Palm Sunday 2022

Jesus riding in to your life doesn’t look like what it’s supposed to

Read Matthew 21:1-11

Great day to be in the house of the Lord - Amen?

Today is Palm Sunday

Today in the church we celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem

Today marks the beginning of Holy Week.

The super bowl for Christians

How many of you know we don’t have a Christmas faith… we have an easter faith. This season, marked by joy, pain, betrail, death, loss, resurrection, and power. That’s what our faith is rooted in

I was asking the Lord what he wanted me to preach on today and as I kept reading and re-reading the triumphal entry I just kept landing on the phrase Hosanna

Can anyone tell me what Hosanna means?

Hosanna means save us, please!

If you didn’t know that … well, know you do

Hosanna is actually a hebrew phrase putting the word save ysah and the word Nah which means please

The word Nah is used as in both requests and exhortations. It means please! I Pray! I beg!

The people who were following Jesus and laying down palm branches and cloaks and coats and all that where singing out Save us please! Thousands of people singing this out...

Where did they get that from?

Was that a spontaneous movement of the Holy Spirit that spurred the crowd to sing out save me? Possibly.

But I want to show you something. If you have a Bible go with me to Psalm 118

READ PSALM 118:25-29

Here is the text. This is the song that the people were singing

They were singing out of a place as a community in dire and desperate need for a savior

Now they were thinking that Jesus was coming in the sense that the psalmist did

Military, political, a religious political state that overthrows the powers of the secular world and sets up Israel as the center of creation due to the power and presence of the Lord

Looking at this psalm that would’ve been passed down from generation to generation, and definitely looking at the context of the people of Israel at the time of Christ’s ministry, you could see where thy would be leaning heavily on that idea

I mean this was a song of rebellion sung to the occupying forces of Rome

v 4 - Let those who fear the Lord say … Let all true believers stand up and sing to the Lord

v6 what can man do to me?

v7 I shall look in triumph on those who hate me

v8 it is better to take refute in the Lord than to trust in man - Singing this song to a people who worshipped their emperor as a god?!

v14 calls back the the exodus and the song of Miriam

v17 I shall not die, but I shall live

v21 You have become my salvation

Save us, give us success

Give thanks to the Lord for his steadfast love endures forever

I mean this is a protest song if I’ve ever heard it.

The people of Israel thought they knew what God was up to in this guy Jesus. They thought they knew that Jesus was gonna be the next King of Israel and he was going to set the people of God free from the bondage of Rome.

I mean do you hear it?

However…

Hindsight is 20/20 amen?

And we as new testament believers are grafted into the story of the Children of Israel.

Our OT only makes sense if you read it through the lens of What Jesus has already done on the cross.

Having the blessing of the illumination of the Holy Spirit and 2000 years of Church history, we can look back and recognize that the people in Jesus time didn’t get it.

They missed the point of this song

Psalm 118 is a messianic psalm.

It speaks deep truths and prophecy about they messiah

It speaks to the relationship that the people of God should have with their savior

This isn’t some political rally cry this is a proclamation of the victory of the people of God over sin and death through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ

The people where singing it out and dancing in the streets and proclaiming the truth without understanding or believing it.

How true is this for us today

We want Jesus to ride into town and conquer the sin in our life (the ones we don’t like)

We want freedom from other people’s opinions

We want Jesus to cut off those who surround us… all our enemies!

We want his steadfast love to endure forever… in the way we want it.

I mean what can man do to me… the Lord is on my side as my helper

Yet we miss that Jesus rode into Jerusalem and what was the first thing he did?

Cleansed the temple

Jesus drove out the money changers and those who had laid stake to the house of God and he ran them out.

It is written that myhouse hsall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers

woah Jesus… youre on the wrong side of the field… They are the enemy. You are supposed to come down and smite them… not us

The religious folks hated him. He disrupted their comfort. He called them back to their purpose

They went from singing Hosanna to crying crucify him in a matter of 6 days.

How like us is that… We want Jesus to kill the external factors that are causing us to sin without accepting his loving rebuke of the sin in our own hearts

We want him to clean the outside of the cup

But Church that isn’t how the Lord is calling us as his people, you as his Child to live

He has called us to sing out Hosanna as we are surrounded by the sin inour life. As we are surrounded by hopelessness. As we are surrounded by fear and by hurt and by pain.

Jesus has already conquered those things. As someone on this side of the cross we can look and see that this palm Sunday we can sing out Hosanna for the right reasons

We don’t have to look for him to overturn our politics… We need him to save us and to overturn our hearts.

And he will do that today church.

He has become your salvation

Jesus is the gate of the Lord. He is the gate of righteousness that we must enter in

He is the stone that builders rejected that has become the cornerstone

Only he is worthy for us to cry out hosanna. Save us! we pray Lord

This is the gospel. This is the good news that we have to offer a lost and dying world. Not that if they don’t follow Jesus they will go to hell.

But that there is a savior who will humbly enter into your life and set you free from the chains that hold you in bondage. From the pain and shame that hang so heavy. From the anxiety that grips you.

There is a savior. There is one who loves us. And loved us enough to offer himself as a sacrifice for our sins.

This is what we celebrate today on Palm Sunday.

We are going to move into a time of communion

I’m going to ask Kylie Jo if she’d come up.

COMMUNION