Palm Sunday - Seeing With the Eyes of God

Good Morning and welcome to Palm Sunday. Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!

Scripture tells us that this is the day that the Lord has made, and we will rejoice and be glad in it!

Today marks the start of Easter Holy Week. This is the week leading up to the Crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. It’s the start of a week long journey that we will be taking as a church to walk through this week with Christ and follow through some of the events that He experienced. I say walk it through together because this week will have some special messages throughout the week on our FB page as we watch the events day by day and see what happened to our Savior, what He was doing in the week leading up to His Resurrection, so if you are not following us on FB please make sure you do, as you don’t want to miss the things we’ll be looking at over the next week. Amen! Let’s go to the Lord in prayer as we begin our service for today!

Pray

As we start our service today I want you to turn with me to the book of Luke chapter 19, and we are going to read from verse 28 to 44

Luke 19:28–44 ESV

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. 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.” 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.”

As we start to dig through our key text this morning, I want to ask you as question:

Are you Looking with the Eyes of God?

Are you looking with the eyes of God? See we see things differently than God does, and if we are looking at our lives with our vision and understanding we are going to miss some things. We are going to struggle with some things.

Turn with me back to verse 28 as we read the words of God again

Luke 19:28–35 ESV

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.

Here we see Christ as He is preparing for the procession into Jerusalem he gives instructions to two of the disciples to go into the town, and to find a colt that had never been ridden, and to take it and come back. And he tells them that if anyone asks, just say that the Lord needs it and it will be OK. and the disciples do, they go into the town and sure enough there it is. And they do as he instructed, and the owners let them go about their business.

Now I want to look at this a few ways.....first I have to put myself into the disciples shoes....Jesus tells me to go next town over find a donkey and take it, and in the event that someone asks me questions, just tell them the Lord needs it and they won’t mind. I’m not so sure about that. This is absolutely something that we don't see it when we look through our own sight

I also look at this and look at the donkey for a minute. It says here that this is a colt that has never been ridden. Now I am not familiar with horses or donkeys myself, but what do we know about donkeys....they’re stubborn....stubborn as a mule. They don’t want to work or carry folks, and any animal, until you train it to do what you want it to do....it is a struggle to get it to do something.

Jesus here has told them to get this donkey that some one else owns and to bring it because He is just going to up and ride it straight away. This defies the normal laws of how things work.

Body of Christ I want you to know that as long as we are looking on this with our own eyes as long as our focus is on our own knowledge and understanding, we will miss the things of God!

See, sometimes we concentrate on the things that we “know” are true rather that seeking to have the truth of God’s Word revealed to us!

Let’s go back to our text this morning and see how this applied in the book of Luke as we move forward.

Luke 19:36–38 ESV

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!”

According to John's account ' a great multitude went forth to meet Him' and indeed saw him along the worn trade route that runs from Jericho to Jerusalem. We saw just a few moments ago that the disciples told the owner of the donkey that the Lord has need of him, and it isn’t a stretch to imagine that word spread that Jesus, the one working miracles who had raised Lazarus from the dead is on the way. It’s no wonder that a crowd gathered! Maybe a few in the crowd caught the prophecy spoken by Zechariah being fulfilled

Zechariah 9:9 ESV

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.

Jesus was making His royal procession into Jerusalem as had been foretold 400 years earlier.

And the people shouted! They sang praise to the one that they thought would break the yoke of bondage and set them free!! And they were right!.....and also completely wrong at the same time

Jesus was the messiah, and He WOULD break the chains of bondage and set them free. But while they were looking for redemption from the Romans, Jesus Christ was looking for redemption for their souls.

Luke 19:39–40 ESV

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.”

And the pharisees here are doing the same thing....they are so focused on the fact that the crowds are receiving Him as they would a King that they failed to stop and ask themselves if in fact He might be!

Two groups of people and both used their knowledge and righteousness as a means to understand the things of God.

Body of Christ, if we are going to understand the things of God and truly appreciate Him, we have to seek Him not in our righteousness, in our self-righteousness....we have to seek Him knowing that His ways are higher than our ways, and that His plans even when we don’t understand them are better than our plans!

We have to focus on the right things! We have to focus on the God things!

See often, we get so caught up in our own things that we aren’t paying attention to the things around us, and we miss stuff. I see it all the time, folks walking around looking at their phone, and you just hope that they don’t run into somebody or something because their focus is wrong.

Let’s go back to our key text this morning and see how this played out in scripture.

Luke 19:41–44 ESV

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.”

Here we see Christ continuing on past the crowds, and we He sees the city of Jerusalem, he stops and weeps. He weeps both for the city in all its beauty that he sees a vision of it destroyed, but also for all the people who failed to see him as the promised Messiah.

In December of 1903 the Wright brothers were successful in the first modern flight. Thrilled with what they had accomplished they sent a telegraph to their sister Katherine

We have actually flown 120 feet. Will be home for Christmas.

This is the message that their sister got, and overjoyed over her brothers’ accomplishment she rushed to the local paper and showed the editor the telegraph and he responded “How Nice, the Wright boys will be home for Christmas”. He completely missed it!

He was personally notified of one of the defining moments in human history and he completely missed it!

Body of Christ we have to be careful that we don’t miss it.

We stay busy, all of us, and so often we are so busy on the phone, on the computer, work, school, family, all of the different responsibilities that we juggle.....we stay so busy that we can miss the things of God.

We have a unique opportunity this year in that many of us are home, we’re not out doing all the things we might normally be doing, and we have an opportunity this year to focus on Christ, on what He accomplished, and what it means not just in a general sense, but specifically what does it mean to us

Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday represents a day that we celebrate Christ and His Triumphant entry into Jerusalem, we celebrate the fulfillment of prophecy, and we celebrate the start of the Holy week activities that will culminate in His arrest and Crucifixion, but most importantly His resurrection.

My prayer for each of you is that you slowdown this week and focus in on your relationship with Christ, to truly experience Holy week like never before.

As we close this week I want to encourage you to ask yourself what Easter week means to you, and most importantly, if you have never trusted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, I want you to know that today can be your day. It doesn’t matter that you’re in your house or wherever you are, God sees your heart. Will you pray with me?

Pray

Similarly, if you are a believer, we all know that doesn’t mean that we don’t have trials amen? And if you have a need in your life right now, I want you to know that God is there with you right now, and He is ready to meet that need.

Pray