MAR 29 2026 | Palm Sunday: The King They Wanted vs. The King We Need

Sea Change Church · MAR 29 2026 | Palm Sunday: The King They Wanted vs. The King We Need
John 12:12-19
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Amen. Amen. Amen. The Gospel according to John, chapter 12, verses 12 through 19. His disciples did not understand these things at first. But when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. 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. This is the word of the Lord. This is the word of the Lord. And the way the world. And the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time the time.

All right, welcome. We got a full house. We have a full house. My name is Joe Brandy, and I do a bunch of different things here, but we are going to start a college group. There's actually 18 to 24. If you're in that age range after service, you can sign up. I also work with the late 20s and 30s, and I'm also a missionary. I help lead monthly trips to visit orphanages, led 200 of those trips.

If you ever want to come, we would love you to come. And let me just pray. Father God, thank you for your people. Thank you for your presence. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for the Holy Spirit. Help us have open hearts. Help us have open minds. And help your word not return void. In Jesus' name, amen. So, orange and blue. Everywhere, a sea of orange and blue.

Humidity, sweat rolling down my face. 2008 or 2007. Where was I? I was in Florida. I want everybody to go like this. All right. What is that? A gator chomp or something like that. And I'm from California, from NorCal. Now, this is my home. Been here like over 20 years. And I don't know if you're all from California, but thinking about living in a different state is just, I don't know.

I don't really want to do it. But I found myself in Florida, and I was a pastor there. And I'd heard about this guy named Tim Tebow. And he had won the Heisman the year before. And the Gators were just on a rampage. And I got invited to the game. And, again, the orange and the blue. And before Tim Tebow, who was in front of his team, came out of the locker room, everything's chill.

You know, kind of talking a little bit. The minute he ran out, the crowd unanimously went mental, went mayhem, just shouting. It was palpable. It was so palpable. And then you have fans like that that just go all out. And then they won the game. Every time he did something amazing, just uniform, just shouts. It was just electric. Because we love to win.

We love when our hero wins. We love when our team wins. All of us in our life have probably that one moment where your daughter did something amazing in the game. And you forever will remember that time where you were vicariously winning through her. Right? Or your team won in a certain year. And it's electric. We love a hero. We love to win. And we don't like to lose.

But our hero wins not like we would expect. Our hero wins not like we would expect. Going to the text in point one, what the crowds expected. The crowds expected power. The crowds expected power. And set in the context, this is the beginning of Passover week. And the population of Jerusalem would sometimes double. At least just tons of travelers that would come in.

And they're in Bethany. It's about two miles from the royal city. And it says in 12 and 13 of John. Question one. That the next day, the large crowd that had come to the feast. It's the feast of Passover. Had heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took palm branches, palm trees. Went out to meet him, crying, Hosanna. Which means God save us.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Lord, question one. Why were such large crowds around Jesus and in the city? As I mentioned, it's already Passover. But for three years, Jesus had done miracle after miracle after miracle. So they talked. They talked. They didn't have Netflix, you know, binging. They didn't have nice waves out there to distract themselves.

And the iPhone had not been invented yet. So to think in this ancient city, the stories that would be shared among travelers about this potential amazing prophet that was greater than Moses. That was maybe going to be the Messiah that came in the line of David. Was just building and building. So these crowds had come out two miles away from the city to see this man, Jesus.

And it says in verses 17 and 18 specifically, 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 they heard that he had done this sign. Have you ever seen anybody raised from the dead? No, I haven't. I haven't seen anybody raised from the dead.

But could you imagine before this, four days, the person that Jesus loved, Lazarus, he was dead for four days. He comes up. One of the sisters says, Lord, if you'd been here, he wouldn't have died. He says, this is going to be for the glory of God. He comes up to the tomb. Jesus wept. Jesus has a deep emotional life and such a beautiful big heart.

We have a God like no other God. He's not far away. But he's emotional. And he weeps when bad things happen to us. And he says, Lazarus, rise. And he rose. And Lazarus was from the town of Bethany. And he says, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Jesus had done. What was the context of Israel at the time?

Like who was there? I've never been to the holy city. And so sometimes it's hard for me to kind of visually understand what was going on. But we know from history that Rome was occupying the land of Israel and the city. And they had taken over power at 63 B.C. And before that, Alexander the Great and the Greeks had taken over and occupied the royal city.

So with all these miracles, with somebody that could raise somebody with his voice from the dead, the ancient Jews that had a prophecy that there would be a king that would come from them, that would be a royal line, that the nations would stream to him, they'd be the lion. They thought that he could be on the scene and elevate Israel to the top.

Could you imagine in San Diego, looking up, the region of the Holy Land was from here to about L.A. and then about another 20 kilometers wide. Could you imagine if 500, 700 years of being occupied by foreign nations, losing your language, having to pay high taxation at your temple, at every church there would be kind of like police officers that you didn't want there to monitor.

This was what it was like for them to have foreign leaders come in and occupy their land. And Greece, there was this guy, and I don't even know how to say, something, Epiphanes. Anyway, so he, before Rome took over, had put like a pig sacrifice inside the holy temple. And there's this, the Maccabean revolt happened in 164, and there was these Jewish priests and a family that said, no more.

And they started doing guerrilla warfare against the Greeks, against the Greeks, to where the small little guerrilla armies went up against Alexander the Great type people and got control of their city and their temple. And a symbol of it they had gained victory was palm branches, was palm branches. If we have an image of the palm branches. Palm branches don't mean, I think, a lot to us.

I was looking at the palm branches yesterday in Mission Beach. I'm like, wow, they're waving, they're beautiful, they're tall. But palm branches were a symbol of political victory and peace. And it says that they cut down palm branches and laid them on the street to make a path for Jesus to come to the city. And then they waved them. Palm branches were such a deep symbol that if, do you have the picture of the coin?

I looked this up. That during this revolt where they wanted peace from Greece and they wanted power and they took it physically, they started to build up this symbol of we're united to take on a stronger army. They started printing coins with palm branches on them. Okay? After the defeat of the Jews and the destruction of the temple in AD 70 with Rome, Rome then made their own coins with palm branches.

Just to show we beat you. Palm branches have this symbol of military victory and war. And the people and the crowds threw down the palm branches because they thought finally somebody that's as strong as Samson, that's a David-type figure that can take on Goliath, that can build a beautiful temple in a city like Solomon was here. They wanted to win.

They wanted to win. And we want to win, don't we? We want to win. Who likes to lose? I don't. I don't think anybody does. But when God doesn't win for you when you want him to, what's your reaction? Are you still praising? And the palm branches, you know, and other times as they threw down their cloaks, they laid out this red carpet for Jesus, and cloaks were like really beautiful at the time, and they were laying it out because they knew the king would come.

But when God doesn't win for us how we want and when we want, are we willing to still throw down our cloaks? Are we still willing to unite and praise him? Are we still willing to do the palm branches? And I've got to admit, I don't. I don't. But God wins in a different way. You know, our nation is divided, and we're not a political church. We focus on the gospel.

But we all know in our heart when certain people of political power win and don't win, and that anger, you know, the news, the gossip, the whatever, you know, and then just other nations, like I think we always want to win. We don't want to lose. But if we can transfer that affection of our political party or even our nation to win among other nations and shift it to focusing on Jesus as the true king that loves the whole world, I really think that's what God wants us to do.

How is your heart when God doesn't show up to win exactly the way you want him to? Point two, what the event they expected, but what did the event really mean? It means peace wins. Key word is peace wins. It says in verse 14 and 15, Jesus found a young donkey, and he sat on it. Just as it is written, fear not, daughter Zion, behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt.

Sitting on a donkey's colt. And the disciples didn't understand these things at first. But after Jesus was glorified, they remembered these things had been written about him and been done to him. So question, why would Jesus want a young donkey? If we can have the images of the donkey in case none of us have seen one. There's a cute little donkey and a colt.

There's a cute little donkey and a colt. Why would Jesus come in on a donkey? One is a symbol of peace, not war. I didn't know this, but David had a donkey when in his coronation he rode into the city because he's like, I've defeated my enemies. I don't have to come in on a war horse. I know my power. I'm going to come in peaceful on a donkey. Later, when he's transferring power to his son Solomon, he said, ride on my donkey.

It's a symbol of power. And there's this ancient prophecies in the Jewish mind that I'm not fully aware of until I meditate on this. In Genesis 49, the first book of the Bible in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, when Jacob is blessing all of his sons, he says in Genesis 49, when he's giving blessings about the future, he says to Judah, and Jesus came in the line of Judah, you're a lion's cub, O Judah.

Like a lion, you crouch and lie down. Like a lioness, who dares to rouse him? The scepter won't depart from Judah, which is a sign of the royal staff of royalty. And he talks about this ancient prophecy of power. There'd be somebody in the line for the people that would be like a lion, strong, powerful. But in verse 11, the same figure would tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch.

All the way in Genesis 49. And then in Zechariah, it's quoted too, about 500 years before Jesus comes on the scene. So there was this expectation that their hero, their king, somehow would be connected to riding on a donkey and connected to the colt. What's a donkey signify compared to Black Stallion? You know? Humility. Steadiness. Calmness. And apparent weakness and simplicity.

And I think Jesus, what he's showing is like, I'm not like other kings. I'm not like other gods. Like Alexander the Great came in with elephants to take out their armies. Jesus comes in, not just on a donkey, on a young donkey. And he's so gentle and so kind in the other gospels, he brought the colt and didn't leave the colt alone and brought his mother with the colt.

Because he's so kind and thoughtful and compassionate. Jesus is a gentle, powerful God. And I was studying up on this, and gentleness sometimes can feel weak. Kind of like a marshmallow, you know, or a jello. But it's power under control. The Greek is power under restraint. And the imagery is like when stallions are super strong and wild and the people come in and tame them.

They still have the same power, but they're under control and restraint. We need to know Jesus' heart, the heart of a gentle king. And I think there's only two places where Jesus talks about his heart. And the one, it says in Matthew 11. And this is, I believe, is a word for me, and it's a word for you. Because some of you think that God's mad at you all the time.

He's kind of perturbed at you. Even if you believed in Jesus, you're like, I'm getting in. He loves me, but he seems really far away, but does he delight in me? Is he patient with me? Have I exhausted all of his grace through my inner thought life or different things I've done and said? But Jesus, we need to know Jesus' heart as our king towards us. And he says in chapter 11 of Matthew to 28.

And you know, I'm not, a lot of people are down with tattoos. I haven't got any tattoos. But I was thinking, this is a tattoo I should put, just to remind myself on my forearm to read it, this verse. Will it happen? I don't know. I'll pray about it. I'll pray about it. Jesus says, come to me, all you who are weary and burdened. Yeah. I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

I'm gentle. I'm humble in heart. And you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Yeah. Are we stuck? Do our burdens feel heavy? Does the state of our nation feel heavy? Does the state of the world feel heavy? When you go to sleep at night and you can't turn off your brain, does you feel peaceful? Come to me. I'm gentle.

This is my heart. And I'm humble. We have a God that is humble and is peaceful and he's gentle. And then also, in the Old Testament, you know, maybe this is just this one little verse because there's so many verses in the Bible, like so many different descriptions of Jesus and his attributes. And Moses, back in the Old Testament, wanted to know God better.

He wanted to know his name. He wanted to see his face, but you can't see God's face. Nexus 34, verse 5, the Lord came down in a cloud and stood there with him. Jesus came down from heaven, born of the woman, to reveal himself to us. Then the Lord came down and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, I'm agitated with you.

You bother me. No, no. He said, the Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love, maintaining faithfulness, everybody say, slow to anger. Slow to anger. Are we slow to anger with the people we love? Are we slow to anger even towards ourselves? He is slow to anger. He is slow to anger. And he goes all the way, this peaceful man on the colt of a donkey going into the city.

Passover lambs were going to be slaughtered. I think it was on the Friday. And he comes into the city. And then he becomes like Isaac back in the Old Testament when Abraham had this miracle child at age, I don't know, 90 or 99. And God says, take your son and sacrifice him. And he ties Isaac, vulnerable, gentle, and Abraham raises the knife. And Soren Kierkegaard wrote a book about this called Fear and Trembling, which was really powerful.

And right at the last minute, God says, no, I'm going to provide a substitute. And he provides like a lamb or a goat in the thicket so he doesn't have to sacrifice his son. But God so loved the world. He gave his only son that no one should perish but have eternal life if you believe in him, if you run into him, if you rest in him, if you accept him. And he laid down and he let the full wrath of the Father because of our sins be placed on him as a substitute.

And in point three, it says, what does this event mean for us today? And Jesus said a prophecy in John chapter 2, 19 through 21. And he says, destroy this temple and in three days, I'll rise it up. The Jew said, 46 years, taking a bill of this, how are you going to do that? But he's speaking about the temple of his body. In verse 19, as we close out this passage, the Pharisees, who were the religious leaders at the time, said, see you guys, you're gaining nothing.

The world has gone after him. The world has gone after him. Why would the world go after him? And today we're in San Diego. We're not in the land of Israel. We're not in the holy city. I've been all, not all over the world, but I've been in Mongolia and worshiped with Jesus followers in Mongolia. I've been to Nicaragua, worshiping with people. El Salvador, Haiti, Kenya, Mexico.

We can keep going on and on and on. The whole world is coming into the temple, the new temple, Jesus Christ. He is the new temple. He is very sad, but his people rejected him and he gave a prophecy in the 80, 70. He didn't say the exact year, but he said, no stone is going to be laid upon another. And that was their religious focus point where God's presence dwelt and in 80, 70, Rome, after the revolt, they destroyed it all and a lot of bad things happened.

But he had to allow that physical temple to be destroyed so that his new temple could be the access point for Jews and Gentiles that believe in him. have you run to Jesus as the new temple, the new house of God? What this event means for us today, we have a new identity and a new mission. We have a new identity and a new mission. He says that he's the temple, but then he also says in 1 Corinthians 3, 16, do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit lives in you?

I don't feel like a temple sometimes, but if you've believed in Jesus, the one that was gentle and marched all the way to the cross and we're going to get to Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday and he resurrected and he says, I'm the new temple, I'm the new house where God and man and woman can dwell together and when you put your faith and trust in him, he comes into you by the Holy Spirit and takes residence and makes you a new temple and you go to him positionally and you're now a living stone, a royal stone being built up and can we have the image of the stones, please?

this is the old wall and I was researching this a little bit and in the first temple, they put these stones so perfectly together, it's said that you couldn't even get a knife, like anything in between these stones because they fit so perfectly together and God is so amazing that he can take all of us little rascals, you know, with all the different personalities and sensitivities and passions and form us together as different shaped stones.

When you come on the campus, I've been here, Pastor Em, how long have you been here? 12 years? I've been here like 11 years and I felt this and it's just like this prophetic echo that when you come on this campus, you feel peace and like family because I think that God has been orchestrating all the different living stones of y'all, greeters, amazing music, people praying before in every pew, you know, there's all these different living stones being fit together to make a new temple.

Do you realize you are God's temple? Do you realize you're God's temple? You have a new identity. What's he going to pull out? So, in Peter, it says we're living stones and these are stones that go in those fake fireplaces. Kind of cool, you know. But those don't seem very living. They seem very dead and other places in scripture, it says your heart is filled with stone.

You have stony hearts and God needs to come in and make it soft. If you have a stony heart towards Jesus and towards God, we're so glad you're here. But today could be the day where you invite Jesus by the Holy Spirit to come in to you and change your stony heart and put in a soft heart of flesh to give you a new identity to be part of something bigger than yourself, part of his kingdom, I mean, part of his temple.

And there's all these beautiful stones I found at Postal Linux. This one says love. This one says healing. This one says friendship. Gratitude. What type of stone are you? How has God uniquely and wonderfully fashioned you as a beautiful stone that's fit together corporately that is unique to you but adds to the greater whole? God doesn't want you to walk around feeling shame, feeling like you're saved but you're still in prison.

Child King Louis XVII in France in the late, I think it's 1700s, 1800s, he was crowned king at age eight. Well, there's a lot going on. He got put in prison even though he's rightful king. He died two years later because of loneliness and starvation. Jesus is the king. If you put your personal trust in him, he's made you royalty. You're his children of the king.

But yet many times we feel like we're still in prison. Prison of shame, that haunting voice, that inner critic, bad words spoken over you even by other Christians that you've adopted and let germinate like cancer inside of you. And we're like this king that's locked in prison. But God says, we're not in prison. We're in him, the gentle king. Closing up, very soon.

Can you do the other image of the, yeah. So, I was teaching through Exodus with my 25-35 group for a year and I found out they didn't really want to do it that long but I did it through a year. And this is probably the best chapter. I didn't realize this. And so, when the high priest would go in on the day of atonement to represent people on behalf of God, he would wear this.

And I don't even know if he wore it all the time. I'm not an expert in this but I know he did this on the day of atonement where they needed a lamb and a scapegoat to die in their place. And he walked in with 12 stones over his heart. And each of these 12 stones was different and it was beautiful and had one of the names of the tribes of Israel. And then he also had the names on the shoulders, six on one, six on the other of the names of the tribes of Israel.

When Jesus went into that city and died on the cross and let him be rejected like a stone, he was going in there with you over his heart. Knowing that you would become a beautiful royal stone represented by him, the great high priest that would die and rise. Do you realize what royal, beautiful stones you are? And as we close, back to the palm branches, if we can have that image.

Again, I was like, palm branches, okay, it's cute, the kids do this every year but what does it really signify? The other one, there's like, I think there's another palm branch one. It's all right. I'll read it to you. In Revelation chapter seven, it says, like, if anything you can get, let your mind's eye get this because someday this is where we're going to be.

After this, I look before me, there was a great multitude that no one can count from every nation, tribe, and people and language standing before the throne and in front of the lamb. They were wearing white robes and they were holding palm branches in their hands and they cried out, salvation belongs to God who sits on the throne and to the lamb. And later it says, they were before him serving him in the temple and it says, never again will they hunger, will they thirst, the sun won't beat upon them, the heat won't scorch them for the lamb is at the center of the throne and he'll be their shepherd, a gentle shepherd.

And he'll lead them into springs of living water and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Our king wins in a very, very unexpected way. We're going to enter a time of worship and then Adam will give the blessing but God says today can be the day of salvation. Today can be the day of salvation and he says, you need to fall on him so you can be broken. Jesus says, blessed are the broken, blessed are the humble and they'll inherit the earth but you need to humble yourself and bow the knee.

Jesus, come into me by your spirit, change me. I was made in your image but I've sinned, I've missed the mark. I need you as my substitute, come into me. If you have not asked him to come into you and save you, let this be the day. And also as fellow believers and Jesus followers, we need to help each other. We are God's hands and feet on the earth. Speak life into each other.

let's not be critical of one another. Let's not be angry with one another because our gentleness is a testimony of the living, true, gentle king. And if we can't love each other well and be gentle, the outside world is going to be like, ew, you guys stink. So we need to dig deep, dig deep and let him come in as we go into him, our gentle king. we invite you to stand if you would like as we just continue in worship.

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And the thing I got from it was a couple things. One, it's my heart that he's riding towards now. He's no longer coming into Jerusalem. It's my heart. And just this week is just another one of those seasons where you can reset, recalibrate, and just change the entry path and change the way that we invite him in. There's a ton going on here that we've set up.

But just be a part of something this week. Pick something on the calendar. Whether it's a prayer meeting, Friday night for worship and Good Friday. But this week can be different. This week can be a recalibration. And then after Easter, we head towards Pentecost. And that was a blessing. And then the other thing was just I regularly think God, like, loves me, but I'm not sure he likes me and he's mad at me all the time.

Like, that's just my thing. I just, I don't know if you feel that way, but he doesn't feel that way. He delights in you. And it was such a good message. Joe not only taught a systematic theological message, but you can tell he's experienced what he's talking about on a really deep level. And so I would just appreciate that. I want to bless you and pray for you.

If you extend your hands, we want to bless you. The prayer team's coming forward. If you need prayer after the service or if you want to ask Jesus into your heart, come forward. Lord God, this week is a new week as we recalibrate. I want to bless your people. I speak blessing. I speak blessing over your people. I speak blessing over their hearts.

And if our hearts have become cold, if they become like stone, that you would give a soft baby skin. No matter the wounds, Lord Jesus, I bless regeneration on their hearts. I bless an open path and open doors, God, and open windows in heaven. Divine appointments this week. I bless your people, God, with the things that they need. Whether it be in their health issues, God, whether it be in provision, whether it be in open doors, whether it be a job, God, whether it just be a smile on someone to say I love you.

God, I bless you, and we ask for the Spirit of God to bless us. And this week, I pray, God, that we can make different decisions. It's a brand new week. And so I bless you, and I send you out now in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. We love you. Have a great week. Come forward if you need prayer. We want to pray for you.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.