The Lion is the Lamb, The Lamb is the Lion (Palm Sunday)

Pastor Josh: Hey guys, how are we?

Good to see all of you here this evening.

I just want to thank every single one of you for being here on

your Sunday night on Palm Sunday.

Thank you.

Hallelujah.

this Palm Sunday, I'm calling this, uh, sermon the Lion Lamb.

The lamb lion.

And, uh, hopefully that's, understandable.

As we get into this, I wanna read, if you would turn with me to John chapter 12.

John 12 · chapter mention

We're gonna read the triumphal entry in John's gospel.

It's brief, but it's succinct and full of meaning.

John chapter 12, verse 12 to 19.

John 12:12–19

Verse 12, the next day, the large crowd that had come to the feast heard

that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.

So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out Hosanna.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel.

And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it just, it is written

fear, not daughter of Zion.

Behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's cult.

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 from

the tomb and raised him from the dead, continued to bear witness.

The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they had

heard that he had done this sign.

So the Pharisee 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.

I found myself last week not necessarily doom scrolling.

'cause doom scrolling is more about the short little videos you watch.

I'm just doom walking because I watch longer, new segments and from

different sources and trying to get a wide view of takes on what's going

on in our present political climate.

And I was sitting there on lunch listening to a story and just heartbroken

over the state of things, and I had this thing that came out of me

After I said it, I kind of wondered at it and wondered where it came

from, but here's the thought I had.

I just simply thought on my lunch, sitting in the van, I wish David Palmer were

president now that if you're cool and awesome, you get the reference right away.

For those of you who aren't cool and awesome, David Palmer was the

fictional president in the long running show, 24 with Keith or

Sutherland playing Jack Bauer.

He was a good president.

He was the kind of president you wanted.

He was a man of character.

Uh, you know, he, stuck to his guns and always did what was right, no matter the

price he paid eventually losing his life.

Spoiler alert, or I think of Aragon and the Lord of the Rings, courageous,

fearsome, valiant at the black gate in the darkest moment, what

Token coined the you catastrophe.

That moment in time where things seem the most hopeless, then

all of a sudden there's a churn.

He by himself, charges the black gate and then the whole

army follows after him to buy.

Frodo and Sam a little more time, and there's this king in Aragon.

There's this, this king you're drawn to.

There's this thing in him that you're like, yeah, I would like as king

culminating in one of the best scenes in any movie ever where following his

coronation, Aragon refuses the bow of the hobbits as they pay homage to

him and that he's newly crowned king.

And he says, my friends, you bow to no one.

And then bows to them and all of Gondor follows with him But we see

even in the best of men and women, twisted by power and money and lust.

There was this guy that we wanted to get, he had written this book called

The Heavenly Man, and it was just all the suffering he went through.

He was tortured for years and years, and the lessons he learned from

it and the things he wrote were so beautiful and other worldly.

Finally at the church I was at years and years ago, we got 'em to come speak.

But what showed up before he got there was a writer telling us that

he needed a certain kind of bottled water at a certain kind of temperature.

And just the, the things were ridiculous.

And after that, you just didn't pick up and read the book.

The same way famous pastors who have had tremendous success in the kingdom leading

thousands to the Lord justifying straight evil, one famous apologist, justifying

his gross infidelity, saying, because I have done so much for the kingdom, God

allows me to sleep with as many women as I want all coming out after his death.

The best we see is an anorexic mixture of the qualities we long for in a leader.

in a king.

The record of actual kings, when you look at it squarely, is not only abysmal,

it's a kind of historical horror show.

No one who has really read history in the history of rulers or even a paragraph

about Henry VII or Ivan the terrible could persist in the delusion that kingship

is a noble enterprise for the long term.

Even in the best cases, kings fail At best, kings turn to gluttons,

neglect and or tyrannical.

At worst, they wither and splendor until they resemble waxing icons, living

death mask, enthroned to over decay.

The 20th century's revolutions in Dethronement seem to end monarchy.

We gotta get rid of this, yet we immediately rebuilt in tabloid

weddings, fairytales, and collective daydreams, the whole enterprise.

Where did we, the educated and the practical?

I say with quotes, the children of Darwin and Freud get the idea of a true king.

What primordial event, what archetypal need, keeps us forging

and reforging that impossible icon.

Real kings were never like that, never wise never, just never gentle, never

truly brave, not in the way we wish, not in the way we imagine when we

describe the ideal prince, even David, A man after God's own heart, the best

king Israel ever had failed and failed.

Yet the moment the last sword clatters to the floor and the last crown is melted

down, we find ourselves possessed by images of the king, as he should have been

the one who rules injustice and mercy.

The one whose word is true as his heart is pure.

The one who suffers with his people and who is by some

miracle also unbreakably strong.

We hold the absence of the true king in our bones, like a genetic memory,

and we cannot bear to let it go.

If you know the real war heroes, you realize quickly that a lot of them,

after the parades and the medals can't even live in civilized society.

They're ruined for bureaucracy, for cocktail parties, for the slow

motion decency of domestic life.

They're too much for us, too raw, too honest, too seared by what they've seen.

Sometimes they're an embarrassment, sometimes a threat.

The world wants its heroes, but outta distance and preferably dead.

And you also realize that the sophisticated, the scholarly type, the

one who is meek in the way of the sage or the monk or the gentle queen mother, is

so often the opposite of decisive action.

The sweet ones are full of hesitation or self-doubt.

They're good company.

But we would not follow them into the battle or trust them to

defend the city walls at night.

I know something about that.

The meek and the brave, the lamb and the lion are at war in us, and

every compromise is a kind of defeat.

We want the king who is both.

I have noticed that in every mythology, every literature, every cycle of

stories, there is a king to come.

A king hiding a king who will one day rise and set things right.

The Greeks had their golden age lofts, but always hinted at in the Son of

Zeus or the wise king of the Gods.

The Arthurian legends are a compendium of failed kings.

Each one promising something the last could never deliver.

It is as if humanity is haunted by the ghost of a king who never really

lived, but whose shape is pressed into every hunger and longing Every

picture of the world made new.

I've noticed too that we transpose the empty place of the king into

every other institution that fails us.

We look for it in governments, holy moly, in relationships, in teachers and artists,

in revolutionaries, in mentors and counselors, we keep waiting for someone

to show the impossible combination.

The might to sweep the world clean of its filth and the gentleness to cradle the

broken in the arms softer than a mother's.

When the leaders fail us, we turn them into monsters so we can keep

our king uncorrupted in the realm of fantasy, we will not surrender the

shape of the ideal, even if it means damning every attempt to reach it In

real life, I tried like everyone to be a little king in my own domain.

If the king's not out there, maybe he's here to rule my little patch

of life with justice or failing that with some kind of competence.

I failed, of course, and found no comfort in the failures of others.

There were times I tried to become a subject instead, a servant of some

worthy cause or a person or even a worthy church to be a part of.

But here too, I found the absence.

None of the Lords I serve could meet the minimum requirements of the ideal.

They would become petty or selfish, or just tired.

They broke my heart with their ordinariness.

I think of the setting where a passage takes place.

A Roman occupied Jerusalem.

Rome was the essential illustration of what it looked

like from the outside of man.

Things are going pretty smooth here, but for Rome, with all its pate's duty

or gravitas, seriousness, or the Pax Romana, peace through strength gave

the world only Caesars iron willed, ruthless and statecraft, addicted

to spectacle, capable of mercy.

Only when it enhanced the state, Augustus ruled as a God, but not as a servant.

Marcus Aurelius wrote of duty.

But not of self emptying compassion.

The Roman ideal was the strong man, the general, the law giver,

power, and tenderness did not mix.

The idea would have seemed foolish, even contemptible to them.

But John, the Apostle John, is exiled and aged, sees the throne of the universe and

weeps because nobody in heaven on earth or under the earth can open the scroll.

No one is strong enough, no unworthy enough.

But then the elder speaks in Revelation five, five.

We've not behold.

The lion of the tribe of Judah is strong.

To open the book and break the seven seals, John lit his head braced

for the roaring lion instead in the place of the lion, as if the

universe had played a trick, there stands a lamb fresh from slaughter.

Wounds still open, blood still wet.

The vision staggers him.

A lion who is a lamb.

A lamb who is a lion.

John had been told of power.

He beheld a paradox.

Who is this?

What kind of king is this?

Centuries before us, Jonathan Edwards read this passage and marveled at it.

He called attention to what he described as a conjunction of such

really diverse excellencies as otherwise would've seemed to us utterly

incompatible in the same subject.

In other words, Jesus Christ embodies the union of paradoxes so deep and wide.

Our culture has spent thousands of years failing to imagine it.

Every story we tell about kings, every myth, every legend,

every epic, every hero's tale.

The king is either conquer or martyr.

Never.

Both.

The king is either a devourer of hearts or a gentle shepherd.

Never.

Both.

We invent gods of war, gods of compassion, but never one who's both at the same time,

in the same body, in the same single life.

One of the science fiction, uh, franchises that is making a huge comeback is Dune.

And Dune three is releasing, and the title of the book for the

third dune is called Dune Messiah.

And this Paul eTrades, uh, the Maade, he is this Messianic figure.

But what's fascinating about this story is spoiler alert, he's the villain.

He's the villain because this power, as people look to him as the

Messiah, is this Messianic figure.

It corrupts him.

He's the bad guy.

Only once in a great while in fiction do we get glimpses of this greatness, Aragon.

But even he doubted himself or David Palmer, who is also deeply flawed.

where then did this wild and possible, ideal originate?

It erupted into the world as something absolutely new as a singularity,

as the shattering of the old order of what power and glory meant.

The conviction of the first Christians was simply this.

The only reason we ever have the concept of the Lord who is servant,

the king who dies for slaves, the lion who is also a lamb, is because

such a person actually exists.

Christians didn't invent the ideal, the ideal invented Christians.

No, mine could have projected it.

No religion could have made up because I ran so calendar to every ancient modern.

Instinct of the human heart.

It became thinkable only after it happened.

Why else do you think we're obsessed with superhero movies, with fantasy

novels, with tales of galactic rebels, and last stands in tragic destinies.

We want a savior who is both human and other worldly who can crush evil, but

never lose his soul in the process, who is willing to die for his friends and

yet never in the in be defeated by death.

We want Gandalf, but Gandalf must also be Frodo.

We want Aslan, but Aslan must also be the child he loves.

We want both the divine rescuer and the gentle friend, and no matter how many

times we split them, we keep looking for someone who can f them at last.

In Jesus and only in Jesus, the impossible fusion is fact, not just a

rumor, not two dimensional story, but a living, breathing, bleeding event.

In his every act, the paradox is alive.

He calms the storm, but he weeps over the city.

He calls out the hypocrites, but he lives beggars and

sitters and children's to side.

He suffers fools, but he also demolishes their lives.

He's so gentle.

You could mistake him for weak.

It's so relentless.

You can make him for being severe.

He brings a sword, but he heals with his own wounds.

The lion is the lamb and the lamb is the lion.

So I wanna look very simply.

This simple outline is the lamb, the lion in two takeaways, the

lamb, John 12 verse 12 to 19.

John 12:12–19

Verse 12, the next day, the large crowd that had come to the feast heard

that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.

There's an interesting parallel, as Jesus has just been called the Son of

David and Matthew's account by the two blind beggars, and it was the one of

the first times that Jesus didn't tell them to be quiet after he healed them.

He's like, all right, it's out in the open.

Let's get the show on the road.

Let's do this.

He has set his face toward Jerusalem.

He's going to his death.

He's gonna stir the pot.

and the parallel In two Samuel, uh, 1514 to 23, David fled Jerusalem to

escape his son Absalom, and he left the city and crossed the Ke Valley

going up the scent of the Mount of Olives to get away to save his life.

But here's the son of David.

And in Luke 2337 it says, as he was drawing near already on the way down

the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and

praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that he had seen.

The son of David, as he was just called by the two blind men, is on

his way into Jerusalem in the same way that David ran to save his own life.

And here the true son of David is coming in to give his life.

Judea is under the control of the Romans.

They built this thing called the Antonio Fortress and 63 BC

built just north of the temple.

One of the towers of the fortress was higher than the temple

courts and looked down into it to police what was going on there.

A constant reminder of the Roman occupation.

The Jews at this time were not independent, though they had

some religious independence.

They were ultimately under the boot of an oppressor, and so all that is

in their mind is this is happening.

Verse 13 says, so they took branches of palm trees and went

out to meet him crying Hosanna.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel.

What's fascinating is these palm branches are incredibly

significant on a surface level.

And then later we'll look on a deeper level why.

In the Maccabean Rebellion.

We don't have that part in our Bibles because we're not Catholics,

but it's got good history.

In second century BC there's a priest by the name of Matthias and he has four sons,

and he's leading a war He leads it, then his sons take it up, and a battle, and it

leads to about a hundred years of freedom and independence from the occupying

armies and the rulers of the day.

And one 40 bc one of these four brothers by the name of Simon, defeated the enemy.

And that's in first Maccabees 13 when Simon entered Jerusalem after

the great enemy had been crushed and removed from Israel's, the Jews entered

it with praise and palm branches.

And so from that time, palm branches start to become a symbol for national

independence and overthrowing the oppressors that had ruled them.

In fact, jump ahead and fast forward a few decades from where Jesus is at

right now, the great Jewish revolt from about 66 AD to 70 AD that obliterated

the city of Jerusalem and killed men, women, and children, and everybody in it.

It's the one thing, as Jesus is warning as he's weeping over the

city, man, you guys have missed it.

But what's interesting is in that time, because they were surrounded and they

was barricaded, they started to mint their own coin and they mint in these

coins that were a fraction of a shekel that they used to buy and sell within

the city as the city was surrounded and as they were striving for independence.

And what was imprinted on the coin was the symbol of palm branches.

It was their idea.

We're gonna rebel, we're gonna win.

We're gonna hold that.

We're gonna overthrow the oppressor, like waving its national flag.

So Jesus is writing into a city full of people, and many of these people would be

fired up for independence because rumors are getting around the Messiahs here.

He just healed the, he just raised the dead.

In fact, we're told from our passage that that's why people are showing up.

That's why they're waving palm branches because they're like, oh, it's go time.

It's go time now.

What's fascinating too, so there's this desire to break free

from this, uh, uh, domination.

It's interesting too, is biblical scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crosson

in their book the last week point out.

The time that this happens, two processions are going on that day.

According to history.

Jesus is coming in on a donkey, and this would be the time that Pontius Pilate

on the other side of the city rides in.

And Pilate would come with his army and ride in on his wharf horse

full of pomp and circumstance.

And you've got this contrast, these two kingdoms that are gonna collide, right?

And then you have verse 14 and si uh, 14 and 15 of our texts.

And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it.

Just, it is written fear, not daughter of Zion.

Behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's cult.

As we look at John's gospel, it's there plain as day.

On the one hand, you have this king Jesus writing in Jerusalem in the

way that would be farcical if it weren't so loaded with meaning.

He chooses of all things a baby donkey.

This is the animal selected for a purpose.

This is not what the world expects from a king and certainly not the king.

In the lore and the legend of the people, centuries of memory had bred

an expectation that when the S finally arrived, he would be a champion.

Not just a liberator, but a majestic imperial figure.

A man on a horse, a war horse.

The hooves with thunder.

The banners would snap, the city would tremble, wake up.

The old stories, David Solomon, the judges, the Maccabees, and

you see it there every time, might empower the king as conquer.

There's a reason the Romans themselves despising and yet admiring the

Jews in equal measure, always anticipated a liter of that mold.

That's why they were quick to put down rebellions.

So what is this?

What would it have meant in a time like that to see a grown man, a self-proclaimed

king, riding into the heart of Jerusalem on the back of a juvenile donkey?

The optics are Absurd.

The animal's not only weak, it's unbroken.

The gospel writers do not miss a chance to underscore this fact.

That's how people would've seen it.

Ridiculous.

It's not merely spectacle.

Jesus is making a point with surgical precision.

It is a joke.

Yes, but the joke is on the world's understanding of power.

Why does he do this?

Why does he make such a deliberate and pointed show of humility?

Because it's not only a performance, it's a fulfillment.

The prophet Zacharia had said a hundred years before, and it's

so insane that they missed this.

Rejoice greatly.

Oh, daughters of Zion.

Shout aloud.

Oh, daughter of Jerusalem.

This is Zacharia nine, nine to 10.

Behold, your king is coming to you righteous and having salvation is

he humble and mounted on a donkey, on a cult, the full of a donkey.

And there's another verse right after that, the very next verse, I

will cut off the chariot of Ephraim.

That's Israel and the warhorse from Jerusalem.

And the battle bow shall be cut off and he shall seek peace to the nations.

His rule shall be from sea to sea and from river to river to the

ends of the earth, and they miss the whole point of his coming.

They want the champion.

They want the swords, they want the violence.

They want the overthrow.

That's why in Luke 1941 to 42, and when he drew near and saw the city,

he wept over it saying, would that you even, you had known on this day

the things that make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes.

It was right there.

He's coming in to make a piece in the most unusual, upside down way.

The sighted passage in John is almost a paraphrase, but the original

is much thicker with meaning.

Rabbis and scribes have puzzled this for generations.

How could the Messiah deliver of Israel ride a donkey?

Wasn't that beneath him?

Wouldn't a king, especially God's king, make a more splendid entrance?

Chariots, at least.

How can omnipotence be yoked to such triviality as if the coming

of the king is a contradiction?

In terms the Messiah, the one that ancients longed for?

The one to restore the fortunes of the nation is a peculiar

figure on a peasant beast.

That's what they're witnessing and the world expects a conquer.

What it gets is a contradiction, but this isn't just a mockery of

power, it's a revision of power.

Jesus is not simply being humble for show.

He's recasting the very possibility of sovereignty.

In his choice of Mount, he's making an announcement about the

kind of king he is and the kind of kingdom he intends to inaugurate.

He's not coming to reinforce the logic of the world.

He's coming to upend it.

The people, of course, are swept up in the spectacle.

They cut down branches, they lay their cloaks on the road, and

an ancient sign of deference for royalty, peaceful, festive, wild.

They shout hosan as a word that means save us now a desperate cry

that is equal parts hope and demand.

The city is in ferment, but the man at the center of it all, the man

writing the donkey is not what they are expecting, and that is precisely the

point he's saying without saying that the real enemy is not the Roman empire.

The real enemy is not the political order nor the religious establishment, nor even

the iron logic of history that crushes the poor in the weak at every turn.

Those are the symptoms.

Not the disease.

The disease is sin and death itself and the fear that undergirds it.

And the only cure for the disease is a king who appears to have no

defense, who seems not to resist, who accepts humiliation and even death.

In other words, a king who triumphs by losing.

This is not what anyone is looking for in a savior.

And the old story, salvation is wr by strength, by, uh,

being a hero, by the sword.

Even the most pious, the ones who spent their lives pouring over the

sacred text could not imagine that the messiah and weakness could ever

belong in the same sentence, the king is supposed to be a lion, not a lamb.

He's supposed to conquer, not submit, but in this moment, the

definition of victory is rewritten.

If all the violence of history is being funneled into this one absurd spectacle,

A would be king writing to his death on a borrowed beast surrounded by a crowd

that has no idea what is about to happen.

The crowd wants a revolution.

Jesus offers sacrifice.

The crowd wants justice.

Jesus offers mercy.

The crowd wants to be freed from their oppressors.

Jesus wants to free them from themselves, from the logic of violence

and retaliation that has ruled the world since the very beginning.

None of this makes sense if you're looking for a hero.

All of it makes sense though.

If you're looking for a redeemer.

When he says in Matthew 2028, I have not come to be served, but to serve

and give my life as a ransom for many.

He's not uttering a metaphor.

He's outlining a strategy.

He's declaring war on the entire system of power and dominance that has ever existed.

The miracle is that he does it by refusing the very tools the

world uses to defend itself.

He allows himself to be destroyed knowing that by only by going

through death, can he defeat it.

This is not an abdication of strength.

It's a transfiguration of it.

What we long for after all is never just a king.

It's never just a strong man or a philosopher prince or a CEO in the clouds.

What we long for is a king who is incorruptible, who cannot be bought, who

cannot be seduced by his own greatness, who does not use power as a narcotic,

but as a medicine for the world.

A king whose joy is in the restoration of the battered image of his subjects.

And it is here the man on the donkey's colt, who is riding not to win, but

to lose in the service of the lost.

He is the true king because he does not spare himself.

He is the true king because he wants to share his glory.

He is the lion who is a lamb.

It is such a strange and almost offensive aversion

that at first it's almost like what?

In fact, some of the crowds don't believe it.

They saw the palm parade and imagined a nationalist revolution, and if they had

stuck around, they've seen him, wear a ragged purple robe and a thorny crown.

And the word king nailed above his head, hung out to dry as a joke.

Jesus feeding the crowds and the preaching the sermon about, you

know, they all wanna follow around 'cause he's the free meal ticket.

Then he preaches the sermon that you know, you don't do it.

Megachurches thousands are following him, right?

And he preaches the sermon about, you got to eat my flesh and drink my blood.

He's like, I am the bread of life, you guys.

You're gonna be hungry.

You eat that bread again.

But if you eat me you will truly be satisfied.

And what's fascinating is that this group ends up leaving to where it's just the 12.

And Jesus says, do you go as well?

In fact, everybody's scared of 6, 6, 6 in John 6 66.

This is what scares me.

After this, many of his disciples turn back and no longer walk with him.

And so he says, do you leave too?

Peter says.

Where else do we go?

You alone have the words of eternal life.

You are the bread.

We've tasted

crazy.

The crowd did not want that kinda king.

They wanted a Caesar and what they got was a scapegoat.

They wanted a revolution, and they got a requiem.

They wanted a parade and got a processional to a skull shaped hill.

If we are honest, at times, in our most desperate moments, neither do we.

We want the strong and the sweet, but we want them in alteration.

Never in the same person, never at the same time.

We want the lion.

When our enemies press us, when they betray us.

When they've stabbed us in the back.

Go, Lord, break the teeth in his mouth or whatever.

Come on.

Whoever touches me, touches the apple of your eye.

Sick him, right?

But we want the lamb when our own consciences process.

Never, both except in fairytales where they're safe.

But this isn't a fairytale.

It is an answer to the ache that grows in every generation.

The ache for someone to heal the split in the world without splitting us in two.

In the process.

Jesus does not come to reign over the world as it is.

He comes to remake it, not by smashing the existing order, but by

letting the existing order smash him.

Unless the green wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone.

But if it dies, man, it bears much fruit.

And then the resurrection and the recreation, remember, it's not just

fall, right and redemption, it's creation, fall messed up redemption.

But then he's restoring all things, including you and me,

in this world that he has made.

Jesus has not come to reign over the world as today.

He comes to remake it.

In suffering.

He recasts strength in dying.

He gives life.

He comes not to gather power, but to empty himself of it.

Not to fill an earthly thrown but to fill a grave, and then from the grave

to fill the world with the undying echo of mercy when he says, I have

come to deliver you from something far more enslaving than the Romans.

He means the tyranny that no political revolution can touch, the

tyranny of death, guilt, futility, and the ancient unbreakable chain

of violence and retaliation.

He means the world as it has always been, and the world as only

a new kind of king can make it.

This is not the king who will fill your granaries or make you feared

by your neighbors or let you go on believing in your own goodness.

This is not the king who will make life easier, but the king who will

make the worst about you into the do in the sunrise as it melts away.

And the best about you immoral.

Not the king who paves the way for national glory, but who paves the

way through the valley of the shadow of death, not by walking ahead of

you, but by walking it first alone and then circling back for you.

Scarred but unbroken, gentle and impossible to defeat.

He wins by losing, conquers, by surrendering, transformed the world,

not by rising above it, but by sinking into its sickest depths and

drawing the poison into himself.

Verse 16, as disciples didn't understand these things at first, but when Jesus

was glorified, ah, then they remembered that these things had been written

about him and had been done by him.

The disciples did not understand, even as they laid their cloaks before him.

I guess this is what we're doing.

One of the most fascinating things is when Jesus is the grave,

they are just so devastated.

Not a clue, but man, the glorified Jesus shows up and it's here.

It says, oh.

Then John writing, he's like, we ended up getting it.

We ended up getting, There was Thomas

saying, I can't be disappointed anymore.

Not unless I put my hand in his side, put my fingers and the nail piercings,

and a week later Jesus shows up and he is like's, get this done.

I dunno if he's unbuttoning his robe.

And he's like, and Thomas just falls on his face and he says, my Lord and my God.

Clicks.

Clicks.

Peter,

seeing Jesus cooking fish in the morning, another hard night at fishing.

What's fascinating is the text says that Peter put on his outer coat.

He doesn't take his outer coat off.

'cause I think he thought, I'm gonna walk on water to Jesus.

I can't wait for this boat to get there.

And he sinks.

So then he is like, well, that was them.

And he swims and he looks at Jesus in the face.

Peter, do you love me?

You know all things you know, all things

the disciples didn't understand, even as they laid their cloaks before him,

as they shouted the ancient slogans, as they watched him disappear into the

city gates, they did not understand until every other hope had been stripped

from them until the last fantasy of triumph had been nailed up and buried.

Only then when the entire project had crashed, when the memory of

those donkey hoofed hours was a source of embarrassment and regret,

did they begin to see the pattern.

The weakness was the point, the defeat.

The only kind of victory that mattered what looked like the shabb ast of

defeats was in fact, the only way to burn the rod out of the system without

burning the world along with it.

Remember, this is not just an abstraction, a cool story, you know, a, a metaphor

to make you healthy, wealthy, and wise.

This is not just a poetic metaphor.

The lion is a lamb in the sense that when the full violence of the world

comes to him, he does not return it.

He lets it break him.

And in being broken, unmask it as powerlessness, the kings of the world

reigned by sending others to die.

The true king and his infinite unflinching bravery goes to die in our place.

The lamb, the lamb, the lamb.

Before its she, it was silent.

Hmm,

the lion, the way king visits his subjects, not in a gold

chariot, but on a young donkey.

And then just as deliberately the radiances of his glory that breaks through

the self-abasement like the sun behind a cloud to see him riding the cult.

The ancient symbol of humility and peace is not to see the king diminished.

It's to see kingship redefined.

The narrative lingers here, the unbroken cult, the, the Messiah serenity, the

peace that subdues, even the untamed.

But as the story proceeds and as the crowd responds, we see that the hour

is not for lowness only, but the revelation of the king's true majesty.

You think about an unbroken cult and the crowds gathering around him,

and yet man, that cult was happy.

He was just, just on mission, right?

So the crowd gathers.

The city is choked with pilgrims.

Their voices layered a haze of expectation.

Here's the Messiah, entering not with a military pump, but

with a rag tag of peasants and children, the poor, the unclean.

Yet as he descends the soap of the Mount of Olives, the

people improvise a coronation.

There are no trumpets, no purple banners, no fex of soldiers, but there are palm

branches, improvised instruments of praise plucked from the trees, waved in the air,

shaken like the signs of victory, and then the garments spread on the road.

A makeshift carpet softening the way for the animal's feet and

for the one who rides upon it.

At a glance, the Palm branch is look like a child's idea of festivity,

or a spontaneous attempt to dignify an undignified procession.

But you have to read the stories.

If you're steeped in the language of Israel, you know that palms are not

mere decoration and they're loaded.

They appear in feast and festival, and the architectural or the

temple carved into the woodwork, embroidered into the curtain.

As we talked about earlier, palms are the symbols of victory and deliverance.

The maccabean victors wave them after their revolt.

Here in this reenactment, no one can miss this point.

The crowd is borrowing the rituals of triumph and rendering them to this galion

teacher, crowning him with the very symbols of freedom and independence.

But even this is only the surface of the symbol.

said The surface and then a little deeper.

The people see a conquer, a liberator, perhaps even a

revolutionary, and their shouts.

Hosanna are a mixture of worship and something like political hope.

Jesus, like the Obama picture, right?

Hope.

Boom.

It's a ticker tape parade.

If you've seen the streets of any city after a World Series or a Super

Bowl, you have the picture yet for Jesus, the palm means something deeper.

A resonance that echoes not just through the memories of national pride,

but down the halls of the prophets and through the secret wisdom of the

Psalms and into the very architecture of the new world he is inaugurating.

For Jesus knows that the next time he comes, the palms will not be mere

cuttings shaken by fickle crowds.

The whole tree will wave, all nature will join.

In the verse from Psalm 96, then the trees of the forest will

sing for joy before the Lord.

It is about to become literal.

And Isaiah 55, the prophet is more explicit.

You shall go out in joy and be led forth with peace.

The mountains in the hills before you shall break forth into singing,

and all of the trees of the field shall clap their hands for centuries.

This was read as poetry.

As liturgical hyperbole, the way one might say The earth trembled or the

heavens wept, dear me, but in Jesus' mind and in the mind of the gospel

writers who record this day, the poems are not just a festive touch.

They are the first intimation that the whole creation is about to awaken, that

the long sleep of the world is nearly over, and that the king who enters in

humility will soon reappear not as a local teacher, but as the Lord of everything.

That is one of my favorite quotes, and it's tattoo worthy.

Get it.

Get it before somebody else gets it is from the lion in

the witch of the wardrobe.

Simply, it says, when Aslan bears his teeth, winter meets its death.

When he shakes his mane, we shall offspring again.

That's what's happening right now.

He knows that the poems will never be the same.

The symbol once co-opted for the brief hopes of political liberation

means something so much deeper will become the sign of something cosmic.

A transformation that begins in the dust of Jerusalem, but will

like a drop of ink and water, eventually saturate the whole world.

The palms are not just for him, but for the world itself, which

as Paul writes in Romans groans, waiting with eager anticipation for

the revealing and the sons of God.

Creation is groaning.

For that redemption.

And so as the people line the road and the palm sway, Jesus sees both

the celebration and the shadow, the adulation of the crowd and the

horror that waits the city's heart.

He sees the temple and beyond it to the inner sanctum, the

curtain that will soon be torn.

He sees the darkness gathering, the friends who will scatter

the silence of the tomb and the eventual unstoppable dawn.

For the king.

Every jester, every word, every sign is doubled.

It is what it is and that it's something more always right.

It is the majesty of the king that is on display here, but it is a majesty that

is unafraid of suffering, unmoved by the trappings of power, a majesty that

is strong enough to be misunderstood, betrayed, and killed, knowing that the

glory hidden in shame will one day resat the worlds, the palms are a prophecy.

They're a promise embedded in the objects themselves that all the potential beauty

of the world, all the implicit vitality of creation will one day be brought

to completion and we'll find its final purpose, not in the service of emperors

or fickle crowds, but in the honor and the praise paid to the returning king.

And that's what this day means.

This is the day that the Lord has made, is literally talking about this moment.

Every act of creation, every tree, every spring bloom, every title.

Roar is waiting, rehearsing for the day.

When the king returns for good and the palms and they're waving are

both the memory of that first parade and the rehearsal for the next.

The arrival of the king is not just the triumph of one man over his enemies or the

victory of a new ideology over old ones.

It is the beginning of the recreation of the cosmos.

Everything that is every Adam and every angel is about to be put right,

and the palm branches are draft one of their universal applause.

Even the stones, Jesus said, Palm branches are alive.

You cut 'em.

They're starting to die.

Even the stones, if the people were silenced, would cry out.

That's how much creation groans.

That's how much it is anticipating the redemption that is waiting, that

he is inaugurating guys, the stones.

Stones are gonna cry.

Even the trees, if the crowd were gone, would clap their hands.

The point is not to diminish the drama of the day by spiritualizing that

away, but to let it be what it is.

The moment when the ancient dream of a true king, strong, meek,

victorious, enthroned, and crucified takes on flesh and rides into

the city, he comes in humility.

But this humility is the dress of power.

He accepts the adulation for the crowd knowing for some it will curdle into

hatred, but also knowing that the day will come when the hosannas will not fade.

When all of creation will at last recognize him for who he is.

The king is coming, and when he comes, the world will come alive.

The trees will sing, the fields will exalt, the mountains will break forth

the song, and the palms will wave not as symbols of fleeting hope.

But as the banners of a kingdom that cannot be shaken for this

is the day that the Lord is made and it's only the beginning.

The highness of Jesus does not cancel his lowness and his lowness

does not disqualify his highness.

They magnify each other.

He's the only king who's enthrallment is completed by crucifixion, whose glory is

never so radiant as when he is emptied out, poured into death, and then at

last overflowed into resurrection life.

The palms and their trembling are the first witness to this

mystery, and their hosannas echo down the ages waiting for the day.

When all things are made new, the mute finds its tongue.

The caged thing stretches its wings.

The withered wood pushes out green shoots and bursts into flower.

In his presence.

All creation shivers with readiness and the air, crackles with the scents

that everything can must become itself.

Finally, extravagantly.

And joyfully, including you and me, when the king steps across the threshold,

everything under his hand, every servant in his house, every inch under of his

kingdom, every voice that can praise is caught up in the song of gladness.

The whole world, it is reach, even the smallest shyest longing

blooms toward its fulfillment.

But not only creation is impacted, but we as his image bearers, the redeem.

When the king comes into our lives, we flourished like

that untamed donkey, right?

Who do you have riding your life?

You think you're in control.

You're not what?

Lemme put it this way.

We went to Disneyland recently, and

one of

the things about Disneyland that made it special

is rides never broke down.

It was like.

Rare.

It was like, cool, like if you were on a ride that broke down, it was

like, I'm gonna, uh, I'm gonna post on Facebook about that, you know,

and that's special and that's crazy.

And, it just didn't happen.

Well, this time we're there and,

I don't know, seven times more.

The rides just kept breaking down.

And if you weren't inside, you don't get the free lightning pass.

You've waited an hour spring break.

Uh, so there's a lot of people there.

But you wait an hour and boom, you're just done.

You're gone.

and it happened over and over.

Finally, one of our friends said, well, what's interesting is they

brought in new management and their whole goal was to save money.

And so the people who crowded themselves on keeping these rides from breaking down

ever and spent time and energy and, and talent into keeping these things going.

well, they got fired to save a buck.

And they brought in some chipper chicken, you know, uh, to take over.

And now there's this chaos But that's what happens, right?

Under new management.

Sometimes you'll see a restaurant that says, under new management, maybe

you've had a bad experience there.

And so under new management, right?

You're like, yes.

Or sometimes what happens is you're going to your favorite place, and somehow it's

just not as good as it used to be, right?

And so sometimes, the, there's crowds At first, it's amazing.

You're telling everybody about it.

There's lines out the door, and then pretty soon it's a

ghost town in there, right?

And so people are like, man, what happened?

And then you'll see a sign that says, original owners back, right?

And you're like, that's what happened.

Oh, they sold it.

And so somebody's trying to save money and cost cut.

But now the original owners are back.

We're getting the, we're getting the fat stack now, right?

We're getting, we're gonna get what it used to be.

The metaphor is almost too easy.

But easy things are sometimes the truest our lives, our loves our world

are like being on a broken ride.

Suspended, vulnerable at the mercy of whatever is in charge

of the cables and the cars.

The management matters.

The one running the system matters, and the reason for the breakdowns,

the reason for the dead stops.

The reason the world so often feels shrunken and anxious and broken is

because it has been left to us, to our own management, our own cleverness

and pride and self-absorption.

And the record of that management,

it's abysmal,

made me think, is this all there is?

There's people who live their entire lives under bad management,

and that's just become normal and that trace echo that calls out.

For someone to put things right has been so muted and so muffled and so choked

out, strangled by the cares of this world that he can barely hear it anymore.

Is this all there is?

If that's all there is, think of the time you lived in a house that felt

for a season to be home, then it was empty, repainted for someone else.

Now your presence erased your memory of irrelevant to the new owner.

It's just something else or your group of friends.

So essential to your joy, your meaning, your sense of belonging for a string of

years until jobs, couples disappointments pull them like magnets in all directions.

You try to keep it going, but hey, life gets busy.

soon your shared jokes and traditions are reduced to a text thread that if

you half-hearted emojis, then nothing, or your closest intimacy perhaps with

a spouse or a child or a parent is already shadowed by the certainty.

That one of you will bury the other or worse fade inconsolably before the end.

All the stuff in your childhood room that once seemed permanent, the posters,

the trophies, the baseball met, the book are now box, step gathering.

Mildew are simply thrown away.

Every forever is a short lease in human terms, and the landlord is always

turnover, entropy, and dissolution.

But wherever the king comes, wherever he takes over, wherever

he's allowed to manage, to rule, to love, the thing blooms.

Wherever the king is, the world gets its voice back.

The palm trees wave, the city's burst into flower.

The river flashes with possibility.

The world in his hands is a world alive, wide and bright and full of

hope, no matter the circumstances.

Remember the sun in the desert, heat in Jeremiah, it's flower doesn't fade.

It's leaf doesn't wither in that heat.

It thrives.

Whatever he manages lives, whatever he touches, sings.

Let me ask you, and then as I've asked myself now quite a few times,

sitting on a ride that's broken or commuting in traffic or laying wide

awake in a bed at three in the morning,

we really like being in charge.

If we could, I think we'd say, come in.

Jesus, stay out Christ.

But that would be as ridiculous if I came over to Nina's house and like,

Hey, come in, Kayla, you stay out.

Josh, you can come in.

You can't divide that person, but we kind of want the,

I really need your help, but it'd be great if you let me keep being

in charge, calling the shots.

But I think if we really thought about it.

Even in our darkest moments of pain, is this not the life you want?

Is this not the world you wish for?

The world you ache for and the marrow your bones?

Have I have you perhaps settled for less?

Have we somewhere along the way, accepted breakdowns is normal.

Learned to eat your overpriced Disneyland lunch stuck on Splash

Mountain and now it's called something else and call it good enough.

Or do you still long for a life that works, a life that is managed by

something true or something stronger?

Something both fierce and gentle.

Something as reliable as a king

and as tender as a lamb.

This is the glory of the king.

His management is always good.

His reign always brings forth what's best, even if he leads you down.

The Princess of the Goblin, It tells the incredible story of this princess

who's being infested by goblins.

The her fairy godmother tells her, follow this thread and don't ever

let go of it, and you'll be safe.

she starts to follow the thread because the goblins are gonna take

her away and it leads her out of the castle where the safety is, and it

leads her right into the goblin cave.

But what she realizes halfway through it as she's following the thread and

there's many times she's thinking about giving up, is that, well, all

the goblins are out there looking for me and the castle, and surely they

would've found me and step by step clinging to that thread, she is perfectly

kept safe through the entire story.

His rain always brings forth what's best.

His strength is made perfect in weakness.

His hands are scarred, but they're steady.

His rule does not crush you.

It blesses you.

It calls you out into the sunlight.

It makes you yourself at last in him all the seeds of your life.

All the secret longings.

All the buried greatness find their chance to sprout flower and

to bear fruit under his reign.

We do not just function, we flourish.

He is the one you seek.

He's the only one who, when you stand in his presence, you feel it

Once unworthy and yet completely at home, disrobed of pretense, but

clothed for the first time in warmth you did not earn and cannot lose.

He's the only king when he comes forth the earth shakes in the mountains,

tremble who can walk on water and still the storm, and yet who kneels

in the dust to wash the dirty feet of the beloved and the betrayer alike.

He is the one whose eyes see through the world, yet linger on the single sparrow,

the single child, the single tear of yours on your pillow or in the bathroom.

He's the one who, when the time comes to enter, his city chooses not the

warhorse, not the chariot, not the gilded litter, but a battered donkeys

full so that in the midst of all who crave power, he might show that

his kingdom is not of this world.

And his rule is not by domination, but by invitation.

He is the one who gathers up the bruised reeds in the smoking wicks of the world.

He speaks not condemnation, but comfort.

He's the one who at the table welcomes not the powerful or the pedigree,

but the tax collector, the zealot, the street walker, and the child

with sticky hands in a runny nose.

He's the one who offers his own body and blood is bred for the hungry wine

for the ruined and the most mysterious exchange becomes the host and the

meal priest, and the offering, the servant and the sovereign all at once.

He's the one who though every throne in history has been secured

by violence and threat claims.

His by being stripped, mocked, spat upon and nailed to wood so that when

he says, behold the king, the old story of the world is unmade and a new one.

Is begun.

He's so glorious that he can summon angels with a whisper and

turn back the sun with a word.

Yet he's so gentle that he will not quench the hope of a single soul clinging

to him By the thin threat of faith, he weaves over cities that will not have him.

He pleads with the proud.

He wrestles with doubters.

He listens to the secrets of the shame.

He gives them a new name.

He does not flatter.

He does not coerce.

He does not break the bruised for sport.

He binds up the broken and takes their scars for his own.

He's so radiant that he, that to see him is to see the fullness of God so

accessible that the outcast in the foreigner and the enemy discover that

they're honored guests at his feast.

He is the one who calls you not simply to be his servant.

But his friend, and not simply his friend, but is beloved, and not

simply his beloved, but his own body joined together by a union more

intimate than any marriage on earth.

He's the one who knows your secrets, your faults, your failures, and does

not shun you, but opens arms wider, inviting you deeper into his own life.

He is the one though he deserves every crown and scepter and anthem.

Instead, empties himself becomes a base exposed and humiliated.

He is the one whose blessedness is not kept behind walls or reserved for

the worthy, but who gives it away?

Who multiplies it, who plants it like a seed in the dirt of your own life so that

it might grow into an orchard and a garden even in the wasteland of our regrets?

He's the one above all who wants to be known by you.

Behold the king.

He is not what you expect, but he is what your soul has always needed.

Blessed is he and blessedness will come into your life if you receive

him for who he is, the true king.

I Two implications.

We'll be brief.

Lemme try bringing this to earth because I don't want you in any way to walk

out of here thinking this is abstract.

This transformation isn't just a spiritual daydream, it's as real as

Friday night at home when everybody's tired and the takeout is late and

nobody wants to put away the laundry.

And you have opportunity to utter sharp word or to serve.

It's as real as the office, as the hospital waiting room As the friend,

you keep meaning to call, but never do.

The kindliness of Jesus when it enters a person does not only change their

self-concept, it changes the weather system of the room when they enter.

It's not just a matter of personality.

We all have different personalities.

Some are born more sensitive, more attuned to the feelings of others.

Some are born more assertive, more focused on the task.

But the kindliness of Christ when it comes into you does

not wipe out your personality.

It doesn't turn the strong into the weak or the stubborn into the sentimental.

Rather, it takes what is best and purifies it, exalts it, and

unmasks the fake imitations.

The pushiness of the barbarian, we'll call 'em, is transformed into holy boldness.

The sweetness of the timid is transformed into real meekness, which as we've

said is strength under control.

It's not possible on your own.

It's not possible through discipline or New Year's resolution.

It is the art of letting someone else manage your heart.

The servanthood of Jesus is not the servanthood of a doormat nor

the servanthood of martyr complex.

It is the servanthood of royalty.

It's all about our identity, guys, of someone who is so secure in

their identity, so anchored in their worth that they can afford to lose

all outward signs of position, ugh.

To be called names, to be overlooked, to be spat on, to be misunderstood, and

still not lose an ounce of their dignity.

Servanthood is defined by Christ is not niceness.

It's not passive aggressive self-sacrifice.

It's not living through your children or your job or your cause.

It's not the servitude that quietly resents everyone in the world for not

appreciating your 3:00 AM active folding laundry or donations to the bake sale.

It's not even the kind of servanthood that expects to be

celebrated for being a servant.

In fact, the real servanthood, the servanthood, born of cleanliness

does not announce itself like Christ.

It is to borrow Cs loose phrase.

The sort of humility that does not think less of itself.

It simply thinks of itself less.

Are you a barbarian or are you timid?

We are.

Most of us both at times.

I've known the barbarian, who at the job site, devours the

week, makes sport of humiliating.

Others.

Sometimes I've been the one to do that, but who at home becomes fragile

and afraid in the presence of his own children because he does not know how

to love without being controlling.

I've known the timid who at every social function takes up the least

space and apologizes for existing runs, errands for others, but who in

the privacy of their own mind nurtures deep resentment and slow burning anger

that sometimes erupts in passive ruin.

Both of these are forms of self-absorption.

Both of them are symptoms of a life under bad management.

Both are healed only by the true king of your soul.

What would it look like if the cleanliness of Jesus invaded your life?

It would look like your home or your office or your relationships,

uh, with your own body being placed under new management.

It would look like the strength of a boss who makes the hard choice

for the good of the team, but also has the capacity to apologize and

take criticism and say, I was wrong.

It would look like the mother who never had a break, never had a day

off, who nevertheless could say no to her child, could set a boundary,

could permit herself rest without feeling that she has failed as a mom.

It looked like the artist who instead of creating for fame, creates beauty

for its own sake, out of the same joy that led the king to create us all.

But what then does that service mean?

It's one thing to listen, and this is the kingly royal service

that, that he births in us.

It's one thing to listen to help at the margins.

We all do that.

Everybody does that a little bit.

They'll give money to the guy on the, on the, uh, divider lane to offer a hand

to the neighbor who needs a strong back to lift a couch or a moment's kindness.

It's another thing to enter the reality of another human being, to bear their

burdens as if they were your own.

To sit in the ashes, in the sweat, and the laughter and the grief of a world not

yours, and make it for a moment your own.

The world resists This kind of service doesn't build a brand or a legacy

or even a record of accomplishment.

It's the quiet valor of a person who without thought of

reward or even acknowledgement.

Bends down to pick up what others have left behind.

The King's service is a service that risks.

It risks disappointment in boredom and the long un heralded years of

not being thanked or even remembered.

It is a service that bleeds sometimes because the world can be rough and

the objects of your love will bruise you, and you cannot serve without

being drawn into the wounds of others.

Still, it's as contagious as it is silent.

Have you ever watched a person who truly serves not from codependency,

not from self-hatred, but from a deep overflow of a heart that has been

served to its morrow by Christ himself?

Such a person is magnetic without even trying.

There's a weightiness.

We call it cavo.

It means glory.

It's the old Hebrew word for weight.

Such a person is magnetic without trying.

They draw the lonely, the wounded, the abrasive, the forgotten.

They create a circle of dignity and others step into it.

Almost involuntarily the king service begets more service.

That's just as simple as it is.

Paul would say in Second Corinthians five, one of the best chapters in the entire

Bible, the love of Christ compels me.

I can't help it.

It's like a, an eruption.

Kingly if you let him in.

If you allow the king to take the high seat of your heart, it is not just

gentleness or a lowly servants touch that begins to pulse through your veins, but

also a boldness that is otherworldly.

Oh, how we need that.

Remember the apostles when they were under persecution,

early churches like Acts three.

What was their prayer?

It wasn't for deliverance.

It wasn't for a change of circumstances.

It wasn't for power.

It was for boldness.

And this boldness comes.

That's almost otherworldly.

There's so many versions of strength in the world, but

most of them are counterfeit.

They are strength that barks the loudest when afraid that gathers

armies because deep down it's terrified of being alone, of being ignored,

of being found out as ordinary.

There is a kind of kindliness, forged in the heat of comparison,

ambition, and insecurity.

A brittle, anxious thing that often wounds more than it rolls.

But the kindliness of Christ, once rooted in you, is a different animal altogether.

It is the courage that can face ridicule and scorn and call them brothers.

It's a heart that can walk in the darkest rooms and bring no flash of the

sword, but still leave the room changed.

It is the lion's heart, yes, but the lion you find in the book of

Revelation, the one who conquers not by roaring, but by bleeding, the one who,

when all the squirrels of history are unrolled stands at the end,

not with a mountain of skulls.

But with a crowd of the redeemed,

the healed, the rescued, and the man knew, and Jesus can

put this person into a person.

Now he doesn't.

By taking the apprenticeship of your soul seriously, he begin a good work

and you will be faithful to complete it.

You know that you are the poetry of Christ, the poema.

He does not just ask you to serve, but to be so secure, so deeply loved, so fiercely

known that there is nothing left to prove.

You do not have to outshine other candles.

You do not have to accumulate trophies.

You do not have to grasp that through the world stage because you know in

the marrow of your bones, your name is already scribed on the granite of heaven.

You are secure.

You are free to love.

You are no longer enslaved to the verdicts of the mob, the boardroom, the family

table, or even your own self-condemnation.

That is why when Jesus sent out the 70 disciples and granted them power

to heal and exercise demons, he was not at all impressed by the miracles.

He did not seem to care about their sudden celebrity or the attention that

followed them back to camp, and the crowds that came with it, he was not

keeping a tally of their exploits in to.

Instead, he told them, rejoice not in the fire they could call down or

the power at their fingertips, but in the knowledge that their names were

already written In another book, a record kept in a place untouched by

war or failure, or by a Google search.

They had been known and loved and chosen from before the beginning of things, the

foundation of the world, and that was the only source of their real kingly power.

He points out.

It is such a strange reversal.

We're conditioned to believe that status comes from accomplishment,

that our authority is built on the mountain of our victories and the

clever manipulation of our enemies.

But Jesus says, no, your authority comes from your belonging.

Guys, I just learned something.

You know when Jesus says to the thief on the cross, today,

you'll be with me in paradise.

Do you know that what we did in Greek, it's literally the word is perio.

All we did is just take that Greek word and make it English.

In the step two agent, the people who spoke Hebrew, the rabbis, Aramaic and

Greek, who were translating the Old Testament into the Greek, when they

came across this word, they took the Greek word paradisio cio Paradise.

Do you know what that word means in Hebrew?

It means garden.

Garden.

So Jesus is saying to the thief on the cross, today we're gonna walk in the.

The whole point walking with God in the cool of the day,

we're gonna be together just like it was supposed to be.

Today we're gonna walk in the garden, guys.

That is what he's after.

He loves you and he's made, done it all.

So that guess what?

He's removed every distraction from you taking a walk with him tonight.

And I,

nothing to prove

from the fact that I have written you into my story.

And it's a story that cannot be erased by your mistakes or

your enemies or even your death,

but there's a promise to all of this.

A shimmering behind the humility of that first arrival.

The next time he comes, listen carefully.

The next time, it will not be as the overlooked or the ridiculed.

The next time, the world will not be able to spit or mock or ignore him.

The next time he'll come, not on a donkey, but on a cloud, on a warhorse.

The next time the crowd will not wave palm branches and mock

coronation, but tremble and awe.

The next time he comes, he will not be torn.

He will tear apart all evil.

He will set all things right that are wrong, put together the world that is

right now, so fragmented and unfinished, and longing for a better ending.

And every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

But today, when the king comes, when he steps off the donkey and into

your heart, this is what he does.

He gives you a royalty that is not built on the bones of your enemies, but on

the bedrock of his own self giving love.

He gives you a heart that not only bows to the weak and the suffering,

but can also look every tyrant in the eye and call them in love to repent

with some John the Baptist fire.

He makes you into something impossible, guys, a servant and a king.

He makes you into a lion and a lamb all at once.

Let's pray.