Palm Monday 2018: The Majesty of the King and the Fickleness of Men - Holy Week

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

So men and women, when you open God's word and you ask God for revelation, he will give it to you.

This boring, historical, theological tone suddenly comes alive and becomes a living, fiery document that is within our hearts and it lights the fire within us like no other book.

Today, Pastor Steve continues his series on the book of Revelation.

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We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We're now looking at the triumphal entry of Christ, sometimes called Palm Sunday.

So this is really the beginning of Passover when this began to take place.

And I'm actually going to take you back six days before, because I believe there's two triumphal entries.

One is the one we're worshiping, and we have palm branches to celebrate, but there was another one that occurred six days before.

And so we're going to look at this.

And what's going to happen, you guys, is this is the beginning of the end for Christ the King who came to die.

And so we celebrate.

But you know, some of you are familiar with what happened is that Jesus comes in, he comes down the Mount of Olives, He comes across the Kidron Valley, and that begins this week of tremendous teaching.

John really captures this in John 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, all teaching that he did during this time.

It's amazing.

Then on Thursday, they came together, the apostles, and we have the Lord's Supper.

Then on Friday, so Thursday night he's arrested, and then into Friday, he doesn't sleep at all.

And we come into Good Friday.

And what we're going to do on Good Friday, what Ryan was talking about is not that we, it's the first time we've done Good Friday because I've been doing Good Friday since Mountain Springs days.

So we've been doing Good Friday for about 15 years, actually.

One of the few churches that actually does it in the city.

And outside of Catholic and Orthodox and more mainline churches, but we're doing it a little bit different.

And so you'll have to come to see it because we're modeling Good Friday to actually have an impact on Easter Sunday.

So that's at 1 p.m.

We'll start right at 1 p.m.

and we'll do everything we can to be ending right at 2 p.m.

for you that need to get back to work.

Turn in your Bibles to John chapter 12.

John 12 · chapter mention

All of the Gospels write about this entry into Jerusalem.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and I've chosen John.

It's actually not on Sunday.

So the church historically has called it Palm Sunday, but it's actually Palm Monday.

And it's a very interesting, interesting situation because these people that will come out on the road coming down the Mount of Olives and across the Kidron Valley, well, four days later, many of them cry out for Jesus to be crucified.

And on Monday, they're proclaiming Christ as King, and on Friday, they're hailing Barabbas, a thief, to be released in the place of Jesus.

So if we were giving this a title, I might call it the Majesty of the King and the Fickleness of People.

The Majesty of the King and the Fickleness of people.

But I want to go back to the very beginning of John 12.

Let's start there.

So this is six days before the triumphal entry.

Then six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus, who had been dead, whom he had raised from the dead.

So if you go back, you guys, to the chapter before, chapter 11 is all about the death and resurrection of Lazarus.

So what we're reading here is a setup.

It's all a big setup by Jesus.

He is trying to create a demonstration that will lead to his death.

Nobody gets it.

But he knows what he's doing.

God the Father has given him revelation that at this particular Passover, remember, he's been through 33 other Passovers, but on this particular Passover, this is the one.

So he's going to do everything he can to stir up the place, to actually work against what the Sanhedrin wants to do because Jesus knows it's time for him to die for the sins of the world.

There they made him supper.

Martha served.

Of course, Martha served.

I had to write that in.

Martha's serving.

But Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with him.

So just a, you know, just a week or so ago, he's raised from the dead after being dead for four days.

The guy's raised up.

That's part of the plan, you guys.

That's part of what he's doing.

He's setting everything up in Jerusalem.

Then Mary took a pound of very costly oil, a spikenard, anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair.

And the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.

But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, who would betray him, said, Why was this fragrant oil not sold for 300 denari and given to the poor?

This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and had the money box.

And he used to take what was put in it.

But Jesus said, Let her alone.

She's kept this for the day of my burial.

Everything's getting set up, gang.

Everything's getting set up.

For the poor you will have with you always, but me you do not always have.

Now a great many of the Jews knew that he was there.

And they came not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.

So you understand what's going on here.

He planned this.

That's why he waited before he raised Lazarus from the dead, because he needed it to line up with the Passover because of the plan of God the Father for God the Son.

So many have asked throughout the centuries who killed Jesus.

And there's been great anti-Semitism and great persecution of the Jews.

Even one of the things that Hitler used in Germany in the 1930s against the Jews, they killed Jesus.

Others have said it was the Romans that killed Jesus.

You know who killed Jesus?

God the Father killed Jesus.

God the Father killed Jesus for the sins of the world.

Because he loves you that much.

He loves every one of you in this room so much that he allowed his son to die on a cross for your sins.

That if you'll receive him, if you'll give your heart to him, he will come in, forgive your sin, and give you a life like no other.

But the chief priest plotted to put Lazarus to death also.

So this is a really interesting group.

There's three different groups of people here in this story.

But here's the first introduction, at least in chapter 12, of the chief priests and the Pharisees and the scribes.

Because on account of him, many of the Jews went away and believed in Jesus.

So he's really getting everybody mad in the temple.

The next day, a great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees, and they went out to meet him, and they cried out, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the king of Israel.

Then Jesus, when he had found a young donkey, sat on it, as it is written, Fear not, daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming sitting on a donkey's colt.

His disciples did not understand these things at first.

You ever notice that about your life?

That sometimes you don't understand some of the most important things in your life when they first happen.

And then you look back and the Holy Spirit gives you revelation.

You go, oh, that's why that happened.

And that's what's happening here.

They won't understand a lot of this until later.

But when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written about him, that they had done these things to him.

I often think that this probably happened on the road to Emmaus.

You remember the road to Emmaus where Jesus is resurrected?

He comes and he walks with these disciples, and then it says, He opened the scriptures to them.

He opened the scriptures and he said, Our hearts, were they not burning?

So, men and women, when you open God's word and you ask God for revelation, he will give it to you.

This boring, historical, theological tome suddenly comes alive and becomes a living, fiery document that is within our hearts and it lights a fire within us like no other book.

It's the living word of God.

And so later they have revelation.

Therefore, the people who are with him when he called Lazarus out of his tomb and raised him from the dead bore witness.

For this reason, the people also met him because they heard that he had done this sign.

Verse 19, the Pharisees therefore said among themselves, You see that you're accomplishing nothing.

Look, the world has gone after him.

Now, in this story, there's two triumphal entries that I'm going to introduce.

And there's three different kinds of people that we're going to look at that are in stark contrast to each other in what happens in this triumphal entry.

Let's go back to the very beginning.

So in the beginning, Christ comes.

So Mary and Martha, if we combine this with all the passage in Scripture, they're at Simon, probably at Simon's house.

Simon was a leper who Jesus had healed, and they're having this banquet, this supper, they come together.

Then Mary takes a pound of spike nard.

Spike nard was an herb only found at that time in the Himalayas.

And so it was expensive, super expensive to not only manufacture, but also to get all the way to the Middle East.

It came on camel.

So she took a pound of this in an alabaster jar.

She broke it.

She worships Jesus.

And then you have this contrast.

Verse 5, why was this fragrant oil not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor by Judas?

Verse 9.

Now a great many of the Jews knew that he was there, and they came not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus.

So there's all these people that are curious about this resurrection all over the country.

From the south to the north, from the east to the west.

Jesus has been doing miracles and he's been healing the sick, and everywhere he goes, he cast out demons, and he now has raised a man from the dead after being dead for four days.

So not, I mean, you can't say, okay, well, you know, they got it wrong when they felt the pulse here, but they didn't feel the pulse here.

He wasn't really dead.

This is four days to the point where he's all wrapped up.

And if you recall, Martha goes, we can't bring him out of the tomb.

It'll stink.

It's gonna stink, you know.

But this crowd goes, and Jesus is demonstrating his power in a way that he's done throughout, but now it's culminating in Jerusalem because he knows it's his time to die.

And now we come to Monday.

Look at verse 12.

So we come, a few days have gone by.

It's now Monday, the next day, a great multitude that had come to the feast when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.

Incredible.

So this is interesting, men and women, how John captures this why I've chosen John chapter 12, because this is the culmination, and this is a dramatic shift in the ministry of Jesus.

John 12 · chapter mention

Back in chapter 6, he had just created food for maybe 20,000 plus people, verse 15, and perceiving that they were intending to come and make him king, that's what it says in John chapter 6, he takes off and goes to the hills, and they can't find him.

John 6 · chapter mention

Then in chapter 8, Jesus goes into the temple treasure, he begins to teach there.

In verse 20 says, No one sees them because his hour had not yet come.

But then in verse 59 it says, They picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

So it's really crazy what's happening.

Jesus goes places, he does miracles, everybody gets fired up.

They want to make him a king, he disappears.

Then he goes, he casts out some demons, he heals some sick, everybody gets fired up, he disappears again.

Then he gets everybody mad, they get ready to stone him, but it's not the right time, and he kind of he just kind of gets through and walks away.

So some of it's divine work of the spirit, some of its human ingenuity that he just uh he uses and he gets away.

But now it's coming together, church.

He's creating a demonstration, and he begins to fulfill prophecy, and he begins to set himself up for what we will call Easter, the resurrection day, setting it all up.

Verse 13.

They took branches of palm trees, and they went out to meet him and they cried out from Psalm.

This is from Psalm 118.

Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the king of Israel.

Hosanna! Hosanna means save us, deliver us, save us now.

And they pick up these palms, which since Old Testament times, it always represented a king.

They represented kingly power.

You see, a palm is interesting because it grows in the desert.

And so there's a beauty to it because it's green in the desert.

There's something powerful about it because it grows in the desert.

And so they they threw down the palm leaves, and they threw it down, and some of those that were historical, some of those who understood the times, was, oh, this is what they did with Judas Maccabees 100 years before.

Judas Maccabees had come into Israel, and he had been hailed as the Messiah and hailed as the king because he was a military deliverer, and he wasn't that man.

But you see this crowd coming together.

Let me give you three people.

I see three groups of people here.

First, this crowd, this is the fickle crowd.

I'm gonna call them the fickle and the faint.

They're the ones who go to see the signs and wonders.

They follow Jesus for the healing.

They want the healing, they want the multiplication, they want to see the deliverance, and they're with him on Monday.

They're all in on Monday.

They walk the aisle on Sunday.

They go to the Billy Graham Crusade.

I guess it's the Franklin Graham Crusade, the Louis Palau Crusade.

I mean, if you counted up the numbers of how many people have gotten saved in this country in the last 75 years from all the evangelists, it's like five times our entire population.

Everybody's always getting saved.

And then we lead the world in pornography.

And we lead the world in sex trafficking.

And we lead the world in crime and murder.

Because people are fickle.

And so when it's all great, and you can get your you can get your dead raised and you can get your healing, or you can make a lot of money being a Jesus follower.

They're there, it hasn't changed.

Right?

It's still true today.

Most American Christians are fickle and faint.

It's like they come on Sunday.

And we're their best, except at our church.

Some of you got ties on, that's awesome.

That's great.

But come Friday, when the chips are down, or you're at work and you're around the water cool and everybody's telling dirty jokes.

Or when that cute secretary's making her move on you.

Nobody knows you're a believer.

And the ring kind of comes off.

Put it in your pocket.

When we're in Vegas, what happens there stays there, right?

Fickle.

People are fickle.

But then we also see this other group.

And these are the foes of Jesus.

There's a fickle, and there's the fierce foes of Jesus.

Look back at chapter 11.

Look at 1148.

These guys are already got, they've got a strategy, man.

They are not dumb.

And they know that everybody's hearing about Lazarus.

Jesus is the rock star in Jerusalem.

Look at verse 48.

This is after Lazar's been raised from the dead.

And they say to each other, these are the Pharisees and the chief priests coming together with the counsel of the Sanhedrin.

If we let him alone like this, everyone will believe in him.

And the Romans will come and take away our place and our nation.

People hate it when Jesus gets proclaimed because they lose their place.

People might start believing in him.

We gotta shut this thing down.

Look at verse 53.

From that day forward, they plotted to put him to death.

Folks, that's growing in our country.

That's growing all over the world.

I mean, we have more martyrs for the church in the 20th and 21st century than all the other centuries put together.

To me, that's probably one of the greatest prophetic signs of the coming of the Lord, is that Satan is really scared.

He's frightened because everybody does believe.

When the gospel, church, when the gospel is preached as a wholehearted message, not this fragmented stuff that goes with it that's a little of this and a little of that, but I'm talking about from the word of the word, the two edged sword, by spirit filled men and women, missionaries, preachers, folks out there in their jobs, sharing Christ in a loving, kind, gentle, but bold way.

Tons of people get saved.

And Satan hates that.

And this is a microcosm of what was happening in the triumphal entry.

The Pharisees are scared.

They're fearful.

Isn't it great to break the power of fear in your life?

Because when you break the power of fear in your life, you make everybody fearful.

I mean, I mean, seriously, when you become a dynamic, vibrant, winsome witness for Christ, I'm not talking about some holy roller sitting on some big platform and preaching it, people, or taking some Bible like this to work, and then boom, laid it on your desk.

So everybody can see the holy Bible.

But you live it.

You treat people with integrity.

You love people, you're kind to people, you're there for them.

When that begins to happen in our lives, what are you doing?

Tea with honey?

You guys are gonna have to do a lot of editing on this tape.

I can tell you that right now.

Oh, that's great.

I'm married up, gang.

I'm married up.

No doubt about it.

But here's what I'm saying, gang is that they're fear, there's a group that become fierce and fearful when you become wholehearted.

When you become spirit-filled, when you start being filled with the spirit and all that you do, and you really start to see the adventure of the Christian life, and you take it to work with you, and you take it into your family and your marriage, other people are not going to like you.

Because you you create fear in them because you're not fearful of them anymore.

And and Satan doesn't like that, and so foes.

But look, look, you guys, look at verse three.

Oh man.

Then Mary took a pound of very costly oil of spike and heart, anointed the feet of Jesus, wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of this beautiful oil.

Third type of person is a friend of Jesus.

There's the fickle, there's the fierce foe, and there's a friend.

This is the first triumphal entry.

This is the first one.

We always study the second one, but the first one is right here.

And she comes and she says, Welcome to my home.

My home is your home.

And she, by the unction of the Holy Spirit and by the revelation of God, she knows what's going on.

Somehow, Mary knows something and she worships him.

She's a friend.

And Lazarus is a friend.

And Martha, who's the servant of the Lord, is his friend.

I want to be a friend of Jesus.

How about you?

I want to be a friend of Jesus.

And so they're all coming together, gang, in verses 12 and 13 and 14 and 15.

And so everybody's coming together.

So these three waves, you know, these three rivers are coming together.

There's the foes, there's the fickle, and there's the friends.

And they're waving their palm branches and they're coming before him.

And I've been there.

Some of you have been there.

How many of you ever been to the Mount of Olives?

Anyone in here?

Okay, very few of you, but the Mount of Olives, you go to the Mount of Olives and you can see, you can see the eastern gate.

And you can see, you would have seen the Temple Mount there and the Kidron Valley below.

That's what he's coming down.

He's coming down these switchbacks that go down.

You can go there today.

You can be on the road.

You go right past the Garden of Gethsemane.

How do you think Jesus felt?

He's coming down, and just to his right, there's the Garden of Gethsemane, and he knows in just a few days he's going to be there crying out to his Father.

So they're coming down.

And guess what, guys?

There's a river that runs through the Kidron Valley.

It's not a river, it's really like a creek.

There's a creek running through the Kidron Valley.

And we don't know this for sure, but I think it ran red that day.

It was running red because they're slaying all the lambs at the Passover.

One extant writer said at one particular Passover, not this one, but at just one regular Passover, he wrote down, they slew 256,500 lambs during the Passover week.

Quarter of a million.

If you realize that you took a lamb and you sacrificed the lamb for a family, that's 10 to 1.

That means there were 2.5, potentially, 2.5 million people in Jerusalem at that time.

It is a crushing crowd.

It is a crushing crowd coming down those switchbacks out of the Mount of Olives, and that creek is running red.

Prophetic.

He probably crossed over that on that donkey.

And he's on a donkey.

He's not on a horse.

And he's not coming as a conqueror, he's coming as a servant king.

For all of you that are in leadership, you lead men.

Any of you who lead women, any of you that are in leadership in your family, your job, whatever, this is the picture of leadership.

Coming on a donkey, riding in humility, caring about his people, loving his family, ready to die.

And he comes, and the people proclaim him, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Now, stop right there.

If you have your Old Testament, if you have that, turn to Psalm 118, and I want to show you something.

Psalm 118 is one of the great psalms during the Passover that the Jews proclaim.

Not even in many cases knowing what they're proclaiming, but at the end of the halel at the Passover, they read, listen, Psalm 118.26.

Psalm 118.26.

I want you to look at that with me.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

So that's what everybody is screaming.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

But look at the next part that's left out.

It's left out.

We have blessed you from the house of the Lord.

We have blessed you from the house of the Lord.

Why is that significant?

It's significant, church, because in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the very first thing Jesus does is he dismounts from the donkey when he crosses over.

He goes into the temple of the Lord.

He looks it over, he leaves.

He comes back the next day and he cleans house.

He comes and he kicks out what he calls the den of robbers.

He comes in, he kicks people out who are buying and selling, and he says, This is the house of the Lord, and it should be called a house of prayer.

Because he goes to the court of the Gentiles, and the court of the Gentiles was an opening for those of all nations to come and pray and seek the Lord right there.

And what they were doing was not only buying and selling there, but it was a shortcut to the Mount of Olives.

It was a shortcut.

And so they would cut through there instead of going around the temple, this holy ground, they would cut through because they didn't care about the Gentiles.

And so they come through that area, go down there close to the eastern gate, come down the Kidron Valley and go up.

It was a shortcut.

And Jesus goes there in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

And he goes, and so first thing he does is he goes in, he cleans the house.

Because that was a prophecy that he was going to birth a new kind of house of God, and that would be the church.

A little over 40 days later, the Holy Spirit would fall upon a group of men and women, about 120 of them, up in an upper room, and the Holy Spirit would fall, and we, church, are the results of their evangelization of the world.

God's Spirit moving because his church would become a house of prayer.

So three kinds of people, two kinds of entries.

The fickle and the faint, the fierce and the fearful, and the friends of Jesus.

So what is a friend of Jesus?

What is a friend of Jesus?

I think we see something in verses three and four that's pretty magnificent.

It's pretty qualitative in how it speaks to us of being a whole-hearted disciple.

Let's look at verse 3 again.

Mary took a pound of very costly olive spikenard, anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of God.

Now, first of all, a friend of Jesus, a worshiper of Jesus.

It's wholehearted worship.

It's coming here today to worship.

Church, it's taking that home with you.

We're going to do a marriage conference in the fall.

And some of the content that we covered out in Nebraska, we're going to cover here.

We haven't done a marriage conference at the road before.

We're going to do it here.

And almost all of you in this room that are married are going to be here, and you that aren't married should come.

Because you can see who you should marry.

They might even be there.

You might meet them at the marriage conference.

We should get married.

And we'll go, yes.

Awesome.

But I have this thing that I'm not going to give it away, but I call it the four-in-one marriage challenge.

The four-in-one marriage challenge.

I'll just give you one.

I'm not going to TV three.

I'll give you one.

And that is learn to worship with your spouse one song a day.

Praise the Lord one song a day.

Worship him with one song a day.

So a friend of Jesus is a worshiper of Jesus.

A worshiper of Jesus.

Secondly, look at the verse before.

They made him a supper.

Secondly, a friend of Jesus invites Jesus into everything in our life.

You see, for most American Christians, and for many Christians around the world, Jesus is kind of a religion.

Jesus is kind of a membership in a church.

But for those who want to be a friend of Jesus, not just an admirer of Jesus, maybe a better way to say it, if you want to be a friend of Jesus and not just a fan.

Okay, fans are fickle.

Friends are loyal.

So if we want to move from fanhood to friendship, take him home today.

Take him to work tomorrow.

Bring Jesus into everything you do.

And then thirdly and lastly, he was Spikenard from the Himalayas.

In modern day computations, it was between sixty and seventy-five thousand dollars.

She spilled out probably her dowry before Jesus in one extravagant, excited, beautiful, overwhelming, whole-hearted act of worship.

She broke the alabaster, and the other Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the other synoptic gospels say, from head to toe, from head to toe, she poured it all over him.

That's extravagant, man.

That's crazy.

That's what you do when you're madly in love.

Anybody been madly in love before?

You do weird stuff, man.

I see guys who stink.

I mean, they need to use deodorant.

They really smell bad.

And then they meet somebody, and suddenly they start using deodorant.

It's the weirdest thing, man.

And they wear these really nasty clothes and it looks really bad.

And suddenly you say, whoa, dude, you clean up nice.

What's going on?

You find, oh, okay, you're hoping she'll be there, you know.

And then you ladies, you know, the hair's just a little bit different.

I mean, I just, it's weird, man.

It's like you can't get that guy to go 15 minutes cleaning his room.

And suddenly he's spending three hours getting ready for a date.

That's weird.

Because you start when you're madly in love, you do weird stuff.

And so Mary loves the Lord and she's extravagant, and she gives up her dowry.

She gives up everything, maybe all that she had, and she worships him.

Friends of Jesus do extravagant things for Jesus.

And so this is the triumphal entry.

Let Jesus in today.

Become a friend of Jesus.

If you've just been a fan, if you've just been a fickle person, maybe some of you here are foes of Jesus.

I mean, we know what happened on the view in relation to Vice President Pence and that whole thing, just being mocked for his Christian faith.

There's a lot of foes out there.

And many of us are fans, but we've never become friends.

Become a friend of Jesus.

Give your heart completely, wholeheartedly to him today.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

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Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.