MAR 25 2018 | David the Fugitive S1E8

Sea Change Church · David the Fugitive S1E8 · Elliott Stearns · March 25, 2018
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Good morning. Welcome to Palm Sunday. I'd like us all to stand if we could. And I'd like us to sing this hymn that is going to be projected, but you have it on your sheet. It's on the back of the sheet you have in your both in there. It's called Right On, Right On in Majesty. This was written back in about 1820 by Henry Millman. It's one of the most famous Palm Sunday hymns, used to be the most popular song, but I really liked it.

And I think it sets the tone pretty much for what we're going to be talking about this morning at Palm Sunday. We're going to sing the first two verses. Third verse we're going to skip, but they're going to play it through instrumentally. And then we'll sing the fourth and the fifth verses as well. Here we go. Right on, right on in majesty, I call the tribes' close and I'll cry.

Right on, right on in majesty, Right on to die. Oh, Christ, thy triumph now we get, O captive death and conquer sin. Right on, right on in majesty, Right on, right on in majesty, The last and missus' strife is nigh. The Father on his hand by throne, His face is the one to shine. Right on, right on in majesty, Right on in majesty, Right on to die. All I can do, All I can do, To love to gain, Then take, O God, My power and reign.

The life in favor, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, The life in love, healing, healing, healing, He teaches every Sunday morning at 9 o'clock.

What book are you going through? Parables of Jesus. Super anointed, gifted teacher. If you haven't gone, wake up early, come. It'll be awesome. So, just wanted to give you a plug, man. Is that good? All right. Okay, got it. All right, so let's read the scripture. Luke 19. When Jesus drew near to Bethpage 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'll find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat.

Untie it and bring it here. And they brought it to Jesus and thrown their cloaks on the colt. They set Jesus on it. And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road, and the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice. And praised 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 when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, Would that you, even you, had known this day the things that make for peace, but now they're hidden from your eyes. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those whose souls, saying to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you've made it into a den of robbers.

And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy him. But they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on his words. This is the word of the Lord. Morning again. I'm honored that Pastor Adam asked that I would take the Palm Sunday sermon.

We have, this is the beginning of Holy Week, or Passion Week as it's called. This is the week starting today that leads on to Good Friday, on the day Jesus was crucified, and then on the eighth day, the first day of the following week, Jesus is raised. Hallelujah. But we start with Palm Sunday. And understanding Palm Sunday helps us to understand everything else that takes place this week.

A lot of people like to come to church just on Easter, which is wonderful. But we want to understand what leads up to Easter. And obviously, Good Friday is a part of that. But what leads to Good Friday? Well, everything is leading up to Good Friday and Jesus' ministry. But in a special sense, this week shows us the incidents and experiences Jesus had and the extreme provocations that he gave to the religious authorities that brought them to that gnashing of teeth level of need to get rid of this pestilential interference with their established routines.

So understanding, as I say, Palm Sunday is really important. Paul, in another context, once wrote that if the root be holy, so are the branches. And also understanding the root of this week, Palm Sunday, is important. But there's a difficulty with Palm Sunday in terms of our feelings. If we think about Good Friday, we have one distinct feeling.

This is Jesus on the cross, the innocent, pure Lamb of God. And he's experiencing the most fiendish tortures that man can devise. And he's doing it for me. There's one distinct sense of sobriety. It's joyful in the sense that he's doing this for me, but it's also saddening that he had to do that for me. And we come to Easter, of course, and he's raised from the dead.

The old chorus says, Brethren, come rejoice with me. The stone done rolled away. Death could not hold him, much less the grave, for the stones rolled away. And we can rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. But what do we do on Palm Sunday? Well, we sang Hosanna, Hosanna, and we were waving our palm branches and getting all excited, as we should be, because Jesus, the Lamb of God, is coming into Jerusalem.

But what about the second and third scenes of Palm Sunday that we just sang about there as well? He approaches Jerusalem, and what does Jesus do? He weeps. In fact, the Greek says he cries out with a loud cry, with many tears. He's very distressed because he's bringing the word of judgment to the city and to the Jewish nation. And then he goes into the temple and casts out the money changers and the merchants, making merchandise in God's house there.

And so he's angry, in a sense. So we have this rejoicing with the palms. We have this weeping. And then we have this anger, you might say, going into the temple. Which one should we feel with Jesus? Should we be rejoicing and then get sad and then get angry? Or what should we do there? Actually, there is a theme that goes through this whole day. And I'd like to just...

It came to me as Pastor Adam had asked if I would take the sermon. And then I was sitting down one morning in the chair at home. And I had this book at home of daily meditations or daily readings from C.S. Lewis. If you like C.S. Lewis, but you just want to get little bite-sized pieces, this is the book for you, okay? But I was sitting there again thinking, what is the thread that ties everything together on Palm Sunday and then introduces us to the week to come?

And C.S. Lewis had a little meditation on the 19th of March. And it's called The Essential Vice. Now, it's two whole paragraphs, but I wanted to read it. Is it up there? Yes. This is... He writes this. There is one vice of which no man in the world is free, which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else, and of which hardly any people except Christians ever imagine that they are guilty of themselves.

I have heard many people admit that they are bad-tempered or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time, I have very seldom met anyone who was not a Christian who showed the slightest mercy to it in others.

There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it in ourselves, the more we dislike it in others. The vice I am talking about is pride or self-conceit. And the virtue opposite to it in Christian morals is called humility. You may remember when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the entire of Christian morals did not lie there.

Well, now we have come to the center. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that are mere flea bites in comparison. It was through pride that the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every other vice. It is the complete anti-God state of mind. My contention is that Jesus, when he comes into Jerusalem on the back of that donkey, is basically confronting.

Yes, he's confronting the Jewish nation and their hard-heartedness, but he's confronting all of us with our tendency toward this particular vice. As it says in Zechariah, Behold, your king comes to you, what? Meek and lowly and riding upon an ass. He goes on, Lewis goes on a few days later. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but he says, It's a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices or pride can smuggle itself into the very center of our religious life.

But you can see why. The others and less bad vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature, our lusts. But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from hell. It is purely spiritual. Consequently, it is far more subtle and deadly. And so pride is what Jesus is, the one thing that he does not come in with.

Now, it may seem a little disturbing to say that when Jesus came into Jerusalem, he did not come in with pride. Now, a lot of even the movies and the pictures you'll see in books showed Jesus on the back of the donkey and he's waving to them and he's smiling a big, broad smile and receiving all the adulation of the people. What does the scripture actually say?

Behold, your king comes to you, what? Meek and humble. And you know why they were waving their palm branches so wildly and shouting and laying their garments down and all? Well, and we can do that because we know he's the Lamb of God come to redeem us. But the crowds that were surrounding him were probably not thinking that. What they were thinking is finally our king has arrived.

The Romans are going to get kicked out. We're going to be independent again. We're going to be top dog nation. And so that helps you understand that when Jesus comes into sight of Jerusalem, what's he do? He starts weeping. They're just not seeing it. And so he starts weeping and then it leads to the other, the last scene there of coming into the temple.

Let's remember that Holy Week, this week, starts at the Mount of Olives. And just before the arrest and trial of Jesus and the crucifixion, it ends at the Mount of Olives as well. Here it starts with the crowds waving palm branches and so on and saying Hosanna. But it ends with Jesus all alone except for a few disciples at Gethsemane. Anybody know what the word Gethsemane means?

What? No, not skull. That's Golgotha. The oil press. The place where you take olives and you crush them to get the oil out. That's where Jesus ends up. And so, again, he knew that that was what was facing him. They just weren't seeing. Everything that Eve saw in the tree of the knowledge of evil, knowledge of good and evil, people saw the exact opposite in Jesus.

What did the when Eve was offered the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? She saw three good things about it. One, it was good for food. Two, it was pleasant to the eyes. And thirdly, it was to be desired to make men or people wise. And what does Isaiah 53 say about Jesus? That he was a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched land. He had no beauty that we should desire him, and he was despised and rejected of men.

He didn't have anything attractive at all. Well, certainly not in terms of attaining wisdom. And yet, that very picture of him was designed to show us where we were putting our priorities was exactly in the wrong place. Michael Card writes the song. It says, So he comes in meek and humble of heart, hopefully, prayerfully, a conviction to the people to show where true righteousness and the true light lay.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1.25, For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. And so we look at these three scenes in this Palm Sunday. And I'm using the Gospel of Luke for the sequence here. All four Gospels talk about the triumphal entry of Jesus and the donkey, riding on the donkey. But they all vary a little.

So I'm going to use the Gospel of Luke in its sequence here. I asked Joe, would you read Luke 19, verses 28 through 40? We'll break it apart. Look at each of the scenes. And it may be projected. When Jesus drew near to Bethpage 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'll find a colt tied on which no one has ever yet sat.

Untie it and bring it here. And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. And as they rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road, and 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 when he drew near to the city, he wept over it, saying, With that you, even you, had known this day the things that make for peace, but now they're hidden from your eyes. Is that good? Verse 40. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, I've read past it. Here you go. Thank you. If you look at the four gospel accounts here, they're pretty similar.

However, in Matthew's account, it's not just the foal that the disciples go get. It's the mother of the foal and the foal. And it says that Jesus sat upon them. Now, I don't know how you can sit upon two animals at one time, so we presume that he sat upon one at one time and another at another. But I want you to get the picture here. He sends forth the disciples.

There's two disciples. We don't know who they were, Peter or John or whatever. And they are there to go into the village and they'll find a foal or a mother in the foal tied. And he says, loose them and let them go. And, of course, the people approach him. Why are you doing this? And so on. But there's an interesting little nuance that's here as well.

When the Mark's gospel, when it records this, says that the donkey or the foal was at the confluence of two ways. In other words, two roads came together and there was the donkey. And you say, well, is that important? Pregnant pause. Every word is important in the gospels. So and those two ways represent two ways. One is the way of the Jews and the other is what's called in Scripture the way of the Gentiles.

Jesus came to save who? Whom? Anyway, the whole world. All sinners. The way the Gentiles as well as the Jews. And so those two ways converge upon this one donkey. And and the donkey or donkeys are are tied. And he says and they started to loose them. He said, loose them. And that's very similar to what happened with Lazarus. When Jesus said to the people around him about Lazarus, when he came out of the tomb, what does he say?

Loose him and let him go. Jesus is in the loosing business. And so when he so they loose the donkey or the foal there. And that what is what is binding that donkey? Well, that donkey, if we say is representative of people, which I'll get to in a moment, then we can say that the that from one of those roads, the Jews were bound to the Mosaic laws, which no one a yoke that they could not bear.

And the Gentiles are bound to the law of sin and death. But those but that donkey was to be loosed. Now, it's an interesting scripture about donkeys. Donkeys are very interesting creatures in the Bible. And there's a scripture here in Exodus 13, 13. And it says, and the first thing of an ass or donkey, thou shalt redeem with a lamb. And if thou shalt not redeem it, then thou shalt break its neck.

And all the firstborn of man among thy children shalt thou redeem. OK, now that's an interesting scripture. You know, a lot of people start reading the Bible. Well, you know, Mark Twain once made an interesting sort of sarcastic comment, but I've always liked it. It said this. He says, it's not the things I don't understand about the Bible that bother me.

It's the things I do understand. Yeah. A lot of people want to say, I'm just going to read through the Bible. I'm going to start a genesis and work to Revelation. They get somewhere about halfway through Exodus and they get something like this. And they say, that's ridiculous. I've got this perfectly good donkey. It gives birth to a baby donkey, a foal.

So, and now Moses is saying, I can't just keep this donkey. You got to have, I have a choice. I just can't, if I don't, if I want to keep it, I've got to take a perfectly good lamb and ransom it with that. Or if I don't do that, I got to break its neck. What's going on? Oh, he says, no more of this Bible stuff. I'll go to the Psalms. Let's see. Open up.

Okay. Something comforting from Psalms. Oh, Babylon, blessed is he who takes thy little ones and dashes them against the stones. All right. All right. Or I'll go to the Gospels. I'll go to the Gospels. Jesus will speak comfortably to me. You think I came to bring peace to the world? No, I came to bring a sword. All right. So we just have to take the Bible for what it says.

And there's a reason for that verse about the donkey. Because the Old Testament is presenting truth in types and shadows and for pictures that we're supposed to understand from other scriptures. Question. What's a donkey represent? Job says that a man born of a woman is like a donkey. Ishmael, a type of the flesh driven man, is prophesied that he would become a wild donkey of a man.

One of the bad kings in Jeremiah prophesied this. As Jeremiah is wont to do, he said, this king is going to be given the burial of an ass. Okay. Dragged to the pit and thrown in. So a donkey represents man, sinful man. A donkey represents that which needs to be redeemed. Does that sound familiar? And if you will, what other characteristics does a donkey have?

We usually think them as somewhat stubborn. Okay. So a donkey is a stubborn animal that needs to be redeemed. Does that sound familiar? And so the donkey is taken. So Jesus says, go loose this donkey, this full, and bring it to me. So loose it from that which is binding it. And bring it to me. And they set Jesus on it. And he rides this donkey in toward Jerusalem.

Now, the thing about a donkey, though, even if you redeem the donkey, you still got to discipline the donkey. Right? And that's what the Christian life is all about, isn't it? First, we're born again. We're forgiven of our sins. And then we are called to become disciples. So we have here a picture of Jesus, the Redeemer, with the message of redemption riding upon the redeemed.

Jesus likes to go places. He wants you to carry him to the four corners of the earth or your neighborhood and all these things. But in order to do that, this donkey, this you, needs to be redeemed. And it needs to be disciplined. Because Jesus wants you to carry him and his message to wherever he wants to lead. He wants the gospel to be heard. So this Jesus is on this donkey.

And it has to leave. It has to go to Jerusalem. But again, that donkey had to be redeemed. And that's what Jesus came to do. And that's what's being presented. People in the back of their mind, these Jews knew this was a redeemed animal. They wouldn't be riding it except a lamb had been sacrificed in order to allow it to live. And I think about the character of the donkey.

And I think about what C.S. Lewis is riding there. And I think about this theme that I think goes through the whole day where pride is what Jesus is really attacking. He comes meek and lowly. Lord, please purge me of my satanic pride and make me like that donkey, a broken vessel thou canst ride. You want to say that with me? If you feel that way.

Just repeat it. I'll say it. And then you repeat. Lord, please purge me of my satanic pride. And make me like that donkey, a broken vessel thou canst ride. He yearns to have you carry him to everyone in need. Obediently, with discipleship worked in. Verses 41 through 44 of the same chapter. Okay. As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, If you, even you, had only known this day what would bring you peace.

But now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you on every side. Then they will dash you to the ground and you and the children within your walls. They'll not leave one stone on another because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you.

Sobering. If you had only known on this your day. Scholars think that that may have been the day where Daniel 924 was fulfilled. Daniel 924 says, look, Israel, you're given 70 weeks of years, 490 years to put an end to iniquity, to put an end to sin. All right. Just read that much right now. If you don't do it, then the following verses describe the judgment that's coming there.

And so Jesus, if that's what was indeed in his mind, it could have been something else. But if he's but but he does say, if you only knew on this your day, what opportunity is being given to you? And now you've rejected it. And now they're going to put barricades around you and they're going to tear you down stone down to the very the basic foundations.

The. And that's why it says there's two words for for crying in this Jesus is the second time Jesus cries. What's the first time he cries again? When was that? Yeah. The raising of Lazarus. And that's a sort of a silent cry. He's just feeling the the the the emotions of Mary and Martha and all at the death of their brother. And he's entering in and he's seeing the effect of death upon mankind in it at the story of Lazarus.

But here he doesn't want to hold back. He wants everyone to hear his loud cry. He is declaring this is it. The day of your redemption has come. Gone and gone. And now your doom is assured. And. So I was just thinking of. Jeremiah 8, 21 through chapter nine, one where he says for the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded. He is wounded of heart.

I mourn. And dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? He comes with the balm to heal. And no one's taking it. Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored? Oh, that my head were waters. This is Jeremiah speaking. But. But he's feeling with the Lord's feeling. And my eyes a fountain of tears that I may weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.

So he comes to Jerusalem and he's pronouncing doom. Every opportunity given there. And yet they refused. And so he goes into the temple and he casts out the money changers there and those making merchandise in the temple courts. Now, this was the second time that Jesus went into the temple. The first time was at the beginning of his ministry. It's recorded in John chapter two.

But but there's a distinct distinct difference between the two cleansings. At the beginning of Jesus ministry, three and a half years previously, John the Baptist had been preaching and multitudes had come down to the Jordan River to be baptized under repentance. And Jesus went into the temple to cleanse it, trying to put together the masses of people repenting and to convict the religious leaders to follow their example and repent and make the temple a place of holiness and the grace of God.

Did they? No. Real quickly. Back to normal. Back to business as usual. And so this time when he cleanses the temple, he's not saying repent. He's not trying to get a change there anymore. He is acting out the judgment that is coming. Upon the Jewish nation. And again, it's a picture, though. You're all seated. Is it OK if I disturb you a little bit? Could the church use a little cleansing also?

No. And that's exactly what he's trying to sell us. He's he's fighting against our pride, our haughtiness and our arrogance. He wants us to take the initiative here to follow him. What was the problem with the Pharisees? Last Wednesday, we're reading a section of Luke for Pastor Jim's class on dining with Jesus. It's going through the various meals Jesus has in the book of Luke there.

Jesus goes to a Pharisee's house for breakfast. They think it was. And Jesus doesn't wash his hands. And the Pharisee is all upset by that because he's not doing the normal thing there. And Jesus lets them have it. And he he says, you Pharisees, you cleanse the outside, but you leave the inside full of all uncleanness. And he says, you Pharisees.

And he didn't say this Pharisee. He didn't say some Pharisees. He says, you Pharisees as a whole. You're filled with greed and wickedness. That's the two words used there. Those scriptures say they were covetous. In the parable of the sower, when the good seed is cast on the thorny ground, it gets choked and doesn't bear fruit. And the disciples say, well, what's what are the thorns represent?

And he says, the thorns represent many distractions. But one of them is called the deceitfulness of what? Riches. They just couldn't give up on their their livelihood through that. And so I can we have these three scenes in this chapter and Jesus addressing them and he goes back to Bethany. But there's one more point that needs to be made there.

It says in the reading that was there that the that the people hung on to his words at the end of that passage concerning the I didn't have Joe read it. I'm sorry. But the they hung on to his words. Jesus cast out the money changers. But the people, the common people hung on to his words in Matthew's gospel. Maybe the others. It says that others came to Jesus for healing and he healed them all.

Brethren, there's always a remnant. There are always those who will hear who have ears to hear that want Jesus. It's those religious structures that he's after. But if you want Jesus, he'll come to you or you can come to him and he'll always heal. And he'll always touch you. Let's go back to the palms. It is Palm Sunday with good reason. And I wanted to conclude with just looking at the palms.

Palms are interesting plants. And we see in Revelation 7, 9, if that's going to be projected there, that there's a great crowd. And all the angels stood about round about the throne and about the elders and the four beasts and fell before the throne of God and their faces and worship God. That's verse 11, though, isn't it? Can you get to nine?

Or maybe I'm wrong. It is. Yeah. After this, I beheld and low a great multitude, which no man could number of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues stood before the throne and before the lamb clothed with white robes and palms in their hands. Palms is a symbol of victory. And where's a palm? I need a palm. Give me a palm. It is a symbol of victory.

What was happening when Jesus wrote in is that victory was intended to be a political victory. That's what the people wanted. They wanted Jesus to become the king. The palm was the symbol of independence that they put on the coins after the revolt of Judas Maccabeus for the short time when Israel did become independent. And it became a symbol of political victory.

But here we have a multitude from every nation, tribe, and tongue. They're waving before the throne. And it says these are those who came out of the great tribulation. Who have who've been victorious over the beast and all of that. And they're waving palms. So it is a symbol of victory and overcoming. But what is it about the palm tree? The palm tree.

Grows in desert places. Away from the hustle and bustle of modern city life. The palm tree. The palm tree can grow in desert places because it sends down deep roots. It finds the hidden water sources. And because of finding that water, it can grow and it can get higher and higher. It reaches up to heaven. Spreads itself out. And bears fruit. Sweetest of fruit.

Scripture says there. And says the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall take root downward. And bear fruit upward. If you want to bear fruit upward, you got to go downward. Like the palm tree. Not just go downward. You got to have a deep root system. And you've got to search for the Lord. Search for the truth. Search for the grace of the Lord.

All of your heart. Reach down into those hidden water sources. Nobody's seeing you. You're in a closet. It's totally hidden. But if you do that, then you grow up tall. And you bear fruit upward. That's what the palm is symbolizing on Palm Sunday. Is that we are seekers after God. We're that remnant that wants the hidden source of water. And we want to bear fruit.

If you see on your program there, two words at the very end, I think, or somewhere near there, that says the Shulamite. Everybody's over 18 here. So this is from the Song of Solomon. The Shulamite is the maiden in the Song of Solomon who is greatly beloved by her beloved. And the beloved likens her to a palm tree. Highly erotic, sensual visualization here.

But that erotic, sensual visualization is a picture of how much the Lord yearns for the fruit that you can bear to him. He says, I think it's John 15. I don't have that projected. But it says, I've called you, I've ordained you that you should go forth and bear much fruit. And how does the verse end? And that your fruit, what? Should remain. He wants permanent fruitfulness because he wants permanent fellowship.

He wants to permanently enjoy relating with you as you relate to him. And the sweetest of the fruits, the dates, is a picture of the sweetest of communion that you can have with the Lord. I'm almost done. But this Palm Sunday on the Jewish calendar occurs on the ninth day of the month of Nisan. Bear with me on a little esoteric teaching. But on the tenth day of the month of Nisan, the Jews were to go either purchase or get a lamb.

And they were to take that lamb and they were to enclose it in a separate enclosure and watch over it for four days. And then on the fourteenth day of the month at even about three o'clock in the afternoon, they were to kill the lamb. And that's the Passover lamb. And that's the Passover lamb they were to eat that night. On the next day after Palm Sunday, Judas goes to the priests.

And he purchases the lamb for thirty pieces of silver. And then for the next four days, he watches over the lamb of God to find the opportune time in order to lead the priests and the soldiers to arrest Jesus. Everything cueing to the pattern that was originally written fifteen hundred years earlier. And so again, let's hallow this day in our hearts.

Let's see what is going to be taking place Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday all the way up to Good Friday and then Easter. So conclusion, Palm Sunday shows us Jesus coming into Jerusalem to bring an end of sin as Daniel had prophesied. It doesn't happen that way. He comes especially against that essential sin in us pride and against the dictatorship of pride in our lives to count it as a privilege to be as that donkey redeemed and discipled and disciplined joyfully to carry the Redeemer and his message to a lost civilization, to a lost people.

He comes for us individually to invite us to learn of him and therefore to find rest for our souls, to redeem us and bring us to taking up his yoke, to do his will, to carry him wherever he wants us to where ever he wants us to go, to be able to carry him to the four corners of the earth with his grace, his forgiveness and his love. Come unto me, come unto me, all who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.

Take up my yoke, my will upon you and learn of me. And when we see him come into Jerusalem on the back of that donkey, we're learning of him. He's meek and lowly of heart. He comes in. I don't think he was smiling and waving and acting like a politician or a conqueror. But he wanted them to learn of him. And if you will, you'll find rest for your souls.

Let's stand.