Luke 19:29-44
It was Palm Sunday, and the mother’s 5 year old son had to stay home from church because of a strep throat. When the rest of the family returned home carrying palm branches, the little boy asked what they were for. His mother explained, “People held them over Jesus’ head as he walked by.”
“Wouldn’t you know it,” the boy complained. “The one Sunday I don’t go, and Jesus shows up”.
I went to a lot of church services in my life and it wasnât until I was 20 years old that Jesus finally showed up. Of course I then discovered that Jesus had always been present and it was my spiritual blindness that had prevented me from seeing him.
Today is Palm Sunday and we try in some way each year to recreate the welcome Jesus received when he entered Jerusalem just four days before he was arrested and crucified. The text we read this morning is very familiar but I looked at it this year from the perspective of how we can welcome Jesus into our lives.
On Palm Sunday we do not simply remember something that happened long ago. Jesus is still present as we experience him through the Holy Spirit. Is he welcome in your life? When you wake up and go through your day, does Jesus feel welcomed in your life?
Let me suggest from this passage three ways we can welcome Jesus in our lives.
The first point is very obvious, we welcome Jesus with our praise.
When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
38 âBlessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!â
âPeace in heaven and glory in the highest!â
When we picture the scene, we imagine a lot of noise and a great crowd of people. Palm branches being cut from trees and the path in front of Jesus covered with cloaks and palm branches. Jesus moving forward on his donkey and the crowd moving forward with him. Joy and celebration, those are the words that speak of Jesusâ entry into Jerusalem that day.
Why were they praising Jesus? Why did they welcome him into Jerusalem in that way? Notice that they were praising God for all the miracles they had seen. They were not praising God because they were supposed to. They were not praising God because they were bored and had nothing better to do. This was not a performance they had rehearsed. This was a spontaneous celebration. They were praising God because of what they had seen happen through Jesus.
What had they recently seen? Backtracking from this passage in Luke, they had seen Jesus give a blind man sight as they approached Jericho. On the way to Jerusalem, ten men had been healed of leprosy. In the three prior years, they had seen the lame walk, the blind see, the demon-possessed set free, the sick cured and the dead raised to life.
When they celebrated the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, they had a lot to praise.
I think this is important for us to realize. Praise does not come in a vacuum. I personally find it difficult to step into a prayer meeting or church service and begin to praise God. I need a context for praise. I canât praise without having something to respond to. I have said before when talking about worship that for me, praise needs to be informed by content. So it was interesting for me to read this text and see why it was the disciples were praising God. They praised God because of the miracles they had seen.
When we read a psalm at the beginning of a church service and the words speak to me, then I am led to praise. When we sing a hymn that is full of content, it leaves me hungry to sing a praise chorus in response. But when we begin a service with a praise chorus, I am still thinking of what happened before church began and I have not had my head pulled back to God and my praise is more superficial.
I donât think this is just me, I see the same thing happening with Paul. In Paulâs first letter to Timothy, chapter 1, he talks about his experience of Godâs grace in his life. He reflects on his having been a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man and then how he was shown mercy and how the grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly. As I understand this section, he was so overcome as he wrote this section that he had to burst out in praise:
Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
In Romans 11 as Paul concluded his doctrinal discussion and prepared to move into practical application of what he had been discussing, he burst out with a doxology:
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
34 âWho has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?â
35 âWho has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?â
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.
In his letter to the Ephesians, chapter 3, Paul prays for the Ephesians a beautiful prayer that they would grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and Paul himself is so taken by the beauty of the prayer he has just written that he bursts out with yet another doxology:
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
I remember one sermon when I was so overcome in my preparation as I was writing the sermon that I broke out in a song of praise. In the middle of my preparation I had to stop and sing praise to God. When I preached the sermon, I included the song of praise in the middle of the sermon.
We can come to church and praise God and that is OK, but I long for praise that comes from deep inside my being and that praise comes when I comprehend in some small way the miracles and wonder of God. It is when praise comes deep from within me that Jesus is made welcome in my life.
What are the miracles you have seen? Next week on Easter, we will have the opportunity to hear how God has worked in the lives of three or four of the members of RPF. I think we need to do this more often. We need to hear of the miracles, big and small, in our lives. We need to share with others what God has been doing in our lives. And when we do that, we will discover that we have a lot for which we can praise God.
One final comment on praise. Notice that Luke writes that when the disciples were praising Jesus they:
began joyfully to praise God in loud voices
I do not want to suggest that when we meet on Sundays or at other times and praise God that we must yell and scream. But I think that there are times when our sense of what God has done is so powerful and we are so overcome with the love of God, that we do not pay attention to others around us and we do not worry what others will think of us. There are times when our awareness of God is so strong that we burst out with praise. This is what I think happened with the disciples. They were overjoyed at the prospect of Jesus coming into what they thought was his earthly kingdom that they let loose, without restraint.
Church is not meant to be a dignified place. There are times when holy chaos is the appropriate response to what God has done and is doing.
It would be a mistake to manufacture this and think that by praising God loudly we will praise well. But praise will not always be orderly and we should not be surprised when it is not orderly.
I love the prayer for revival prayed by Charles Spurgeon, a nineteenth century British preacher. He prayed, in part:
God, send us a season of glorious disorder. Oh, for a sweep of the wind that will set the seas in motion, and make our ironclad brethren, now lying so quietly at anchor, to roll from stem to stern!
Like Spurgeon, I pray for a time when there will be a genuine movement of the Holy Spirit that will overwhelm us, strip us of our need to control, and allow us to taste the goodness of God. The disciples did not plan to praise Jesus as they did, it just happened. May we, one day in our worship, in a similar way be overcome by the joy of the Lord and burst forth in holy, unrestrained praise.
We welcome Jesus into our lives when we praise him for what he has done and we welcome Jesus when we offer to him our possessions.
This second point I am taking from this passage:
They brought [the colt] to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. 36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.
Matthew and Mark add that the crowd cut branches from the trees and laid them on the road in front of Jesus.
What laying cloaks and branches on the road in front of Jesus signified was what laying out a red carpet today signifies. When the king comes, a red carpet is laid out as a symbol of respect so he can walk on something beautiful. In ancient Rome, this was done for royalty. Today this practice has broadened to the royalty of Hollywood and visiting dignitaries.
When Jesus came into Jerusalem, he received the royal treatment of cloaks and branches being laid out in front of him.
I want to take a metaphorical leap from this to illustrate a Biblical truth and that is that offering to Jesus their cloaks was like offering Jesus their possessions. And the Biblical truth is that we make Jesus welcome in our lives when we offer to him our possessions.
What does it mean to offer to Jesus our possession? The obvious way we think about this is when we put money in the offering plate on Sundays and if you read the bulletin this morning you will see a report about our financial state. We are falling behind in our giving and have been doing so for the past three years. Our situation is deteriorating and at the end of October, at the rate we are going, we will have only 30,000 dirhams with which we will enter the new fiscal year.
Churches talk about giving a ten percent tithe. For me that is an Old Testament concept and the New Testament concept is that all you have belongs to God. The question for Christians is not how much must I give but how much can I give. I personally have always viewed 10% as a minimum and giving has been a joy, not a duty. The church board encouraged me to talk about giving and I will do so in more detail in April, after Easter.
RPF needs an increase in giving but I am confident God will provide us with what we need and am not going to go on long about this today. I trust that you will respond as you feel Godâs leading.
Let me suggest another way in which we offer our possessions to Jesus. A friend of mine borrowed some of our DVD movies and when there was a prayer meeting at his house, one of the people walked off with one of the movies. This story makes the point that even Christians are sinners. But it made me reflect on my attitude in having people use our house for meetings and celebrations of one kind or another. It has crossed my mind before that when there are so many people in our house, it would be easy to take some videos or books or CDs or some knickknack on the shelf.
So what do I do about it? Do I tell people they cannot use our house because I am afraid someone might steal something? There is a possibility that the person who broke into our house a couple years ago and stole our computers, my camera equipment and some money was a person who had been in our home for a party several weeks earlier.
But I thought about what I would say to Jesus when I come into his kingdom. âWell Jesus, I would have allowed people to come into our home but I was afraid someone might steal something.â Jesus might respond by asking me if any of the things I had protected had been brought with me to heaven and he might even ask me if now that I was in heaven that I even cared about any of the possessions that had been left behind.
Thinking about the things we have from an eternal perspective allows us to be more free with what we have and welcomes Jesus into our lives as we serve him by serving his children.
We open our home to people because we offer our possessions to Jesus.
We share what we have with others because we offer our possessions to Jesus.
There might be some here today who would accuse me of being hypocritical at this point because I have refused an offer for assistance in the past. But offering possessions to Jesus does not mean we give up control of them. We are still meant to be stewards of the possessions God has given us and that means sometimes saying, âNoâ to people who ask for help. Offering our possessions to Jesus does not mean we put them in a basket in front of the house so anyone who wants to can have what he or she wants.
We make Jesus welcome in our lives when we offer up praise for what Jesus has done, by offering to him our possessions, and we make Jesus welcome in our lives by taking on his heart for the world.
As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it
This is an extraordinary part of the scene. A joyous, loud celebration with Jesus at the center and then as he comes around the bend and overlooks the city, he stops, looks and begins to weep.
Is the image of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem a powerful image for you? In John 14:9 Jesus said to Phillip, Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. Does God weep over the suffering that takes place in the world? Look to Jesus and see the answer to your question. God is not indifferent to our suffering. God is intimately involved in our suffering and he grieves for us.
What is it that made Jesus weep? Was it the poverty of people in the city? Was it the people who were being abused by people more powerful than they? These are the things we tend to think of when we think of suffering. And God does indeed grieve over this suffering. I do not mean to minimize or disregard this suffering.
But there is another suffering that we do not think of as immediately. Jesus wept because the people of Jerusalem had the opportunity to know the one who would bring them peace but they had closed themselves to him. And for this reason, the city would be destroyed.
They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of Godâs coming to you.
There is much suffering in this world but we need to remember to include in our catalog of suffering the people who are in the process of closing themselves to Jesus who alone is able to bring them the peace we all seek.
If you want to make Jesus welcome in your life, then grieve with him over the suffering in the world. When you find yourself being indifferent to the suffering that takes place, let that be an indicator that you need to draw closer to Jesus and take on his heart.
Indifference to suffering is a rejection of Jesus because it is a rejection of his heart for the world. When you read the papers and see the news and when you look out over Rabat or any other city, let your heart grieve with Jesus for the suffering that is taking place and welcome Jesus into your life.
Is Jesus welcome in your life? Do you need a deeper, more intimate relationship with Jesus that will allow praise to come from deep inside you? Is your faith more cultural than personal? If you would like to have a deeper, richer experience of Jesus, I encourage you to come up at the end of the sermon while we are singing and allow one of us to pray for you.
Is Jesus welcome in your life? Are you holding on to your possessions to tightly? Is it difficult for you to share what you have with others? Are you struggling to know when to share and when not to share? Do you feel guilt when someone asks for help and you say âNoâ? I encourage you to come forward so one of us can pray for you to receive a release of your hold on the things you have and to receive wisdom from God about when to share and when not to share.
Is Jesus welcome in your life? Is indifference to suffering more often your response to suffering than grieving? Or does the suffering of the world overwhelm you? I encourage you to come forward for prayer and one of us will pray for you to open your heart to Jesus who will sustain you as you take on his heart for the world.
Whenever I offer the opportunity to come forward for prayer, there are some who come asking for prayer for a successful journey as they pay a smuggler to sneak them into Spain. Donât come to me and ask me to pray for success in your illegal journey to Spain. I will pray that God will block your illegal attempt to get into Spain and I will pray that God will give you the courage to obey him and go back to your home country and serve him there and trust that he will help you find a legal way to go where he is calling you to go. Breaking the law is not how you make Jesus welcome in your life.
But if you want to make Jesus welcome in your life and seek his provision to go back to your home country, then come and let us pray for you that God will bless your efforts to be obedient.
Make Jesus welcome in your life.
