the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. These events brought everything into focus for them. You and I have a distinct advantage over the disciples because we have the written word of God which tells us all the details we need to know about the person and work of Jesus, including the details of His death, resurrection, and ascension.

So to answer the question of how we can increase in our knowledge of the person and work of Jesus, it’s be reading, studying, memorizing, and mediating upon the Scriptures. Every page of the Bible tells us about the person and work of Jesus. Old Testament, New Testament; all of it points us to who Jesus is, what He has done in the past, what He is doing today, and what He will do in the future.

So if you know that Jesus is the Lord and Savior, but you discover that you’re bored with Him, or your disappointed with Him, or you’re annoyed with Him, or you think He doesn’t love you and care for you, or you wonder why He doesn’t give you the things you think you need, then you probably have a mistaken understanding of the work Jesus is performing in your life and this world right now. The solution to this problem is to pray that the Lord will increase your knowledge of the person and work of Jesus. Pray that He’ll cleanse your mind of the cultural caricatures, bad theology, and moralistic baggage that you’re carrying in your heart. Pray that His Spirit will give you understanding of the spiritual things that belong to the mind of Christ. Then apply yourself to reading and receiving and absorbing the Scriptures. And when you do, know that the Spirit of Christ will transform you by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.