Palm Sunday: Day of Reckoning
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Today is Palm Sunday
I though about trying to complete my Last Supper series today, but i decided to save that last bit for this Wednesday, because Palm Sunday deserves its own time.
We often look at Palm Sunday as a victorious day,
It is when Jesus came to jerusalem, with people gathering and praising him
and many Bibles will title all the passages that deal with Palm Sunday as “The Triumphal entry”
And there are echos of a triumphal king returning home,
And the People are celebrating their savior, their messiah, but he is not about to do anything they expected him to
Because while this was a time of celebration for the people,
For Jesus it was a day of reckoning
And when he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ you shall say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.’ ” So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” And they said, “The Lord has need of it.” And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it.
Matthew and Mark both point out that this fulfills a prophecy from Zechariah
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.
Now Zechariah’s prophecy here echos many other prophesies about the coming day of the Lord - which is sometimes equated with the day of judgement.
because the prophesied arrival of the Messiah almost always coincided with the prophecies of judgement upon the nations.
Many of those prophecies of Jesus are only half fulfilled - he will one day come back to finish the job.
But here we see Jesus, the coming king, riding into Jerusalem not on a warhorse, not in regal robes, but humble on a young donkey.
But Jesus made sure to orchestrate things so that it was clear he was fulfilling this prophecy.
And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
So this is the picture we always have of palm Sunday, Jesus riding towards Jerusalem, people spreading cloaks and palm leaves on the road like a carpet, people praising his name.
the other gospels include the word Hosanna - which literally means “Please Save Us”
The People recognize Jesus as a savior, but they think he is coming to save them from the romans
What he has actually come to do is more serious
And the pharisees tell jesus to rebuke the people worshiping him.
And Jesus responds “If they were silent, even the rocks would cry out”
Now that sounds triumphant, like even the rocks will sing my praises, but there is more here, stones have a particular role in the Bible, often time they are set up as reminders of things God has done, or as witnesses to covenants the people made with the Lord
In fact, the exact phrase of “the stones will cry out” is found only in one other place. and it is not a happy celebration, like Isaiah is.
“Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house, to set his nest on high, to be safe from the reach of harm! You have devised shame for your house by cutting off many peoples; you have forfeited your life. For the stone will cry out from the wall, and the beam from the woodwork respond.
Remember Jesus is speaking to Pharisees here, they know the Bible better than anyone,
They ask him to rebuke those praising his name, and he tells them that if they silence the people the stone will cry out,
almost warning them of what is about to come.
And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
When Jesus first sees the city, he weeps over it, he has this lament,
And he cries about how soon the city will be surrounded on every side, and tear it to the ground.
Jesus knows that the day of the Lord is coming, that judgment is coming to Jerusalem, and he is weeping because he knows how it will play out
Church this happened to Jerusalem roughly 40 years later.
And this is almost directly tied to the Day of the Lord Imagery.
The great day of the Lord is near, near and hastening fast; the sound of the day of the Lord is bitter; the mighty man cries aloud there. A day of wrath is that day, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet blast and battle cry against the fortified cities and against the lofty battlements.
Zephaniah explained how there would be battles that tear down city walls, where not once stone will be upon another, and it is coming
But look at how Zephaniah opens this section of his prophecy
Be silent before the Lord God! For the day of the Lord is near; the Lord has prepared a sacrifice and consecrated his guests. And on the day of the Lord’s sacrifice— “I will punish the officials and the king’s sons and all who array themselves in foreign attire. On that day I will punish everyone who leaps over the threshold, and those who fill their master’s house with violence and fraud.
He opens up by saying that before the Day of the Lord, will come the Lord’s sacrifice
Jesus is that sacrifice, the passover lamb, and he is coming into Jerusalem not victorious, but marching to his death.
And the Prophet Joel also spoke about the coming day of the Lord, with an army that devours everything. and you can read about this in Joel chapter 2.
But Joel concludes that in order to avoid this dreadful day of the Lord, they ought to repent.
“Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God?
See Joel knows that the judgment is coming and calls the people to repentance, Zephaniah saw that the judgement would follow the arrival of the Lord’s Sacrifice, Jesus.
Jesus is here, and he see the people worshiping and praising him, and he sees the city and he begins to weep because instead of repenting and turning back to the Lord, they are thinking that he is going to drive out the romans. They do not understand why he is here, to free them not from the romans, but from sin, and their own blindness is going to lead to their destruction.
And Then Jesus enters the temple, and instead of making a sacrifice or making peace with the priests he does something else
And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.”
He Upsets the buisness of the temple, how the priests had allowed the temple to be used as a place of business, where people bought and sold offerings,
in John it says that jesus made a whip as he was clearing out the temple.
and this to is tied to the day of the Lord
“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord.
this begins with calling out John the Baptist, who prepared the way,
then the Lord comes into the temple, and who can endure it, he comes like a fire to refine the temple.
To make worship of God proper again.
For Jesus, Palm sunday was not a day of victory, it was a day of reckoning.
It was the wake up call to the priests,
It was the call to repentace for the people
Church when Jesus comes again, it will be another day of reckoning.
The day of the Lord is coming, who can withstand it?
We can get our house/our church in order,
Do not let the sacred become the secular
We can repent of our sin
Turning away from our sin, turning back to Jesus
We can recognize Christ’s Sacrifice
His work on the cross, to defeat the sin in our lives.
