Christ Is King

Recap Where Does My Help Come from

We have been in our sermon series dealing with the early church. Last week we looked at where our help comes from. Our help doesn’t come from any worldly thing. Our help comes from God Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth. We looked at Paul’s admonition that one day everything is going to be made right. Sometimes, God is going to lead us through a dark valley, but He is going to get us through. David talks a bit about that in Psalm 23:4 “Even when I go through the darkest valley, I fear no danger, for you are with me; your rod and your staff—they comfort me.” We have no need to fear when we are going through dark and trying times. God is goin to lead us through and it is going to be for our benefit. Though there are groanings, these things are only temporary. We belong to the One true God. He has promised us that we will be with Him forever and ever.

We also looked at how the Spirit helps us in our prayers. We might not know what to say, we might not know how to say it, but the Spirit intervenes on our behalf. When we talk to God, we can talk to Him plainly and the Spirit will fill in the gaps. God doesn’t need flowery words from us to hear us and understand us. Instead, we can approach Him with our emotions, we can ask questions. We can be honest with Him about how we are feeling. If we are happy, we can communicate that. If we are upset, we can communicate that as well. God made us with emotions. He made us in His image. Jesus Himself had emotions. Jesus knew how everything was going to work out, but He still displayed His emotions. Today is Palm Sunday. Last week at the kid’s clip time in the 11:00 AM service, Dania talked about an event that happened right before Christ’s triumphal entry. Before Jesus entered Jerusalem for the last time, He went to Bethany because He received word that Lazarus His friend had passed away. The disciples don’t want Him to go to Bethany because they know He is putting Himself at risk in heading that way. They know going this way is going to mean certain death. Jesus shows up to Bethany and sees how Martha and Mary are crying and what does Jesus do? He doesn’t say, “Praise, God, for Lazarus has gone home”. Instead, Jesus weeps. The shortest verse in the Bible is “Jesus wept”. Most people have that one memorized. Jesus cries. He shows that He feels emotions. He knew that He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead, but He still wept for His friend and wept for those that were weeping. Since God feels emotions and displays those emotions, why would we think that we need to hide how we feel. God made us to feel things, so we should feel them and express them in an appropriate manner.

What Paul was getting at in the text we reviewed last week is that God is going to make everything right in the end. There will be groans, and it is okay to groan, but that is only temporary for those of us that believe. When it comes to our future, this is one way we can look at it. Those that do not believe in Jesus are going to have good days and they are going to have bad days. The bad days they feel here on earth will not compare to the bad days they will have in eternity. Believers are going to have good days and we are going to have bad days. Those good days we have here on earth are going to pale in comparison to the good days we have waiting for us in paradise.

Today, we are going to take a break from our series on the early church and look at the events of Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday kicks off what is traditionally known as Holy Week. Jesus enters Jerusalem and does a lot of good things, but people start to get a little upset about what He is saying, so they begin to abandon Him. Thursday is known as Maundy Thursday. That is the night that we have the first instance of the LORD’s Supper. From there, we go into Good Friday in which Jesus was brutally executed, followed up to His glorious resurrection from the grave. A lot happens in this week. Today we are going to look at the events that kicked it off. If you have your Bibles, please turn them to Mark 11:1-11

Mark 11:1–11 CSB

When they approached Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and told them, “Go into the village ahead of you. As soon as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here right away.’ ” So they went and found a colt outside in the street, tied by a door. They untied it, and some of those standing there said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” They answered them just as Jesus had said; so they let them go. They brought the colt to Jesus and threw their clothes on it, and he sat on it. Many people spread their clothes on the road, and others spread leafy branches cut from the fields. Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted: Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest heaven! He went into Jerusalem and into the temple. After looking around at everything, since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.

This triumphal entry starts with a display of faith. Jesus sends two of the disciples to get a donkey for Him to ride into town on. What is amazing here is that no one questions what Christ has told them to do. Up to this point, we don’t really learn much about Jesus’s modes of transportation. He most likely walked, so the fact that He is calling for His guys to bring Him a donkey and there are no questions about it is pretty amazing. They don’t question Him. Jesus tells them what to say if they are asked what they are doing. They are simply to say that The LORD needs it. They go, no questions asked. What’s more is that when they go to get the donkey, they are asked what they are doing. Mark has this group labeled as some people. Luke’s account is a little bit different. Luke 19:33–34 “As they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” “The Lord needs it,” they said.” So it’s not just the faith of the disciples here that is on display. They go out and get this colt with no fear. They just do exactly what Jesus had told them to do. There is also the faith of the colt’s owner. This guy hears that the LORD needs it and just lets them go. No questions asked.

If we were in his position, what would we have done? Would we have been faithful and just given it over? Or would we make an argument on why we needed to keep it? That colt was valuable, but the owner was willing to give it up. He was going out on faith. Are we giving up the things God has told us to relinquish to Him? Or are we holding on?

The disciples take the colt back to Jesus, they spread their garments on the beast and Jesus rides into Jerusalem. This is significant for a couple of reasons. This colt is symbolic of what Jesus is there to do. Jesus has come not so that He can be served by these people that are acting as His subjects. The colt was a symbol of peace and service, two things that Jesus came to deliver. He is the prince of peace and He is all about service. When Jesus walked the earth, we see Him spending more time taking care of others than He does taking care of Himself. Jesus puts others first, even though He is the One that deserved to be put first. The second reason that the colt is significant is because this was foretold in prophecy. We have talked before about how Jesus is the ONLY human to ever walk this earth that hit each and every prophecy about the Messiah. We know that Jesus is who He says He is because He meets this criteria Zechariah 9:9 “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout in triumph, Daughter Jerusalem! Look, your King is coming to you; he is righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Jesus gets on the colt and He heads into town, the people are rejoicing, they are so happy that He has come. So they are proclaiming the coming of the Messiah. They are bowing down prostrate before Him and giving Him the worship and reverence that He is due. The words they use here to give Him praise are taken from the Psalms, Psalm 118 and 148 to be more precise. These psalms proclaim the victory that God has given David over his enemies.

So for that brief moment in time, everyone seems pretty happy that Jesus has shown up. The only people that were not happy to see Him were some of the Pharisees. They are upset because they recognize some folks out of this crowd. Many of these people gathered at the triumphal entry were there when Jesus raised Lazarus from the tomb. These same Pharisees had been conspiring earlier to kill Lazarus because he was irrefutable proof that Jesus had raised him from the dead. John’s account details the Pharisees and their complaint amongst themselves about how the crowd is going after Jesus. However, Luke gives us a little more detail in his account. As the crowd is throwing their adoration at Jesus, we read in Luke 19:39–40 “Some of the Pharisees from the crowd told him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if they were to keep silent, the stones would cry out.”” Honestly, I wonder what kind of impression that would have left on everyone gathered.

Anyway, here we have all these people that are worshipping Jesus and identifying Him as the One that was there to liberate them. I have always wondered how in the world this entire crowd can go from calling Him the Messiah on Palm Sunday and then calling for His crucifixion just a few days later.

We are made in God’s image, God is not made in our image.

People fall away because they think God should meet their expectations, not the other way around. This group knew that the Messiah had come to free them. The problem was that they just looked at Him from a worldly power that would rescue them from a worldly power. That Zechariah text we read earlier prior to the announcement that the Messiah would come riding in on a colt, talks about how the Messiah is going to free them from their oppressors. This group had known oppression. They had been under slavery in Egypt, they had been taken away on an exile by the Assyrians and the Babylonians, now at this time of Jesus’s arrival, they were under occupation to the Romans, paying their taxes and living under their laws. Zechariah 9:10 “I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem. The bow of war will be removed, and he will proclaim peace to the nations. His dominion will extend from sea to sea, from the Euphrates River to the ends of the earth.”

So I am sure that there were plenty of people there in the crowd expecting for Jesus to just head on into Jerusalem and lay waste to the Romans that were occupying the territory. They were looking for a good smiting like they had read about with Pharaoh and the plagues. That’s not what Jesus does when He first gets to the holy city. The first thing He does is weep over Jerusalem. Then He goes to clean out the temple. There was another enemy that Jesus was focused on and it wasn’t the Romans. Something had gone wrong. The people were now just going through the motions when it comes tow worship. So Jesus goes and shows his disapproval of what is happening in the Temple. Mark 11:15–17 “They came to Jerusalem, and he went into the temple and began to throw out those buying and selling. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves, and would not permit anyone to carry goods through the temple. He was teaching them: “Is it not written, My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations? But you have made it a den of thieves!””

The people at this time enjoyed their convenience. I think we can all relate to that. We love convenience here in the US. We enjoy convenience. We have fast food. we have high speed internet. Sometimes these conveniences are good and enhance things. I am old enough to remember dial up internet and how long it took to get a simple webpage loaded up. Now we have lightning fast communication which is good. However, it is also bad because so many of us can just fire off a response without thinking about it. Since we have that convenience of instant communication, people expect an answer immediately. Fast food is convenient in this fast paced world we are living in and it fills the gut, but at what cost? We love our convenience, but we probably love it too much. We have so much convenience that many people expect church and Christian service to be convenient. Clarifiers are put on there. “I will help in this area as long as nothing else is going on.” “I will make it to church as long as I don’t have a family event or something else more entertaining to do.” God didn’t call us to have a convenient faith. He called us to sacrifice. He didn’t send Jesus down to earth because it was convenient. He sent Jesus to show what it was to live a life fully devoted to God.

The problem here is that the people were not fully devoted to God. They wanted things convenient. Back in those days, Jewish people were expected to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year for various festivals and to make a sacrifice for their sins. At this point, there are Jews spread throughout the area, so they are coming from all over. That’s why there are money changers there in the Temple complex. Nobody wants to travel with an animal to sacrifice, that would be highly inconvenient, so there are people there selling animals to the travelers. They are there to change their currency into the shekel so that these people can then purchase their atonement animal, take it to the priest, and just be done with it until the next pilgrimage. The people exchanging money and selling animals was not the problem. The problem was the location. The problem was that they essentially turned the temple into a convenience store.

Sacrifice was never meant to be convenient, that’s why it is called a sacrifice!

So Jesus goes into the temple complex and He fashions a whip of chords and drives these people out. It should be noted that He doesn’t destroy anything. I want to know what was going on in the mind of the disciples while He is putting the whip together. They were probably thinking “oooooh, someone is going to get it.” Of course, the money changers and animal sellers probably never thought that the whip would be used to drive them out of the area. They were probably thinking “Oh yeah, we are going to watch Jesus go and whip on these Romans.” As far as they were concerned, they were doing nothing wrong.

After Jesus goes in there and drives these guys out and flips their tables, I don’t think as many people were as happy to see Him as there were earlier. I can imagine that these folks selling in the temple complex were probably thinking “who does that guy think He is?” “What authority does He have?” And that is the beginning of their turning from confessing Christ as king to calling for crucifixion.

Up to this point, everyone with the exception of the Pharisees and Sadducees were happy with Jesus. He had healed people, he had fed thousands of people with very little supply. Jesus had done many miracles and the people were happy with what He had done. Several times they tried to make Him king because of the wonderful things He had done.

God Does not Exist to do our will, we exist to do His.

Then there is an incredible shift, because it goes from Jesus giving things to them and turns to matters of how they are supposed to behave. See, everyone is okay with God and Jesus as long as they are getting what they want. These people wanted to install Jesus because they thought God was going to make all their dreams come true. They were treating God like some kind of a magical genie that does our will. That’s not how it works! The Father’s will is the will we should be concerned about. In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prays, “not my will, but your will be done.”

Are we more concerned about our wants and wishes than we are about God’s will? It’s a question we have to ask ourselves. If we were there would we have been impressed with His cleansing of the temple and the teachings He gave? Would we be going along with Him or would we start pulling away when we see how difficult following Christ can be?

Faith is going to cost us something.

We wonder how these people that were confessing this day that Christ is king would just a few days later spit on Him while He hung on the cross. It’s not the first time in Christ’s earthly ministry where He was rejected because of the hard sayings. After feeding the 5,000, the people were fat and happy and satisfied with Jesus, until He started telling them what it was going to take for them to enter heaven. When it gets too tough, we read in John 6:60 “Therefore, when many of his disciples heard this, they said, “This teaching is hard. Who can accept it?”” Jesus then admonishes them and tells them that the flesh doesn’t help at all. Then in John 6:66 “From that moment many of his disciples turned back and no longer accompanied him.” The only ones that remain at that point are the 12 disciples. Throughout the gospels we see the people try to put Jesus on the throne, they know that He is the king, but the rejection hits when Jesus is not doing what they want Him to do. Here’s the deal, though. Christ is king no matter whether we believe He is or not. Jesus’s authority is not determined by our belief. He remains the Messiah whether we confess Him as Lord or not. He is not dependent on us for His power. God is not One that we can order around. He entered Jerusalem that Palm Sunday, riding on the donkey, there to set the people free, but they did not see it and later rejected Him. But still, even in their rejection, He was and is still king. As His people, we have a choice to make. We can either go along and follow God even when it isn’t convenient. We can lean on Him and seek Him in everything we do, even when we are told to do things we don’t want to do. Or we can be like these Israelites here and say that it is too hard and walk away. Do we live lives that demonstrate Christ is the authority in our lives or do we show that convenience is really what drives us?