4/14/2019

Thanks for this Sunday is taken from Luke chapter 19 verses 28 through 40.

After he had said this he went on ahead going up to Jerusalem when it come near Bethpage and Bethany at the place called the Mount of Olives. He sent two of the disciples thing go into the village ahead of you. As you enter it you will find tied there a Colt that's never been ridden untie it and bring it here. If anyone ask you why are you untying? It just say this the Lord needs it. So those who are sent departed and found it as they did as he had told them as they run time to Colt its owners asked them. Why are you in time too cold? They say the Lord needs it then they brought it to Jesus and after throwing their cloaks on the cult. They said Jesus on it as he rode along people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God. Joyfully with a loud voice for all the Deeds of power that they had been 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 Heaven some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him teacher. What are your disciples to stop? He answered I tell you if these were silent the stones would shout out the word of God for the people of God.

Let us pray. Lord May the meditations of our hearts and the words of my lips be pleasing in your sight. our Rock and Our Redeemer amen

brought a little something with me today.

It's fishing season. I have too many life transitions to even touch my boat right now. So I get to see other boats go by and look jealously at them and

I was fishing about 3 years ago. And sometimes when you go fishing you got to stop by a couple gas stations on the way. And so we stopped by this gas station in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee and beef jerky is really good to take with you. When you go fishing, you just put a little slice in there and kind of nodded as it goes and and so what not. So anyway,

Picked up this beef jerky. Anybody beef jerky fan here. Okay. Well bad too bad. There's too many of you. So anyway, not to mention is like 15 bucks for this little thing. So this is mango a beef jerky. And the thing I knew the name of it and I tried it and it's really good. It's I'll tell you what makes it really good. Is that like old-fashioned? But it's in strips, but it's like dry. You can even see the Press marks on it just smells like smoke Enos, right and it's just the right thick and it just turned it off and it's just perfect. It's not as good as David Letterman jerky David Letterman. Jerk. He's the one that I found in, Louisiana. It's $20 for like a quarter of a pound.

Terrebonne Parish in Louisiana. Anyway, I can't get that anymore of it. But I found this I really really like it. But the thing is that they don't really sell it anywhere all I could remember if it was the name of it. And so I looked online and I found out that they were looking for you strip heaters in the Illinois area for this beef jerky. And I'm like you mean I could I could have a whole storage facility full of this stuff and like take it to gas stations and sell it but it was going to inflict with my other career and so I wasn't able to do that but I did find in Springfield. There's a gas station there that carries this stuff and it's absolutely amazing and I tried to tell my future stepson Charlie that it was the best beef jerky in the world and he tried it and he's like, oh that's gross. More for me so it's good stuff. You know any time anybody would go to a gas station and they likes beef jerky. I would just be like, hey pick up some meanwhile beef jerky. It's really good, you know.

I'm even all of my friends have heard about this beef jerky, right like all of them have. I could go on for days.

That's kind of how the disciples were with Jesus. They could go on for days. They just wouldn't be quiet about it. They just kept going and going and going and going and and they just Started to shout about it this time on the way down from the Mount of Olives that they were beginning to remember all of the things that Jesus had done that they had saw and they started to shout out about it and they were like the the Mary Kay lady of disciples or for the Tupperware lady or for our current generation. The AdvoCare people they were like the AdvoCare people for for Jesus and people just felt like it's what they had to do and so they told everyone who would listen about it and they started to get loud about it. And then the Pharisees got uncomfortable. Let me tell you why they got uncomfortable. Is the Pharisees had power in Jerusalem because Rome allowed them to have power because they could keep control of their base. Once they lose control of the base. No more power. Don't worry. The rules not complicated. It's the same way hegemony works in the world today. So so they kind of have all of these reasons why they want Jesus's disciples to stop talking but Jesus's disciples won't stop talking So eventually they even stop telling the disciples to be quiet and they tell Jesus cuz they know Jesus has the power to get him to be quiet. And so it takes hey Jesus get him to be quiet into shut up there too loud. And what is Jesus say? Even if they didn't cry out. The Rocks would cry out. So my question for you this morning is does Jesus need to send the rock on your behalf to cry out?

Does Jesus need to send a rock? To cry out because if we don't cry out we know that the rocks will and quite frankly all of us in the room would be way more comfortable Distributing beef jerky. Then you would be about telling people about Jesus. Because beef jerky, you can just be the the weird guy who loves beef jerky, right, but if you if you love Jesus so much that all you do is is want to tell people about Jesus.

then you somehow different than and so one of the things that we're going to talk about this morning is this this praise that we we have this in this scene from Jesus's Ministry this pose Anna Hosanna hosanna in the highest. Okay, really good idea of the background of the word by the way, it's it's Grant salvation Grant salvation Grant salvation the Pharisees question was who is this Jesus that he can grant salvation? And how and why? And so that question still exists for us today, we've gathered because the Holy Spirit has moved in us, but we have felt the love of God through action and through relationship. Maybe through somebody telling you about Jesus. I remember the first time I was ever asked if I had accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. This is the kid who is baptized immediately upon birth and spent every Sunday in church. But someone a little old lady down at the end of the road who's grass was always moved by the city, cuz she let it grow so high they got tired of it. And so she was kind of slipping a little bit and she was the one who asked a six-year-old child if they have accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior is that makes anybody else and there's an age that we believe that that conversation can happen. And so

sometimes others of us give others a bad name and we're worried about buying into that name that that we don't want to be confused with right like sometimes we see people that are really pushing maybe on the street corner with a bullhorn, you know, maybe maybe they go down to New Orleans town of Bourbon Street and try to convince everybody on Bourbon Street that them that they shouldn't be there. But but more likely than not the reason you're here is because somebody has invested in you and loved you and cared for you so much that they shared with you. How did Jesus change them? Maybe it was just something as simple as this is where I Feel Love. This is where I feel acceptance. This is where I feel like I'm not judged by all of the ways of this world, but can simply acknowledge my relationship with God in my position in experiencing God's grace. One of the things that Jesus offered that was so threatening was Grace for everyone. Grace no matter what You know. What's what's called is triumphant entry what's called a parade, right? So Jesus has a parade that's going into Jerusalem. And if you had a parade, let's save. Like every four years there's an inaugural parade, right? It doesn't matter who's coming in power. They always have an inaugural parade and so you can get a ticket to it. Right did you know you can get a ticket to those things that the House of Representatives in the Senate they each have a set number of tickets. It might be too in my before it might be 6, but if you know them well enough if you rub elbows with them, if you're the right kind of Giver or the right kind of person and we have the right kind of influence. Then you can get a ticket and you can go. And really the whole inauguration event. It is also about who's in power and who Associates with those in power is not just because they absolutely are in love with the candidate but it's more about who they are when they arrive to the event you going to get the ability to then go home and share about that event right kind of creates steam, right? Jesus's parade was not a parade of esteem. Jesus's parade wasn't afraid of everyone who was respected in the community. You want to know who let it off? A bunch of a bunch of people that followed Jesus around for three years. You probably were known as people that either couldn't hold down a job or didn't make the best life decisions or they were the family not that tried to go off and join the circle of discipleship, right? Or or maybe it was the kids. The kids that weren't in school, cuz their parents couldn't afford it the kids who were begging on the side of the street and decided to join this this parade. Those kids you want to know where they got the Palms from?

Poems they don't they don't I like to think of it like the girl from Big palm trees right and people got to walk up the palm tree to get them. That's not how it works is you like a bush? Okay. He's a very pretty blush. I imagine people on Jerusalem's thoroughfares planted them for their wife at Mother's Day the year before and hear these kids come the next year. They pluck them off and start waving them all around town. You know those kids. I didn't have anything better to do. That's who Jesus is being worshipped by as Jesus enters Jerusalem.

Why?

Because Jesus was their only hope. And Jesus is our only hope. We can have the best technology the world has to offer the most advances in medicine, but still we're broken people. We can understand exactly how markets work but we can still be poor. We can understand how relationships rely on one another but we can still feel isolated and alone. We as a people need Jesus, but we we need to share Jesus with others. So that Jesus is praise continues on. So that God's love is known because this week it came out of the news that the non-religious have officially reached the level in one study of the population in the u.s. Is Catholic. So that means that more likely than not people that we are interacting with have not heard of Jesus like literally no idea and let me tell you one of the reasons why this is We're really nice people. We don't want to offend people. Right? And so therefore we want our kids to engage in other kids in ways that are comfortable right? So then we begin to say things to our kids like, you know, we don't talk about religion. You know, we don't we don't really talk about that outside of church. That's something that's for church. We want to make people uncomfortable and there's a there's a grain of Truth in that right? Like we don't want to be like cutting people off in the name of Jesus, right? But at the same point in time we have to be able to reach out to people and say I can see you're hurting or this is somewhere where I Feel Love and life isn't always easy. And so we have to acknowledge that our mission field this fertile ground that we have is ground that maybe hasn't heard about Jesus. Jesus is like the minghua beef jerky and nowhere, Tennessee. And the world is hungry and we have one job. And that job is to distribute Jesus. But in order for us to do that, we have to be willing to share what Jesus has done for us. This week you were going to have an opportunity to share at least one reason or one thing or with one person about why you either come to church today or going to come to church next week organ experience Holy Week. You're going to have an opportunity to just say, you know, I go to church and this is why or I pray in this is why it doesn't need to be anything more than just you sharing love with another person. That's what God has called us to do. Don't make God send rocks on our behalf.

We are created to bring honor glory and praise. The praise with the palm branches like the noise that they make when you shake them around right then other way that we do praise is we also sing praises to God. And that's one of the ways that we do worship on a regular basis and other way that we praise God is through prayer. You just start talking to God about your life. In about what God has done in about maybe praying for others and what God can do in their line. But God is going to offer some way that we can reach out to others. This way is Holy Week. A lot of people in the world know, it's Holy Week mostly because everybody gets Friday off here and Monday.

If you have an opportunity this week, you could do something as simple as inviting friends with kids to church at 9:30 on Sunday morning to join in the Easter egg hunt. Cuz the weird thing about it is some kids don't even do Easter egg hunts. Maybe you want to invite them to breakfast for Sunrise Service, or maybe you want to invite them to our Monday Thursday service or the Good Friday service, or maybe you just want to invite him to church with you. But God is calling us to praise and not just in this building but with our whole life. Cuz that's what God needs us to do. That's what we're called to do. Let us share the love of God with all that we mean. So That Others May praise him too. butter spray

Lord help us to share with others

why we have faith in you. Why we worship you.

Why we feel your love.

We know others are hurting.

We know that you call us not to provide answers.

But you still love them.

Help us to do that. amen