WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.560 I'm going to invite Miriam to come down. Miriam's going to read scripture for us. 00:00:03.640 --> 00:00:06.379 Scripture readings from John chapter 12. 00:00:06.759 --> 00:00:12.460 The next day, the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 00:00:12.960 --> 00:00:19.580 So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, Hosanna! Blessed is he who 00:00:19.580 --> 00:00:25.760 comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel. And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on 00:00:25.760 --> 00:00:33.939 it, just as it is written, Fear not, daughter of Zion. Behold, your King is coming, sitting on a 00:00:33.939 --> 00:00:40.280 donkey's colt. His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, 00:00:40.540 --> 00:00:44.700 then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. 00:00:45.200 --> 00:00:49.780 The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the 00:00:49.780 --> 00:00:55.219 dead continued to bear witness. The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they had 00:00:55.219 --> 00:01:00.039 heard that he had done this sign. So the Pharisees said to one another, 00:01:00.619 --> 00:01:06.819 You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him. This is God's holy word. 00:01:08.859 --> 00:01:13.799 All right, let's focus on God's word together. We're taking a break from James and looking at 00:01:13.799 --> 00:01:20.900 the passage Miriam read for us, John chapter 12. As we move towards Easter, this is the beginning of 00:01:20.900 --> 00:01:26.219 Jesus' Passion Week. It's called the Passion Week because the word passion comes from the Latin 00:01:26.219 --> 00:01:32.700 passio, to suffer. So this is the week of Jesus' suffering, and it starts with what's called the 00:01:32.700 --> 00:01:41.620 triumphal entry, John 12, also called Palm Sunday quite often. Now, if you think of every great literary 00:01:41.620 --> 00:01:49.960 king that you know about, Mufasa standing on pride rock looking over his land, or Aragorn, 00:01:50.600 --> 00:01:55.560 the king who was so humble, he had the opportunity to take the ring and seize power, but he refused. 00:01:56.300 --> 00:02:02.380 Or King Arthur, who was just a little boy that did not want to be king and he pulled the sword from the 00:02:02.380 --> 00:02:08.099 stone and became king. He was chosen. We have all these stories. There's so many more of these great 00:02:08.099 --> 00:02:15.359 kingly figures. They're humble. They've got a quiet strength. They are typically men who are powerful, 00:02:15.359 --> 00:02:20.759 but never tyrannical. They're self-sacrificing. There's often always a moment in the story of giving 00:02:20.759 --> 00:02:26.900 their life away somehow for others. They're righteous. They're tender. They're gentle and just. 00:02:29.219 --> 00:02:34.620 We've never, in all the history of humanity, we've never stopped writing that story of this good king, 00:02:34.620 --> 00:02:41.360 this ideal king. And so you can go and you can find a story like this in Norse sagas or in Arthurian 00:02:41.360 --> 00:02:47.539 romances from the Middle Ages or in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well. T'Challa of Wakanda 00:02:47.539 --> 00:02:53.700 is like this. Where did we get this idea from of the righteous king, the good king, the just king, 00:02:53.759 --> 00:02:59.500 the tender king, the meek king? And when you look at the records of the record of kings throughout history, 00:02:59.500 --> 00:03:05.439 it's almost consistently the case that they're all pretty abysmal. And we've never really had a king 00:03:05.439 --> 00:03:09.680 like this. We've never seen a king like this in our history. And it's because the reason we keep 00:03:09.680 --> 00:03:17.099 writing this story is because this is the Christian ideal. Every culture points to a king that is 00:03:17.099 --> 00:03:23.259 otherworldly ideal, one who would have to come down and give us all these virtues that we think about in 00:03:23.259 --> 00:03:28.080 these great stories we write. The world keeps writing the story not because it's untrue, but because it's 00:03:28.080 --> 00:03:32.620 true. And this is exactly the story that we're reading about today in the triumphal entry passage. 00:03:33.620 --> 00:03:37.920 We sang, you might have noticed, our psalms and our hymns today are all kingship hymns, 00:03:38.280 --> 00:03:44.220 because the triumphal entry is a story of the unveiling of Christ the king. It's this moment 00:03:44.220 --> 00:03:50.020 where all of a sudden the curtains pulled back on the reality of his kingship for the first time 00:03:50.020 --> 00:03:56.240 in the gospels. In Mark's account, there's a consistent refrain in the gospel of Mark 00:03:56.240 --> 00:04:01.719 where Jesus will heal the paralyzed man or he'll heal the blind man. And then he'll say, 00:04:01.780 --> 00:04:07.340 don't tell anybody. It's not my time. But then when it comes to the triumphal entry, 00:04:07.980 --> 00:04:13.860 he says to them, go and find the cult. It's tied up. And when you get there, tell the people the 00:04:13.860 --> 00:04:18.420 Lord needs it. It's the first time Jesus is self-referential like that, where he says the 00:04:18.420 --> 00:04:24.139 Lord needs it. The king needs it. This is the moment of his unveiling. It's the moment of the entry of 00:04:24.139 --> 00:04:29.860 the true king into the city of Jerusalem. And we see here, he's not just a God who is 00:04:29.860 --> 00:04:36.659 king of heaven and earth with all authority. This is the king who comes so close, who's so tender and 00:04:36.659 --> 00:04:44.860 gentle, who gets so near to us that he would ride on a baby donkey. Now, this comes, this shows up in 00:04:44.860 --> 00:04:49.680 all four of the gospels, this story. It's very important. And you can look at each of the gospels and 00:04:49.680 --> 00:04:54.100 see something different. The details highlight something different about the importance of the 00:04:54.100 --> 00:05:00.800 triumphal entry. So in John's gospel, I think John is pointing us to see irony as the most significant 00:05:00.800 --> 00:05:06.300 feature in the way he writes about the triumphal entry. So let me point you to three ironies 00:05:06.300 --> 00:05:12.879 in this account of the triumphal entry from the writer John. The irony of the coming of the king, 00:05:12.960 --> 00:05:18.319 the irony of Jesus' entry first. And then secondly, the irony of the cry of the people. 00:05:18.319 --> 00:05:25.360 They shout, Hosanna. And then lastly, the irony of the Pharisees' complaint in the very end of the 00:05:25.360 --> 00:05:31.639 passage, verse 19. So let's look at first the irony of the king entering, the coming of the king here, 00:05:31.980 --> 00:05:40.480 Jesus. Now in verse 16 in our passage, John writes that the disciples did not understand the triumphal 00:05:40.480 --> 00:05:46.800 entry until later on. So John says in verse 16, it wasn't until Jesus was glorified that they 00:05:46.800 --> 00:05:53.840 understood what his entry into Jerusalem actually meant. Now that tells us that we can't understand 00:05:53.840 --> 00:05:59.259 the triumphal entry without looking at all of what he did, without looking at his glorification, 00:05:59.520 --> 00:06:04.439 is what John says. So what is that? What does he mean by that? That you can't understand his entrance 00:06:04.439 --> 00:06:10.980 as king without understanding his glorification. That's what he says in verse 16. So to get that, 00:06:10.980 --> 00:06:16.580 think about the context for a minute. In this passage, this chapter, if you back up, if you have 00:06:16.580 --> 00:06:23.060 a Bible, you can see in verses 1 to 8, Jesus had come to Bethany to have a meal with Mary and Martha 00:06:23.060 --> 00:06:28.000 and Lazarus. And this is the man that he had raised from the dead in just the previous chapter. 00:06:28.920 --> 00:06:36.100 And so he's at the meal, and then the next day he exits Bethany and goes down the Mount of Olives 00:06:36.100 --> 00:06:42.040 into the city of Jerusalem. Now Bethany, where he had had the meal, is only about a mile or two from 00:06:42.040 --> 00:06:48.600 Jerusalem's gate. And it's just on the other side of the Mount of Olives. And the reason he's there is 00:06:48.600 --> 00:06:54.240 because this is going to be his home base for the Passion Week. And that's because Josephus, one of the 00:06:54.240 --> 00:07:00.160 historians of this era, 30 years later, he will tell us the only record we know of the population 00:07:00.160 --> 00:07:05.760 at Passover week. This is Passover week. Josephus says that there would be two to two and a half 00:07:05.760 --> 00:07:11.939 million people in Jerusalem at some point altogether during Passion Week, during Passover week. 00:07:13.240 --> 00:07:19.280 So Jerusalem, the ancient city, the first century Jerusalem is about 125 acres of land. And so you've 00:07:19.280 --> 00:07:26.580 got to get two million people inside. So it's basically identical to the size of Old Town. And it's 00:07:26.579 --> 00:07:31.839 basically the same situation as August for us here, Festival Week, about two million people coming 00:07:31.839 --> 00:07:37.300 through Old Town. So it's exactly like that in one week. And so what's happening here is that you don't 00:07:37.300 --> 00:07:42.579 stay in Jerusalem. You camp outside of Jerusalem. He's in Bethany. But he comes down on Sunday morning 00:07:42.579 --> 00:07:49.379 at some point, and he's coming down, and crowds are gathering down the Mount of Olives. But then also 00:07:49.379 --> 00:07:54.839 clearly crowds are coming out of the city gates towards him, and they're forming this great multitude. 00:07:54.839 --> 00:07:59.939 We don't know how many people, but it was probably thousands upon thousands. And why? It's because 00:07:59.939 --> 00:08:05.879 the text tells us they had heard he had raised Lazarus from the dead. So they've heard of this 00:08:05.879 --> 00:08:09.579 great mighty sign that he's done of raising a man from the dead, and they want to come see. And so 00:08:09.579 --> 00:08:16.259 there's a parade, and they lay down their cloaks, we learn in Mark and Matthew, and they lay down palm 00:08:16.259 --> 00:08:24.000 branches, we read about in all four Gospels. And they say, behold the King of Israel. So they announce 00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:30.040 him King. Now this is not the first time this has happened, nor would it be the last time. 00:08:30.959 --> 00:08:35.679 So John, the writer here, wrote the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation. And in the book 00:08:35.679 --> 00:08:43.820 of Revelation in chapter 7, John has a vision of the eternal King on his eternal throne. And in 00:08:43.820 --> 00:08:50.799 Revelation 7, it says that the nation surrounded the throne, and they held up palm branches to the 00:08:50.799 --> 00:08:55.819 king. The same thing. And then if you go back to the Old Testament, 2 Kings 9, for example, 00:08:57.120 --> 00:09:03.399 Jehu was crowned king of Israel. And when Jehu came into the city, they laid down their cloaks for him. 00:09:04.459 --> 00:09:08.039 So this is not the first time that this has happened. This is not the last time this has 00:09:08.039 --> 00:09:13.179 happened, because laying down cloaks, laying down palm branches, is what an ancient person would do for 00:09:13.179 --> 00:09:18.639 their arrival of a king. This was normal. This was not out of the ordinary. And so they're clearly 00:09:18.639 --> 00:09:24.659 recognizing him to be king as they lay down these palms. This is, for us, this is red carpet. This is 00:09:24.659 --> 00:09:28.000 rolling out the red carpet. And that's what they're doing with these palm branches. But 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:37.919 if you went to primary school in Jerusalem in the first century, history class 101 would have told 00:09:37.919 --> 00:09:43.860 you about another king that had received the same exact treatment. And that was a man called Simon 00:09:43.860 --> 00:09:52.419 Maccabees. And we talked about him in our Daniel series. Simon Maccabees is the leader of the Jews 00:09:52.419 --> 00:10:01.060 that came and defeated the evil king Antiochus Epiphanes in the 160s BC. And when he did that, he took 00:10:01.060 --> 00:10:07.920 Jerusalem back from Syria, from one of the broken kingdoms of Alexander the Great. And Simon was the 00:10:07.920 --> 00:10:13.560 figure in the Jewish mind of greatness. And every little boy and little girl in the first century would 00:10:13.559 --> 00:10:17.759 have gone to primary school and learned about Simon Maccabees the same you would about Scottish history 00:10:17.759 --> 00:10:23.619 today in your primary school. And so they would have been thinking about him. And what happened is when 00:10:23.619 --> 00:10:31.779 Simon Maccabees came to the city of Jerusalem in 163, they laid down palm branches for him. He came down 00:10:31.779 --> 00:10:36.299 the Mount of Olives. They laid down palm branches. They laid down their cloaks for him. And they cried 00:10:36.299 --> 00:10:44.719 words like deliverer, salvation. This has happened before. But the key is that Simon Maccabees, as every 00:10:44.719 --> 00:10:51.659 person in that city would have known, he came on this massive mighty steed. And he came with a big army 00:10:51.659 --> 00:11:01.439 and troops that came before him and behind him. He came in power. Jesus comes like Simon, but he is truly 00:11:01.440 --> 00:11:10.520 greater, the true king, yet visibly lesser. And we know that because here he sends people into the city before 00:11:10.520 --> 00:11:17.280 he comes and says, go, you'll find a donkey's colt that's never been ridden upon. And say the Lord requires 00:11:17.280 --> 00:11:24.360 that Jesus came in on a baby donkey, not a mighty steed, without an army, without anything like Simon Maccabees 00:11:24.360 --> 00:11:32.779 had done. And so you see, he's truly greater in himself, but yet visibly far less. And only Christ 00:11:32.779 --> 00:11:39.800 could hold this kind of excellency together. John's Revelation, the last book of the Bible, in Revelation 00:11:39.800 --> 00:11:46.320 chapter 5, John has another vision of the eternal king on his eternal throne. And he looks around, and one 00:11:46.320 --> 00:11:53.200 of the elders says to him, weep no more. Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered. So John, 00:11:53.200 --> 00:11:59.100 in his vision, looks up and he expects to see a throne where there's a lion who has conquered all. 00:11:59.940 --> 00:12:04.340 And then it says in Revelation 5, and between the throne and the four living creatures, I looked, 00:12:04.660 --> 00:12:13.379 and among the elders instead, I saw a lamb who was slain. So on the throne, in Revelation 5, this great 00:12:13.379 --> 00:12:18.379 vision of the eternal king, the elder says, look for the lion. And John looks up, but he sees a lamb on 00:12:18.379 --> 00:12:24.120 the throne, and he's on the throne slain. And here Christ, when he enters Jerusalem, holds these two 00:12:24.120 --> 00:12:30.200 excellencies together that no other king could ever hold. And that's that he is truly greater than Simon, 00:12:30.299 --> 00:12:36.480 truly greater than all the kings, the lion who conquers. Yes, and yet he appears visibly as a lamb, 00:12:37.379 --> 00:12:42.919 riding on a donkey's colt. You know, this is not a mighty sea, this is a hobbit's horse. 00:12:42.919 --> 00:12:49.259 Jesus is a grown man. He probably, you know, his legs probably dragged the ground as he rode a colt, 00:12:49.439 --> 00:12:54.620 literally a baby donkey, into the city. It would have looked so strange in a way. And you see, 00:12:54.759 --> 00:13:01.259 who is this? This is the shepherd king, the servant king, the one who we write stories about. 00:13:02.120 --> 00:13:07.939 He is the better Aragorn, the better Mufasa, the better Aslan, the better King Arthur. He's the best 00:13:07.940 --> 00:13:14.180 king. He holds all of these things together, the truly humble king who is the one of absolute 00:13:14.180 --> 00:13:22.020 authority, of absolute power. And so John quotes here from Zechariah 9.9, and he says, this is the 00:13:22.020 --> 00:13:29.600 fulfillment that the prophet said he would enter as king on a donkey, on a colt. But John also omits a 00:13:29.600 --> 00:13:36.100 section of the prophecy. So he squeezes two clauses together, the first and the last clause of Zechariah 00:13:36.100 --> 00:13:42.920 9.9. And what he omits is this line, righteous and bearing salvation is he. And in Zechariah 9.9, 00:13:42.960 --> 00:13:47.600 it said he would be the one who would be righteous, just, and bearing salvation on the one hand, 00:13:47.860 --> 00:13:53.399 and yet riding on a donkey's colt on the other. And you see the humility of the true king, the final 00:13:53.399 --> 00:13:58.639 king as he enters. Now, let me wrap this up and move on. This is our long point, by the way. 00:13:58.639 --> 00:14:06.819 D.I. Carson points out just a couple of important things to know about this king. He says that the 00:14:06.819 --> 00:14:14.279 text in Mark and Matthew say that he rode upon a colt never ridden upon before. There's this real sense 00:14:14.279 --> 00:14:19.980 in the Gospels where this is all according to plan. Jesus knows everything that's going to take place 00:14:19.980 --> 00:14:25.500 here. He has planned this out. And then Carson says, the colt, it's important to remember, a colt never 00:14:25.500 --> 00:14:33.980 ridden upon cannot be immediately ridden upon. This is an untamed animal, yet when Jesus goes and sits 00:14:33.980 --> 00:14:40.860 on it, the colt does exactly what he wants. And here we can remember the rest of the Gospels. Jesus 00:14:40.860 --> 00:14:49.019 Christ is the king who has authority to still the weather, to tell the storms to stop. He can tell 00:14:49.019 --> 00:14:56.279 demons to exit humans and go into pigs. He has total command of heaven and earth. When he sits upon an 00:14:56.279 --> 00:15:04.139 untamed animal, the animal does exactly what he wants it to do. Who is this? This is one who, remember 00:15:04.139 --> 00:15:10.679 in Genesis 2, Adam? Adam had authority over all of the animals. And they came to him, and he named them, 00:15:10.720 --> 00:15:16.539 and he tamed them. This is Jesus Christ, the one man, the second Adam, who has authority over all of 00:15:16.539 --> 00:15:22.620 creation as he enters. He sits upon the colt who's never been tamed, and yet it does everything he 00:15:22.620 --> 00:15:27.740 commands. But that's not all. If you sort of broaden out and really ask what's going on in this 00:15:27.740 --> 00:15:34.500 triumphal entry passage, another thing Carson notes is that in the Old Testament, in the Torah, in the 00:15:34.500 --> 00:15:41.240 law, animals that have never been used for labor are pure. They're pure according to the Torah. 00:15:41.240 --> 00:15:49.279 This was a pure animal, and it's pointing to something else, and that's this. In Exodus chapter 12, 00:15:50.299 --> 00:15:56.139 Exodus chapter 12, there's the command of what to do during Passover week. And in Passover week, you are 00:15:56.139 --> 00:16:02.899 to pick a spotless lamb, and you are to prepare it to enter the city of Jerusalem for sacrifice on 00:16:02.899 --> 00:16:09.820 Passover day. The day that you pick the spotless lamb is called Nisan 10 in the Jewish calendar, 00:16:09.820 --> 00:16:17.900 the Hebrew calendar, Nisan 10. And Sunday, Palm Sunday, is Nisan 10. It's the day that a family 00:16:17.900 --> 00:16:24.140 would pick the spotless lamb and anoint that lamb and prepare it to enter the city for its death on 00:16:24.140 --> 00:16:30.520 Nisan 14, Thursday, the Passover. And remember that Thursday night Jesus stood up at the meal and broke 00:16:30.520 --> 00:16:36.100 the bread and said, this is my body. I'm to be broken for the sins of the world. What is happening here? 00:16:36.100 --> 00:16:41.899 This is the king. Yes, the king, the mighty king who's entering the city, triumphant king, the triumphal 00:16:41.899 --> 00:16:48.960 entry. And yet, in the moments just before this entry, at that meal in Bethany, Jesus was anointed 00:16:48.960 --> 00:16:56.840 by Mary and Martha. It's a double entendre. It's a double anointment. Who's anointed in the Old Testament? 00:16:56.940 --> 00:17:03.759 The king is anointed on the one hand? Ah, the spotless lamb is anointed. You see, in this moment where 00:17:03.759 --> 00:17:10.500 this king enters the city, this is the king entering as the lamb to be slain. He is coming. This is, 00:17:11.140 --> 00:17:16.259 as John puts it, what is his glorification? What is his enthronement? What is the announcement of his 00:17:16.259 --> 00:17:22.099 kingship? It's certainly his resurrection. It's certainly his ascension. But before that, in John's 00:17:22.099 --> 00:17:30.980 gospel, John says the cross is where Jesus, the king, was lifted up on his throne. You see, this is the king 00:17:30.980 --> 00:17:40.380 parading to his coronation event. And his coronation is the cross. He has been set apart as the lamb to 00:17:40.380 --> 00:17:46.539 be slain. And yet, as the lamb to be slain, that is the anointment of his kingship. This is the 00:17:46.539 --> 00:17:50.900 background of the vision of Revelation 5 and Revelation 7. This is the king who would give 00:17:50.900 --> 00:17:57.180 himself away as a ransom for many. Let me give you one lesson. One lesson, and that's this. 00:17:57.180 --> 00:18:06.500 The way Jesus Christ entered the city, the way he went to the cross, full of glory yet in utter humility 00:18:06.500 --> 00:18:13.799 is exactly the way you receive salvation. If you want to have the glory he has, if you want to be 00:18:13.799 --> 00:18:19.180 great and share in his greatness, you actually have to do what he did, and that's follow him in humility 00:18:19.180 --> 00:18:25.440 to the cross. The same way that he entered is the same way you enter. It's by laying aside all your 00:18:25.440 --> 00:18:32.680 glory with utter humility and saying, I cannot have glory unless I share in his humility. You receive 00:18:32.680 --> 00:18:38.519 salvation the same way he earned it, by following him to the cross, taking up your cross and following 00:18:38.519 --> 00:18:44.380 him. Will you this week, this Easter week, follow the parade to Golgotha, to the cross? Lay down your 00:18:44.380 --> 00:18:50.539 cross. Follow him. Receive him in the same way he came for you. And that's with utter humility, saying, 00:18:50.539 --> 00:18:57.599 it's not my achievements. It's not my greatness. It's not my glory. It's all him. Secondly, briefly, 00:18:58.319 --> 00:19:06.859 then there's an irony here in the cry, Hosanna. Now in verse 13, as they enter, as he enters, and they 00:19:06.859 --> 00:19:16.079 crowd around him, the people cry out, Hosanna. Now, Hosanna is a Greek word here that's been transcribed 00:19:16.079 --> 00:19:21.559 directly into English letters, and it's a Greek word transcribed to English that was transcribed 00:19:21.559 --> 00:19:27.519 originally from Hebrew. So what the authors did here is they took a Hebrew word, they put it into 00:19:27.519 --> 00:19:31.980 Greek, and then in our English Bible, we took the exact Greek letters and just put them into English. 00:19:32.119 --> 00:19:37.859 And so it comes out as Hosanna. You know, everybody knows two Hebrew words, hallelujah, praise the Lord, 00:19:37.960 --> 00:19:43.659 and Hosanna. And Hosanna means save us, deliver us. And so they cry out. Now the tricky bit here 00:19:43.660 --> 00:19:51.300 is that very likely John here is not saying anything to show that they think that they're 00:19:51.300 --> 00:19:56.720 receiving a salvation for the forgiveness of their sins. There's not a single hint in the passage 00:19:56.720 --> 00:20:01.940 that suggests to us they think that they're looking at the king who's going to save them from their sins, 00:20:01.980 --> 00:20:08.660 and instead it's very likely that when they cry out Hosanna, they're saying this is the new Simon 00:20:08.840 --> 00:20:13.300 Maccabees. This is the one who is going to save us from Rome, just like Simon saved us. 00:20:13.660 --> 00:20:18.480 From Syria. That's their thought. That's clearly why they're crying out. How do we know that? It's 00:20:18.480 --> 00:20:24.900 because how do you get from Palm Sunday when the people say, deliver us, this is our salvation, 00:20:25.259 --> 00:20:32.540 to Good Friday? The same crowd on Good Friday will say, crucify him. On Sunday they say, 00:20:32.759 --> 00:20:37.880 Hosanna, our salvation is here. On Friday morning they're going to say, murder him, crucify him. 00:20:37.880 --> 00:20:42.680 How does that happen? And it's clearly because they think he has come to displace Rome, 00:20:42.680 --> 00:20:48.420 not to be a salvation for the forgiveness of their sins. And in Mark's gospel and Matthew's gospel, 00:20:49.180 --> 00:20:54.840 Jesus, it's pointed out, Jesus enters on Sunday and he goes straight to the temple. 00:20:56.020 --> 00:20:59.840 And on Monday he came down from Bethany and he went straight to the temple. And on Tuesday 00:20:59.840 --> 00:21:02.740 he came down from Bethany and he went straight to the temple. On Wednesday, 00:21:02.740 --> 00:21:09.819 to the temple. And the people start to get the picture that this man did not come to walk up to 00:21:09.819 --> 00:21:15.460 the garrison of the Roman, where Pilate reigns. He didn't come there. He keeps coming to the temple. 00:21:16.180 --> 00:21:20.359 Why? Because Jesus Christ did not come to displace Rome yet. He came to be the temple. 00:21:21.259 --> 00:21:26.339 He came to be the sacrifice of sins. He came to replace the temple sacrifices. He came to be the lamb. 00:21:26.339 --> 00:21:31.859 And as the people start to understand that more and more over the week, they move from shouting, 00:21:31.980 --> 00:21:38.419 Hosanna, to shouting, crucify him. He's not the one we thought. He's not the new Simon Maccabees. 00:21:39.199 --> 00:21:44.099 Let me give you three lessons of why it's so important to recognize this in our own lives as well. 00:21:45.339 --> 00:21:52.859 You can praise him first. You can praise him and not understand him. You can worship him and cry out 00:21:52.859 --> 00:21:59.859 to him and not really understand what he came for. They wanted help for their circumstances in the story. 00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:06.159 They simply wanted a smaller salvation than he actually came to offer. The people cry out, 00:22:06.279 --> 00:22:10.319 Hosanna, because they want a smaller salvation than Jesus Christ came to offer. 00:22:12.759 --> 00:22:18.979 Do you have an on-again, off-again relationship with Jesus Christ? 00:22:18.980 --> 00:22:29.740 Where you come to him when you're looking for small salvations, but you don't abide with him as your king. 00:22:31.620 --> 00:22:37.240 The people came to him for a small salvation. They thought he was going to save them from the 00:22:37.240 --> 00:22:41.799 occupancy of Rome. Do you have an on-again, off-again relationship with Jesus Christ where you treat 00:22:41.799 --> 00:22:47.559 him like a genie in a bottle? Where you come to him and rub the lamp and say, I need you now. 00:22:47.559 --> 00:22:52.700 And that's exactly what the people are crying out. We need you at this moment. But when they realize 00:22:52.700 --> 00:22:57.200 he didn't come to deliver them from Rome, they want nothing to do with him. They want to crucify him 00:22:57.200 --> 00:23:05.440 instead. And here we learn in this passage that if the whole of our relationship to Christ is just 00:23:05.440 --> 00:23:10.099 praying to him in bad circumstances, then we're treating him like a genie in a bottle. He actually 00:23:10.099 --> 00:23:16.440 came to save us from something bigger than we asked for, bigger than we know we need. And so that leads 00:23:16.440 --> 00:23:22.640 to the next one. And secondly, what we want, we learn here as human beings, is not actually what we need. 00:23:23.580 --> 00:23:29.539 So our desires, our strongest desires that we might have today, your strongest desires you might have 00:23:29.539 --> 00:23:36.140 today for your life are not your deepest desires. The things that you currently want are not your 00:23:36.140 --> 00:23:42.860 deepest needs. The people cry out, save us from Rome, but they need something far deeper than that. 00:23:42.859 --> 00:23:47.619 And so you cannot trust your own desires for the circumstances you want in your life because your 00:23:47.619 --> 00:23:53.319 needs, your deepest desires are far bigger than that. He comes to offer a salvation that's bigger 00:23:53.319 --> 00:24:00.339 than our little wants in this life. And so sometimes we pray and we say, Lord, deliver me, save me, 00:24:00.399 --> 00:24:05.839 Hosanna, deliver me from this circumstance in my life. And then he answers our prayers and he gives us 00:24:05.839 --> 00:24:09.939 something we didn't expect. And what he's trying to do in that moment is shake us up and wake us up 00:24:09.940 --> 00:24:17.140 to say that what we're asking for is not what we need. Our deepest desires, our deepest needs are far 00:24:17.140 --> 00:24:22.039 bigger than our strongest desires as we express them. That's exactly what the cry of Hosanna here 00:24:22.039 --> 00:24:29.039 means. And then thirdly, third last application here is that we learn from this crowd who cries, 00:24:29.120 --> 00:24:36.700 Hosanna on Sunday, crucify him on Friday, is that there is nothing more fickle than the praise of human 00:24:36.700 --> 00:24:44.140 beings. There's nothing more fickle than when the crowd gathers together and cries out, save us, 00:24:44.220 --> 00:24:52.100 deliver us. This is our salvation. You can't build your life on what the crowd thinks. You can't build 00:24:52.100 --> 00:24:57.620 your life on what the social order says about truth, about what you should think, about what you should 00:24:57.620 --> 00:25:02.539 believe, about how you should act. And Jesus, look at Jesus, how he knew that, that he could not listen to 00:25:02.539 --> 00:25:09.920 the word of the crowd. Don't seek the praise of the crowd. And this is such a simple lesson, but I think 00:25:09.920 --> 00:25:15.339 this is probably one of the hardest battles all of us fight in this earthly life, is to get to a place 00:25:15.339 --> 00:25:22.519 in our hearts where we can get beyond the opinion of the crowd. And we all, you know, we all want the 00:25:22.519 --> 00:25:28.659 praise of the praiseworthy. We want to hear the cries of people giving us affirmation. But when you see 00:25:28.660 --> 00:25:35.880 Jesus, that he was in this moment headed into Jerusalem to go to the cross for you, for God so 00:25:35.880 --> 00:25:41.140 loved the world, he gave his only begotten son for you, when you see that, you can know that you have 00:25:41.140 --> 00:25:46.200 the praise of the praiseworthy, the most praiseworthy, and that's all you need. You don't need the opinions 00:25:46.200 --> 00:25:52.800 of the crowd. People are so fickle. The opinion's going to change. It's going to move on. In the eyes of 00:25:52.799 --> 00:25:58.339 God, there is no hiding the truth of your reputation. There is no concealing your reputation 00:25:58.339 --> 00:26:03.680 before the eyes of the Lord. So instead, forget the praise of the crowd and come to him, come to Jesus, 00:26:04.319 --> 00:26:09.859 follow him to the cross, and let the cross tell you what he says about you. If you have the praise of 00:26:09.859 --> 00:26:15.419 the praiseworthy, what else do you need? And at the cross of Christ, you have it. He says that he loves 00:26:15.419 --> 00:26:20.599 you. He says that he came and entered the city in this day for you, for his love for you. Now finally, 00:26:20.599 --> 00:26:27.000 let me finish with the irony of the Pharisees' complaint very briefly. At the very end of this 00:26:27.000 --> 00:26:34.339 passage down in verse 19, you can see that the Pharisees turned to one another to complain, 00:26:34.740 --> 00:26:39.959 and this is what they said. So the Pharisees said to one another, you see that you're gaining nothing, 00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:46.740 or we're gaining nothing. We're not winning this. Look, the world has gone after him. 00:26:46.740 --> 00:26:53.220 So you can translate that in a few different ways. The world has gone after him, or literally, 00:26:53.339 --> 00:26:59.859 the world has gone to him. Or it can also be translated, the world has returned to him. 00:27:00.579 --> 00:27:07.220 That's the idea. Now, this is classic in John's gospel, and it is the Pharisees' complaint. So 00:27:07.220 --> 00:27:12.660 they're complaining here, and it's a hyperbole. They look up, and they see all these thousands of 00:27:12.660 --> 00:27:17.640 people gathered looking at Jesus parading into the city, and they say, what are we supposed to do? 00:27:17.740 --> 00:27:22.880 The whole world's coming after him. The whole world's returning to him. And so they're complaining, 00:27:22.880 --> 00:27:28.920 and they're just wanting to kill him all the more because of this. This is hyperbole born of 00:27:28.920 --> 00:27:34.880 frustration, but John, just like in the rest of his gospels, uses the words of the Pharisees 00:27:34.880 --> 00:27:41.460 for great irony. They don't know what they're saying. And so in the previous chapter, Caiaphas, 00:27:41.560 --> 00:27:48.720 the high priest, said, it's better that one man would die than that the many would die. And he was 00:27:48.720 --> 00:27:53.420 trying to say there, we got to prevent a war with Rome. It's better that we kill Jesus than start a 00:27:53.420 --> 00:27:58.040 whole war with Rome. But when he said, it's better that one man die in the place of the many, what was 00:27:58.040 --> 00:28:03.700 he doing? John is saying he was preaching the gospel without knowing it. It's better that one man 00:28:03.700 --> 00:28:09.799 substitute for the many than that the many would die, lose all hope. He preached the gospel without 00:28:09.799 --> 00:28:14.940 knowing it. Then you turn to John chapter 12, and the Pharisees say, the world is going after him. 00:28:15.140 --> 00:28:21.100 And the reason they're upset is because they see how many Greeks, Gentiles are flocking to him in 00:28:21.100 --> 00:28:26.860 this moment. The world is going after him. And again, they preach the gospel without knowing it. 00:28:27.519 --> 00:28:33.220 We must kill him because the world is going after him. Now, if you've read John's gospel, you'll know 00:28:33.220 --> 00:28:40.539 probably that the word world throughout John's gospel is really prominent. It's the word in Greek, 00:28:40.720 --> 00:28:47.620 cosmos, and we just took it right into English, cosmos. And John has a lot of different uses for 00:28:47.620 --> 00:28:53.779 it, but basically three main ones. Number one, the word world in John's gospel means the whole 00:28:53.779 --> 00:28:58.319 universe. It means everything, everything that exists in creation order, the stars, the bugs, 00:28:58.319 --> 00:29:05.779 the human beings, all of it. But it also means every single ethnicity. But a third way John uses 00:29:05.779 --> 00:29:12.720 it sometimes is to mean the broken order of the world as it exists right now under the fall, 00:29:12.799 --> 00:29:18.899 under human sin. So God loves the cosmos. He loves the world. He loves the universe. He loves the stars, 00:29:19.039 --> 00:29:23.939 and the sun, and the bugs, and the green grass, and the food that he gives us. He loves it, 00:29:23.940 --> 00:29:29.580 and he loves all ethnicities, and he loves the broken order. Even though we broke this place, 00:29:29.620 --> 00:29:33.740 even though it's so full of sin and corruption, he still loves it. So listen, John 3 16, 00:29:34.140 --> 00:29:41.200 for God so loved the cosmos that he gave his only begotten son. And now here the Pharisees look up and 00:29:41.200 --> 00:29:49.160 say the cosmos is coming to him. The cosmos is returning to him. They preach the gospel 00:29:49.160 --> 00:29:55.759 when they don't know it. It's such irony. They say the whole world is returning to him. See, we 00:29:55.759 --> 00:30:02.080 in the beginning, the cosmos, we ran away from him. We rebelled against him. We rejected him. 00:30:03.420 --> 00:30:09.920 And yet when he, the king, enters the city, the world without knowing it is pulled back to him. 00:30:10.320 --> 00:30:15.880 We can't help it. We can't help but come to him. All the nations this week, Easter week, 00:30:15.880 --> 00:30:22.660 billions of people, billions will come and worship him. We cannot help all the nations but come to him. 00:30:23.080 --> 00:30:27.960 This is the, this moment of the triumphal entry is the pull of the creator to his creatures, 00:30:28.300 --> 00:30:32.940 saying, come home, come back, and all the people are coming back to him. 00:30:34.540 --> 00:30:42.400 J.H. Bavinck, a Dutch missionary from the mid-20th century, he talks about how every person has these 00:30:42.400 --> 00:30:47.820 same experiences, and one of them is that life is such a riddle. Maybe you come today feeling like 00:30:47.820 --> 00:30:53.440 life is such a riddle, and what he meant by that was the longer you live, the more you feel like life 00:30:53.440 --> 00:30:58.220 really is full of pain and sorrow and misery, the veil of tears, and then you think, what are we here 00:30:58.220 --> 00:31:04.300 for? Why all this mess? Why this darkness? Why this pain? I keep having to bury people that I love. 00:31:04.440 --> 00:31:07.980 That's what he meant by the riddle of the universe, that this human life we live. 00:31:07.980 --> 00:31:13.700 But then he said, in the midst of the riddle, we seek for meaning, and he said, there's these magnetic 00:31:13.700 --> 00:31:19.620 points that our hearts tend to be drawn back to over and over again. And the ones that he said, a couple 00:31:19.620 --> 00:31:25.839 of them, he said, we have a sense of our whole relationship with the cosmos, that though we're distinct 00:31:25.839 --> 00:31:32.019 individuals, yet we're connected to everything so closely and intimately. We are humans, and we're not bugs, 00:31:32.059 --> 00:31:37.360 and we're not stars, but yet we feel like we are here to be rulers of the bugs and the stars. We feel this 00:31:37.359 --> 00:31:43.699 connection to the cosmos. And then the other thing he says is, at the same time, we have a craving for 00:31:43.699 --> 00:31:50.439 salvation, a craving for salvation. And this is what he wrote about it. There is a craving within for a 00:31:50.439 --> 00:31:56.819 reality that recognizes that this world, this cosmos, is not as it should be. It's hard to define. We've 00:31:56.819 --> 00:32:04.219 got a remarkable tendency not to accept reality as it presents itself to us, but to dream of a better 00:32:04.220 --> 00:32:12.299 world where we will be healthy and safe. Jesus Christ enters the city this Passion Week, and the 00:32:12.299 --> 00:32:20.660 world did not know what to look for. They thought they needed salvation from Rome, and yet in their 00:32:20.660 --> 00:32:27.079 deepest desires, they come to him because we crave salvation. They saw him. They saw the king. They had 00:32:27.079 --> 00:32:31.059 to come to him. And billions of people this week will come to him. And I want to ask you today, 00:32:31.059 --> 00:32:38.659 do you know, will you listen to your deeper longings, your deepest cravings? Your surface level desires 00:32:38.659 --> 00:32:44.299 are chasing after all sorts of things, but your deepest cravings are for him. They really are. 00:32:45.500 --> 00:32:50.940 And I want to ask you this Easter week, are you moving towards him, or are you moving away from him? 00:32:52.139 --> 00:32:57.679 Are you going towards him this week? Are you moving away? Well, are you following him all the way to the 00:32:57.680 --> 00:33:03.279 cross? And standing under the shadow of the cross and saying, that is my glory. He is my glory. The 00:33:03.279 --> 00:33:10.620 king coronated, that is my glory. This is why, I'll finish with this, this is why, this is why we write 00:33:10.620 --> 00:33:16.620 the stories of the righteous king, the ideal king that we've never seen. He's real. This is him. He is 00:33:16.620 --> 00:33:21.840 the ideal king. He is the one we crave. He is the one that we keep writing the stories about. C.S. Lewis 00:33:21.839 --> 00:33:29.339 famously wrote, the story of Christ is the myth that actually happened. Tolkien could tell of Aragorn, 00:33:29.439 --> 00:33:34.639 the great king, because he is an archetype of Christ. Because the archetype of Christ has existed for all 00:33:34.639 --> 00:33:40.379 eternity, it is a person. It is him. That's why we write the story. Our heart is pulled. Are you moving 00:33:40.379 --> 00:33:49.459 towards him today, or away from him? Every good story that we have ever told in world history 00:33:49.460 --> 00:33:54.180 finds its deepest reference point in him, the true king, the shepherd king. 00:33:56.039 --> 00:34:04.340 The king of love, our shepherd is. Let us pray. Father, we ask today that this week we would follow 00:34:04.340 --> 00:34:12.579 him to the cross. We would see the lion of the tribe of Judah and the lamb who was slain. We would see 00:34:12.579 --> 00:34:18.079 the irony of the king who made himself nothing by riding on the donkey's colt. We would see 00:34:18.079 --> 00:34:25.199 our Lord, you, our Lord Jesus. We would have a vision of a king who came to give his life away for us. And so 00:34:25.199 --> 00:34:32.579 we thank you today, Lord Jesus. We confess our distance from you this week. We want even, 00:34:32.739 --> 00:34:38.219 as we sing, the king of love, my shepherd is to return to you. And so we follow you, Lord, 00:34:38.219 --> 00:34:44.500 even in these moments to the cross, to your enthronement to see the king who was slain for 00:34:44.500 --> 00:34:49.839 us, the king who did not stay dead. And so we thank you, Lord, for being the shepherd king and for being 00:34:49.839 --> 00:34:53.219 the ideal king. And we thank you for that in Christ's name. Amen.