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HOSANNA! |
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Good morning! Let us begin this morning we something new…
here is some
Calvin and Hobbes:
We are a lot like Calvin, aren’t we? We lift people up when we think that by so
doing, they will give us something we want.
Unfortunately, we are a lot like that with God, as well. We approach God with the attitude, “I will worship you, and
I expect you to make my life work out just the way I’d like it to.” Fortunately for us, though, God does not
work this way. God loves us too much to
give us what we
want; he gives us what we need. This morning is Palm Sunday.
It is the Sunday before Resurrection Sunday.
Palm Sunday is the day that we celebrate
Jesus entering into Please feel free to turn in your Bibles to
John 12:12-19: We read: The next
day the large
crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to As I read this passage, one truth especially
stands out to
me: If I want to experience the
salvation that Jesus offers, I need to trust him to give me what I
need, not what
I want. If I want to experience the salvation that
Jesus offers, I
must go to Jesus on His terms. How do we do this?
How do we experience salvation? The first thing we can do is
this: Seek Him We read in verses 12-13a: The next day the large
crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to There is a large crowd of pilgrims who have
come to That phrase:
“they went out to meet him, crying out.” What does that mean?
What does it mean that they went out to meet him? What does it mean that they were crying out? Imagine crowds of people coming to celebrate
the
Passover. They are here for a
purpose. They came to They went out of their way.
They changed their plans for the day. Why? Because Jesus showed up.
They wanted to go out and meet Jesus. Question: how is Jesus changing your plans
these days? Are you going out of your way
to meet
him? Are you taking time out of your
busy schedule to seek Him in prayer? Are
you taking the time to be reading your Bible? Are we a people who seek Him? I love this quote from AW Tozer: “If anyone
wants to know God, let him count
no time wasted spent in the cultivation of his presence.” These pilgrims… were they wasting their time
by taking palm
branches and going out to meet Jesus? I don’t think so. And
I
don’t think we are wasting time by spending time seeking God. If we want to experience salvation, we need
to come to Jesus
and His terms. The first thing we can do
is simply this: go out of our way to seek Him. Before we move on, one more question for us
to think about: What is one thing that you can do this week
to go out of
your way to seek Jesus more? Take a
moment to think of one thing you can do to go out of your way to
experience a
relationship with Him. Do you have something in mind?
Whatever it is, can we make up our minds to do it? Let us continue… The next thing that we can do to experience
the salvation of
Jesus: Acknowledge Jesus
is King of
We read in verse 13 what they were crying
out: "Hosanna! Blessed
is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of
Israel!" The crowds are here crying out Psalm
118:25-26. This is nothing new, though… it was a custom
for Pilgrims to
sing this Psalm out as they were approaching What is unusual is that they are ascribing
to Jesus these
words! They are ascribing to Jesus this
messianic title: the coming King of Israel! And do you know what ‘Hosanna’ means? It means ‘Save us now!’ It
is funny, though, because after years of
being a customary Psalm to sing when traveling into But we have to wonder if any of these
pilgrims really
understood what they were saying when they cried out “Save us now!” Many of these Pilgrims have been waiting
patiently for Jesus
to declare himself the Messiah. They have
seen and experienced Jesus’ miracles.
They are ready for him to set himself up as their King and
free them
from Roman rule. Though they are quite mistaken about the
reason Jesus same, they
certainly got one thing right: They are acknowledging Jesus as the
Messiah, the
King of Israel! If we want to experience salvation, we need
to do the same
thing: we need to acknowledge Jesus as King of Israel. What does it mean that he is King of Israel? I think of is the rich history that is
involved in that statement. Going back
even as far as Genesis chapter 3,
we see God’s plan to bring salvation to mankind. We
see God making promises to Abram to set
apart a people for himself. We see God
using Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David and a host of other spiritual
leaders
and prophets… all for one purpose: to set apart a people of his own. The entire Old Testament is really about
this one thing: God
preparing the world for the Messiah. Question: do you acknowledge Jesus as the
King of Israel? Do you see all of history culminating in
this one event: the
coming of the Messiah? What does it mean that Jesus is the King of
Israel? It means that history is all about
HIM! We might ask ourselves: do we see that
history is all about
Him? Or maybe a better question is this: Do we
see that the
present is all about Him? Do we see that the future is all about Him? That is really what it means that he is the
King of Israel,
right? If Jesus really is the Messiah,
then life, all of LIFE… is about Him. Past, present, and future. Question: is your life all about Him? What in your life is not about Him? Another question: what is the next thing
that God is calling
you to do to make your life all about Him? It is certainly worth thinking about, isn’t
it? Jesus is King of Israel.
Let us make our lives all about Him. And the next thing we can do to experience
salvation is
this: Value God’s Ways We read in verse 14: And
Jesus
found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, "Fear not,
daughter of The apostle John here writes that Jesus
found a young donkey
and sat on it. And he quotes Zechariah
9:9, which announces that the Messiah would appear not with power and
prestige
but in humility. John also notes that the disciples did not
understand these
things at first; they understood only after Jesus had been glorified. How would you expect a King to enter his
city? In power, right?
As a conqueror, right? The people were expecting Jesus to announce
himself the
Messiah and use his miraculous powers to solve their political problems. They wanted him to free But that is not what Jesus came to do. Instead of coming as a conqueror, he came in
humility. He didn’t come on a warhorse. He came on a donkey. He didn’t come to be served.
He came to serve. He didn’t come to declare himself the
earthly King and live
in a palace. He came to be declared the heavenly King and
die on a cross. Aren’t you glad that He did it His way? What they wanted was earthly comforts. What Jesus wanted was their eternal
salvation. It makes me wonder: what do I want? Do I value what God values? Maybe right now, life is really hard for you. Maybe you really, really want Jesus to come
in and do a miracle and conquer your problems. But for some reason, he doesn’t. He isn’t coming into your life on a warhorse
as
a conqueror. He only shows up on a
donkey. He only shows up and tells he
will be with you as you suffer. What are we supposed do with a God like
that? There are only two choices: reject him or
accept him. We can reject him and tell him that we don’t
want a God like
that. Or we can trust Him and tell him that even though we don’t
understand, we know he loves us. I am reminded of Isaiah 58:8-9: For my thoughts are
not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. I am reminded of the truth that God loves us
so much that he
wants us to grow in a relationship with Him at all costs. I love these words in 1 Peter 1:7. Peter is here talking about why trials come
into our lives: These have come so
that your faith-- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even
though
refined by fire-- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory
and
honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Isn’t that cool! Our
faith
is more valuable than gold. And
God is all about increasing our faith… no matter what the cost. God doesn’t want us to be happy, He wants us
to be holy. God doesn’t give us what we want; he gives us what we
need. What does it mean to value God’s ways? It means to accept him as He is.
It means to love Him as the suffering
servant. It means to trust Him even when
life is really hard. It means to let him
come into your life on a donkey even though you want so much for him to
show up
on a warhorse. If we want to experience the Salvation that
Jesus has to
offer us, we need to value His ways. And the last thing that we can do to
experience his
salvation is this: Evangelize We read in verses 17-19: The
crowd
that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and
raised
him from the dead continued to bear
witness. The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that
they heard he had done this sign. So the Pharisees said to one
another, "You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has
gone
after him." I just love it that it says here that the
crowd that had
seen Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead… they continued to bear
witness. What does it mean to bear witness? They were simply continuing to remind people
that Jesus had indeed raised Lazarus from the dead. Imagine the crowds of people that are
involved in this
procession of Jesus entering And in the midst of all of this, those who
saw the
resurrection miracle of Lazarus are bearing witness. Isn’t amazing how many varied opinions there
are these days
of who Jesus is? In our daily lives, we
come across people with all sorts of views on Jesus.
In the midst of all of these relationships:
do we bear witness? What does it mean to bear witness? It is simply to confirm that something is
true by your own experience. Some of this crowd had experienced the
resurrection power of
Jesus! They had seen him raise
Lazarus. And they kept confirming this
truth to others. How have you experienced the power of Jesus
in your life? How are you telling others about it? Look again at verse 18: The
reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done
this
sign. Isn’t that cool? When
the
crowd heard about the power of Jesus, they went out to meet him. We can have the same impact!
We can be a part of helping others take
another step toward meeting Jesus. May we continue to bear witness! May we keep experiencing Jesus and telling
others about his power in our lives. It is Palm Sunday.
Jesus enters What does he do? He
dies. He goes to the Cross… for us. Nobody expected it.
Nobody wanted it. But we all
needed it. God doesn’t gives us what we want. He gives us what we need. May we, this Palm Sunday, commit ourselves
again to seeking
God for the one thing that he is most happy to give: salvation. Remember what ‘Hosanna’ means?
It means “Save us now!” But
it had lost its meaning and was just an
exclamation of praise. I suggest that we take back the original
meaning! From now on, when we cry out
“Hosanna!” let’s
cry from our hearts “Save us, now!”
That’s what he came to do, isn’t it? He is just waiting for us to ask. Let us pray. Jesus, thank you for
saving us. Thank you for coming to us as
a servant. Thank you for dying for our
sins. Thank you for giving us what we
need and not what we want. We want to
seek you. We want to acknowledge you as
King of |