Sermon Tone Analysis

Just out of curiosity… How many of you have ever heard a Palm Sunday message before?

Slide #1

Just out of curiosity… How many of you have ever heard a Palm Sunday message before?

… Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey…

… People line the streets between Bethany and Jerusalem waving Palm Branches and

screaming… “Hosanna… Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!...”

… Sure, most of us have and probably lots of times.

But at some point this last year I came across this story in my quiet time and for the first time something jumped out to me that I had never noticed before…

… Now it’s possible my Sunday School teachers taught me this, and I was just too busy

thinking about the OREO cookies and Kool aid…

… Because Ms. Evelyn never bought the imitation OREO’s only the real deal…

But in all the times I had heard this story… and all the years I have preached messages about this story I can never recall this detail jumping out at me the way it did this last year…

… You see… that first Palm Sunday, for Jesus, started out in Bethany… Most likely at the

home of Lazarus, Mary and Martha…

… But because it was the Passover Festival Jesus and His disciples made their way into

Jerusalem…

… But unlike the dozens of other times Jesus and His disciples had gone into

Jerusalem… this time crowds of people started to gather alongside the road… and they

laid their coats on the road in front of Him and waved palm branches screaming out,

“Hosanna… Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!...”

… When He arrived in Jerusalem Jesus goes straight to the Temple… and enters into the

COURT OF GENTILES…

… Now you have to picture this… the Court of Gentiles was no small place… it was this

massive courtyard the size of almost 15 football fields… and it’s packed with people

from all over who had made the trip to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival…

… Some of those people the very ones who were just screaming His name and

declaring Him to be the Messiah!

… I mean this is the moment… the stage is set… the atmosphere is electric… the crowd is engaged… Jesus was the most profound preacher in all of history… so you have to think… any preacher worth his salt is going to jump on this and start preaching to this captive audience…

… But Mark tells us that’s not what Jesus did at all… In fact, right there in the middle of this

huge bustling crowd of excited people Mark tells us that… Jesus just stops…

Slide #2

NIV…

Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts (And) He looked around at everything…

Now call it the curse of familiarity or the unwillingness to pay attention to all of the details, but until this last year I had never noticed that Jesus… in this prime teaching moment… just looked around… and THEN He turned around and went back to Bethany…

… Are you kidding me… That’s it?...

… He didn’t do anything…?

… He didn’t say anything…?

… He didn’t teach anything…?

… It seems crazy right… But don’t check out on me because there’s something to this…

… You see when Mark says Jesus looked around he doesn’t use the word that would imply Jesus was looking around like He was searching for a friend or the restroom or the funnel cake stand…

… the word Mark used was telling all of his readers that Jesus took His time and He looked around slowly and carefully… making sure to take in every detail…

… He looked at the Temple building… a beautiful structure with all its detailed architecture…

… He looked at the Wall… these massive stones shaped and fitted to stack on top of one another…

… Over by the altar of sacrifice He saw smoke billowing up into the sky as the priests were making

the sacrifices for the sins of the nation.

… In front of the altar He saw the lines of people waiting their turn to have their sacrifice made by

the priests…

… and at first everything seemed to be as it should be…

… UNTIL something in the SOUTHERN part of the courtyard grabbed His attention…

… Right there inside of the Temple courts… set up like a Farmers Market… or a Flea Market…

Jesus saw a crowd of vendors…

… Some of them were exchanging foreign currencies into local currency…

… Some were selling animals to travelers for their required sacrifices…

… But Right there… in the place that was designed to be a place to worship and honor God…

they had set up a market and turned it into a place for making profit.

… And in that moment… I have to believe in His mind Jesus was transported back 3 years earlier to this exact same spot when He had walked into the temple and saw the exact same thing…

John tells the story like this…

Slide #3

…

It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover celebration, so Jesus went to Jerusalem.

14 In the Temple area he saw merchants selling cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifices; he also saw dealers at tables exchanging foreign money.

Slide #4

15 Jesus made a whip from some ropes and chased them all out of the Temple.

He drove out the sheep and cattle, scattered the money changers’ coins over the floor, and turned over their tables.

Slide #5

16 Then, going over to the people who sold doves, he told them, “Get these things out of here.

Stop turning my Father’s house into a marketplace!”

- So are you catching this… 3 years earlier… Jesus… Enraged at the misuse and abuse of the temple… unapologetically with no consideration of being politically correct drove these criminals out of the Temple courts…

… He didn’t ask permission… He didn’t form a committee… He wasn’t concerned about

offending anyone…

… He cut through the red tape and He RESTORED the temple back to a place of worship…

… And Now here He is… standing in that exact same place 3 years later… and all those criminals had found their way back into the temple…

… at the invitation of the religious leaders they had returned the temple courts to a place of

corruption and profiteering.

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Slide #6

ILLUSTRATION:

If you were alive in September of 2001 it is likely you recall exactly where you were when you heard about the terror attacks on the United States

… That was a very unsettling time for the United States… America was back on its heels…

… The thought that terrorists would come to our soil and terrorize our citizens…

… that they would violate our circle of safety… murder our citizens and destroy our property… had EVERY AMERICAN outraged…

… Government on every level made a commitment that day that this would never happen again…

…That we would secure our borders and set safeguards into place

… that we would rebuild stronger than ever…

… And I could not have been more proud than the day President Bush very publicly and very humbly

called our nation to prayer…

… Somewhere inside of my Jesus Loving heart… a glimmer of hope started to well up that

maybe America would make a return to trusting in God and relying on His wisdom and

guidance to repair our nation.

… and for a time there were signs of this…

… National Unity… Huge increase in Compassion ministry… Financial and relational

generosity… and churches were full…

BUT as time passed… as the shock began to wear off… you could watch the rally cry of our nation shift from GOD WE NEED YOU to WE WILL REBUILD…

… And instead of it being a time of humbling for America and her citizens… what it really

became was a time of national arrogance and self-reliance…

… to the point that almost 18 years later our nation has not only returned to our pre 9/11

ways… we have gone far far past that to a place where God is not honored… instead He is

being shunned from the public arena.

And somehow in my mind I have this picture of Jesus… a lot like on that first Palm Sunday… standing in the middle of the crowd of people… among all of the cheers of self-congratulation and human arrogance and He’s not saying a word… He’s just “Looking around”

… Slowly and purposefully taking it all in…

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You see what we have to understand about the Character and behavior of God is that He is in the RESTORATION BUSINESS…

… His goal from the moment Adam and Eve introduced sin into the world… has been to