See your King

See your King.

John 12:12-19

September 22, 2024

Kids teach back!

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“When my friend John Guest, who was a noted evangelist in England, first came to the United States in the late 1960s, his first exposure to American culture was in the city of Philadelphia. During his first couple of days there, his hosts escorted him around the city to attractions such as Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, and they told him stories of the American Revolution to introduce him to the history of this new world he was embracing as his home.

John was enjoying all of this until they went to Germantown, just outside Philadelphia, and visited an antiques store that specialized in Americana. Among the items in this shop were placards and signs that displayed some of the battle cries and slogans of the Revolutionary era, such as, “No Taxation without Representation” and “Don’t Tread on Me.” But the placard that drew his keenest attention was one that announced with bold letters, “We Serve No Sovereign Here.” John told me later: “That sign stopped me in my tracks. I had left my native land and come across the Atlantic Ocean in response to a call, a vocation to be a minister of the gospel, to proclaim the kingdom of God. But on seeing this sign, I was filled with fear and consternation. I thought, `How can I possibly preach the kingdom of God to people who have a profound aversion to sovereignty?”‘ -R.C. Sproul

This story serves us well for today. It could not describe our mindset better. A king is so odd for us to get our heads around because we don’t have those here in the US. Our closest commonality would be our president but that position doesn’t even come close to someone centuries ago for the king of England, France, or the Roman Emperor. We just don’t get it.

My task today is to get all of us to “get it”. To understand what is happening in our passage and how it directly relates to you and me today. Believe me, it does relate! It does have applications, and it does affect your life.

That is why I am leading out with my main point, and we will visit it often. The title and main point of this message is “See your king.” Like I said, how can I get you to see a king unless you know what a king is and why you need one? So, that said, let us see what the Word of God has to teach us today.

1. The king’s entry.

The historical context of this event will get us to the application. If we could travel back in time 2024 years, I want each of us to hear the noise, see the crowds, smell the dirt streets and feel the energy in the air. I want you and I to understand what they did and understand the crowd’s actions.

Each year before Easter we talk about Palm Sunday. This triumphal entry of the Lord’s King, riding on a donkey and kids running down the aisle with palm branches. But by doing that, it is not necessarily accurate.

The origin of this scene comes with a heavy past that each person in that crowd knew. You see, this was the time of the Passover, 5 days from it. In 600 BC King Josiah mandated that all Jews come to Jerusalem for Passover. No Jew was allowed to celebrate the required Holiday of God in the countryside.

The result was that this small city exploded with close to 4 million people. Just to give you some context on size, Jerusalem was a walled city and was only 1 square mile in diameter. People were packing the streets.

The palm branches are very important. About 200 years before Christ, Antiochus IV attacked and oppressed the Jews. He conquered the nation of Israel and desecrated the temple. He would not allow the Jews to worship their God. Then a man by the name Judas Maccabaeus emerged as a version of the Jewish Robin Hood. He led a revolt against Antiochus’s armies and pushed them out of the Holy City.

The result was another celebration by the Jews called the Feast of Dedication (re-dedication of the temple) that later became Hanukkah. The Jews celebrated Judas Maccabaeus with music and the waving of palm branches. The palm branches came to signify a sign of military victory. You should never view Palm Sunday the same way again.

However, the palm branches are only one part of this scene we are reading about today. What was even more telling about the hearts of the people is what they were singing and yelling. Look at vs 13:

“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.”

Don’t read this like an American! Stay in the context of the event. We want to give them credit for recognizing Jesus as LORD. But, that is not the bulk of this crowd. If they really knew who He was, this would not be the scene.

Hosanna: is derived from a Hebrew word that literally means “save now.”

They were demanding that Jesus act, or “save now.” The crowd wanted a Judas Maccabaus, not what was riding on the donkey. They were demanding their expectation of a conqueror. We need to talk about that little donkey just for a second. Look closely at vs 14.

Vs 14: “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!”

The crowd was missing a very important prophecy being fulfilled right in front of their eyes. They wanted one thing and God was sending something completely different. The crowd wants a ruler, God wants a servant. To be clear, God wants a suffering servant, lowly and one not to fear. The cross-reference that John directs us to is Psalm 118

“Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!”

And Zachariah 9:9 that John quotes in verse 15.

The entire event was according to God’s perfect plan, perfect will, and perfect orchestration. The crowd had no idea that what they were doing was actually foretold hundreds of years before. Even down to the donkey.

Thanks to all four Gospels, this event is recorded with extra detail. The donkeys of that time were not large animals. This one would have been barely able to carry a full-grown man. Even a short man would have had to bend his knees to keep his feet from dragging. This was not a conquering general they were expecting or trying to make him into. The difference between how God saw His Son as compared to the crowd could not be further from reality.

This is what John (our author) wants us to get. He wants us to address the failed expectations and come and see Your King for who He is.

2. Failed expectations.

The crowd:

For years I wondered, how a crowd go from singing songs, and palm branches, to cheers to “crucify him” in a few hours. It all starts with miss reading who He is. The sad truth, we do the same thing. But, before I pull you back to our time and space, please stay on the dusty streets of Jerusalem.

We talked about what the crowds wanted, but let’s look at what they were expecting and demanding. They expected the liberator from Rome, from established and the oppression that made their lives hard. They wanted what was spoken of in the Old Testament but completely missed the timing.

Verses like: Isaiah 9:6,7

"For a child is born unto us, a son hath been given unto us, and the government is placed on his shoulders;

Or:

Isaiah 2:3-4

"He shall reign in the city of Jerusalem as King of kings, as the nations would go up to that city to be taught in his ways, never more to “train for war anymore”".

Or

Psalm 2:7-9

"You will rule them with an iron scepter, you will dash them to pieces like pottery".

They wanted that but missed the:

Isaiah 53:3-6

3 He was despised and rejected by men,

a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;

and as one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted. [1]

The desire of the crowd was not honorable. It was forced expectations. They were going to get their king, the one of their makings even if they had to kill Him to get it. And that is exactly what they did.

You know what the crowd looks like in our day and time? “I refuse to believe in a God that does not take care of the hurt in the world. I am angry with God because He did or did not do…., Any God that would pin His Son on the cross for good people is no God worth my acknowledgment.”

Hear me please, if you struggle with these statements, your expectations of who God should be will never change who He really is. No condition of your knowledge of Him will ever change the fact that He is God, that He is the same yesterday and today and forever (Heb 18:8) and His identity is never going to bend to false expectations.

If you struggle with this, please allow me to ask, what would it take for you to see Him for who He really is? Would it require Him to ride in and show you ID? The only revelation we need and have it His Word (special revelation) and His general revelation (creation). This is how He speaks and has spoken.

The disciples:

Have you ever followed a crowd and you could not explain what was going on or why you were following the masses? You could look around and say, why am I going along with this?

The disciples are obeying, but at this time, they have no clue what is going on. What is troubling is that they were comfortable. After all, Christ had the power over death, stood up to the religious rulers, walked past stoning, healed brokenness etc. Why be worried? He is going to care for them. Although it is true, their attitude comes with great risk. It brings with it failed expectations. Look at our passage:

Vs 16 “His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered…”

It should not shock us that they are lost right now, but it all comes together after the Spirit directs their attention to the entire picture. Both the OT and the now-resurrected Christ come together to reveal what Christ is about to accomplish on the cross. But as we find them here, their actions before the cross show a condition many of us believers are in today.

Church, there are a lot of us like these guys. We are obeying but are not understanding what is going on. In the time that God is teaching us, we will get frustrated, and scared and will soon scatter with the crowd. Jesus even warns them!

Mark 14:27

27 And Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ 28 But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.[2]

My challenge to each disciple of Christ, be careful to not slip into the crowd of failed expectations. Be careful to not hear the noise of the crowd and compromise into failed expectations.

The Pharisees:

I know that we may not think these guys are alive and well today but they are. Look closely at how they respond

Vs 19 “So the Pharisees said to one another, “you see that you are gaining nothing. Look the world has gone after him.”

This is a panic statement. The time is ticking in their mind. If they don’t kill Him, they will lose everything. Remember we talked about this earlier? Their panic is not a surprise though. It is part of the plan of God. Their panic here is the nudge that God uses to have His Son on the cross before the Passover.

Yes, this is all according to the plan taught by scripture that is 100% sovereign and 100% perfect. It is all laid out before us. They were acting out of pragmatism, (get rid of Him so that Rome does not destroy our way of life). It was a reasonable idea. 1 man for the sake of an entire nation.

Again, to revisit our message a while ago, would you suppress the truth for the greeter good? If so, this is the worst place to be. The truth, no matter how logical it is to suppress, can never be held in the dark. It will come out.

Now, can I bring you back to 2024? We get the benefit of looking back and playing Sunday morning critic. In our comfortable chairs, temperature-controlled church, and our 21st century problems. We pass judgment on the crowd, the disciples and the Pharisees all the while demonstrating characteristics of all three.

Today, I want all of us to change our focus from self to your King. You may not claim Him, but, you will have to recognize Him soon.

3. See your King:

On this side of the cross and the Word of God, we do not have to look at this event like the crowd, Pharisees, or the disciples. We can view Christ without getting our feet dirty and being jostled by a swelling crowd. We can come and see our King today!

You ask, how can I do that? We have to end the expectations we place on the God of the universe. We have to end our desires for who we think He is and recognize who God says He is. We have to see that He came one way and will come again in a different way.

Allow me to draw your attention to another way of looking at Christ:

Revelations 19:11-16

It is interesting how hard it is for us to get our minds around the suffering servant in the Gospel of John and the depiction that I just read for you. Allow me to ask you, how do you think that the man who saw with his own eyes the suffering servant in real life felt when he also saw Him in Revelations? Yes, the man who wrote about the Lamb Of God willing to be humiliated on a dusty street on the back of a small donkey followed by Revelations 19.

For us, we are gifted with this! We are offered the mountaintops of God’s plans. I once heard a wise old preacher say, God only gives us the mountain tops and never the valleys of His plans.

When you look at the mountain tops from a distance it looks like they are all connected. The valleys are hidden. But, do you not know that in those valleys we find the details, the specifics, and the real story? We can’t have the mountaintops without the valleys.

Many great people have suffered. Many have paid unbelievable prices of pain and suffering in the world. Some of them were Godly men and women who had dedicated their entire lives in service to God only to be left in a valley never to see the mountaintops. In short, they never saw the why it all happened.

But, they held onto the hope that the mountain top of God’s plan was the greatest good. You see, God never promises health, wealth and prosperity. Matter of fact, He never promises a life free from pain and sorrow. Oh, we want those outcomes, we want the blessings of God without the valleys of life.

Have you ever had prayers unanswered? Have you ever cried out to God begging for Him to intervene and it seemed as if He was not interested in your prayer? Look, you are in great company! Look at Elijah (just kill me Lord, it is all for nothing). How about Jonah, (Just kill me Lord), Job, CH Spurgeon and countless people. But that does not mean He ignores you!!

In each situation, these prayers were prayed from the valley, not the mountaintop. We can’t see the peaks because we are not recognizing who’s peak it is. It is the Kings Mountain top. It is the King’s plan and it is good! Each valley serves a purpose in the overall plan, even the death of the Son of God.

If you are here today and are saying that if following Christ is that hard, then He is no king of mine. I’ll remind you, you and I are not given the luxury of picking or choosing if He is king or not. He is and we should never approach a king demanding our own will! We humble ourselves before a king and NEVER demand.

Let me remind you of my introduction. The sign said, “No sovereign here…” If that is your perspective still, allow me to leave you with 1 question. What will happen when you are wrong? Don’t allow that to be on your tombstone. See your king!

See the King who came to unite hearts who reject Him with the Holy One who planned this from the start. See the King for first the suffering servant that was a payment for your failed expectations, failed and false ideals, and woeful rebellion. See the King who in spite of being hated, steps into human history as an answer to pain, suffering, and shame and gave Himself, the King of the universe, as a payment for your sin.

This King, this King is worthy of our knees on the ground. Do you know how the crowd should have responded? In hushed silence, reverent worship, knees on that dusty road and faces hidden from the King of Kings. See your King church! See Him for who God sees Him to be!