The One and Future King (Luke 19:28-40)

Hello, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning in to New Sun Churches Podcast.

We're a gospel center church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Luke.

When Jesus drew near to Beth Page and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat.

Untie it, and bring it here.

If any one asks you, Why are you untying it, you shall say this, The Lord has need of it.

So those who were sent away, those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them.

And he and as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, Why are you untying the colt?

And they said, The Lord has need of it.

And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it.

And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road.

And 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 they had seen, saying, Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven and glory in the highest.

And the sum of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, rebuke your disciples.

He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.

The gospel of the Lord.

Praise you, O Lord Christ.

And remaining standing, let us um let us pray.

We don't have a creed today.

I'm so used to saying, now let's confess our Christian faith.

Heavenly Father, we now come before you to um to hear your word, uh, speak directly to our hearts and our minds.

Lord, just pray um as we always pray, take any distractions from this week away, whether good or bad, and just draw us to yourself.

And pray us in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Now, before I um transitioned into ministry, um, I was um a photojournalist for 10 years.

And I lived in Ottawa.

And the thing with Ottawa, it's a political town, so you cover a lot of politics.

But in the summertime, politics goes on um summer, basically summer vacation for a couple months, and you don't really have much to do in Ottawa.

So you have to take photos of weddings to make um ends meet.

So I would I've shot a lot of weddings in my past.

I've probably over a hundred weddings I've done.

And the thing with weddings, they there might be some different elements to them, but they're all the same.

When the reception happens, there's the standing reception that happens before, and everyone is at the reception, it's good times, the wedding party's off taking photos, and then there comes that point where everyone is looking at their watches and they're like, okay, let's get this going.

Let's let's get to dinner.

And that's when the grand entrance happens for the couple and the wedding party.

And they everyone sits down, there's all this music, people, and the couples come in and they start dancing, and then it it introduces the mark, it marks the former part, the formal part of the reception.

And here we have Jesus, in a sense, doing a grand entrance into Jerusalem, and it is marking a moment of the start of what we call Holy Week.

It marks as he enters in.

And then when you read in the Gospels, you see the account of what happens in those weeks.

And we're gonna look at um the triumphant entry that many Bibles uh title it as.

And we're gonna look at that.

So in your bulletins, it's listed.

If you have your Bibles, turn to chapter 19, uh, verses 29 to 40, and we're gonna take a look.

And something that's very um that's very good to do during holy week.

I have my bulletin here, um, is as we go through every day, we should reflect on the cross.

We should reflect on what Jesus did.

And Creighton has um really handily given verses and prayers to read during the week.

And I would strongly encourage you to do that.

That's on page 20.

You can look at that after.

I would strongly encourage you to do that every morning, evening, or whenever you have a chance to do it, is to reflect on what is why is Holy Week so important?

And why does Palm Sunday mark the beginning of it?

It is so important.

So we're gonna look at Palm Sunday or the Triumphant Entry, as it's called in our Bibles.

And we're gonna do that this morning.

Um, we're gonna do it in a way where we're gonna glean some things about who Jesus is more.

We're gonna look at it more about who he is, and we're gonna do it in three ways.

All we're gonna do point one, the all-knowing king.

We're gonna do point two, evidence of the king, and point three is worship of the king.

Because Jesus is the one and future king.

I don't know if anyone's read um The King Arthur Tales.

It's a famous book.

I'm just playing doing a play on words off the title.

And the thing that's also really nice about Luke and his gospel is that he's very concerned on having historical markers through it to keep you going.

And if if you I don't know if you caught it, but all through this text, there's historical markers of places that mark Jesus coming closer and closer and closer to Jerusalem.

And that's very handy for when we're trying to, when we come to the Gospels and we maybe scrutinize them or we try to see if they're actually true.

That these are places that are named, that you can go and walk.

These are places that you can go travel and walk these places and walk in the in the sense the same place that Jesus walked.

That is very um, I find personally very um grounding in my faith to know that this is a historical book.

This is a book that um that it marks that God used history, uses um, it's not this thing that's up in the air, it's very historic, it's grounded in a place.

So let's look, uh point one, all knowing King, verses 29 to uh 35.

When he drew near to Beth Page and Bethany at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of his disciples, saying, Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied on which no one has ever yet sat.

Untie it and bring it here.

If anyone asks you, Why are you untying it, you shall say this, The Lord has need of it.

So those who were sent away and found it, found it just as he had told them.

And as they were untying the colt, the owners said to them, Why are you untying the colt?

And they said, The Lord has need of it, and they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, colt, they set Jesus on it.

Now I've often thought, um, reading this um every year, or just reflecting on it when I get to it in my reading plan, um, what would what would the disciples be thinking when Jesus asks that?

When he says, Go and find this colt in this village.

It's right there, it's gonna be there tied up.

I'd personally, I'd be like, Jesus, you're pulling my leg.

You can't be, you can't be real here.

Like it seems so far-fetched, such a random thing to ask for.

And they might be thinking, well, shouldn't you be raising up an army?

Shouldn't you be um raising up an army?

Shouldn't we be getting this going that we should be taking over the people who are oppressing us?

But no, he says, go and get a cult.

And why does he request this?

Well, I believe it's twofold.

It shows that, it shows one that he is all-knowing, and it also signifies something that we're gonna look at in the second point.

So, how does it show that he is all-knowing?

Well, it shows here that Jesus can look, he can say things that haven't happened yet.

And it shows that he is all-knowing, because he can say, go and find the cult just as it is, and they go and find it.

Other times in the Gospels, in Luke's gospel, he predicts that he's gonna die three times to them, and then it happens.

And that is something that um when we talk about apologetics in Christianity, when we try to defend the faith, that we can say that Jesus predicted his death, that he can never um he can never um construe it to make it happen.

It was done at the hands of the Romans.

That this is something you can hold on to, that it is something that Jesus predicted and it happened.

There's grounding in it.

And it points to that he is all-knowing because he can predict the future.

And then when it's when he says, how does it how does it show it?

How does it show this?

It says the Lord has need of it.

And this points to his kingship when it says the Lord has need of it.

They're acknowledging his kingship as well.

The opening section reminds us of two things.

It reminds us that Jesus is not just a man, that he is one that can predict that things are gonna happen.

But it shows that he is God, it shows in his perfect knowledge that this should bring us, one, to repentance, to our knees, that because he is all-knowing.

At the same time, it should bring us to sing praise, as we just sang, that he is an all-knowing God, the God, who can see us as we go through our sufferings and hardships.

He doesn't just write us off.

And this is something that in my life personally I found great comfort in.

That Jesus sees us through every moment of our life.

He knows what we're going through, whether it's good or bad.

As um last week uh I preached on the ending of James, and it talks about prayer and the prey in all things, the prey in hardship and suffering, to pray in moments of joy, and the prey in sickness.

Because we know we have a Lord who is there with us, who doesn't write us off.

And the text shows us this.

It shows us that Jesus is an all-knowing king.

He is the one who predicts the future before it happens, to show that he is all-knowing.

Now, on point two, evidence of the king, we see that it points to Jesus as king in this text.

And let's look at it.

Verses uh 36 to 38.

And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks in the road, and as he was drawing near, already on the way down, 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 they had seen, saying, Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven and glory in the highest.

Through the gospels, up until this moment, through them all, Jesus is depicted always as walking.

He's always walking to the places that he goes.

So, like, why now does he choose to ride a cult into Jerusalem?

Why does he do it now?

He does it because it signifies something.

It signifies his kingship, that now he's riding a cult into Jerusalem, into the city, the city of David.

And this points, this is a prophecy in the book of Zechariah that becomes fulfilled.

Jonathan read it, and I'll read it again.

It says in Zechariah 9:9, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem.

Zechariah 9:9

Behold, your king is coming to you, righteous and having salvation is he, humbled and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the fowl of a donkey.

See, this marks, it shows that through Jesus, prophecy becomes fulfilled.

This was written many years ago, and it becomes fulfilled in Jesus, marking the king coming into Jerusalem.

With Jesus, we see it fulfilling the prophecy.

And the disciples, the people who followed him, would know this, would right away know of what's happening because they would study this text all through their youth, all through their childhood.

This would have been seeping out of them, this text, and they would see it happening before them.

Another way to um to uh bring this into a more um our culture text, every time I run out of illustrations, I always refer to Lord of the Rings because it's so it's so rich in using it for uh Bible um illustrations.

In Lord of the Rings, we we all know it, we all know it.

But when you read the books, there's a lot more into um into Lord of the Rings.

And the thing that's all through the books is that the one king who comes to save humanity from evil is that he would be a healer, he would be one who heals.

And he does this through herbs, and this is Aragon.

He is the as the mark of the king, that he will be the one who comes healing the people, and he heals the people.

In many instances, he heals people throughout the books, and it marks it, it marks him as king.

But the marker of a Messiah king in their time in Israel is in Isaiah, and it says this in Isaiah 35, 5 to 6, it says, Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped, then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.

For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.

See, this is, if we remember, John the Baptist sends his disciples to Jesus to ask, Are you the one, or should we expect another?

This is in earlier in the in the Gospels.

And this point, Jesus quotes this text, the point that he is the one, the one who is coming, the king who comes seated on a colt into Jerusalem, the one who has been healing, raising the dead, making the mute sing for joy, and marks him as the one, the king, the king that comes in.

And we see this in the text.

It points to Jesus.

But the thing about the triumph of entry is that it's so key to marking who Jesus is, that everything Jesus has been doing culminates in this moment as he enters into his last week of life and marks him as the one king.

The king shows the evidence of the king, the all-knowing king, and shows him.

And that is why the disciples are crying out, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven and glory in the highest.

They know this because they've seen the works that he's done, and then they see this moment that they've been hoping for for so long start to happen in front of them as he comes in.

If you've seen um, how many people are watching the chosen here?

Anyone?

Anyone?

There's that moment where it shows Jesus coming in.

And I find it so helpful as a good illustration.

But it's something to always remember that we need to go to the Bible first and then do things like that that help illustrate things.

Because when things are visual, it's so much helpful to make things more grounded in our minds.

And that's why the crowd says this.

Jesus fulfills the prophecies of the Old Testament and they see it happening before them.

But the expected ruler that they thought would liberate them immediately from the Roman oppressors, the people who were ruling over them, who have conquered their city.

They expected this to happen.

In Israel's history, the heir of David would always ride in to their coronation into Jerusalem, into the place of Jerusalem.

They expected him to be the one who would set them free from the Romans.

And this brings us to our final point in our brief look at this.

The point three is the worship of the king.

Again, it helps to visualize the scene.

Picture this.

He was humble.

He was a man of no means.

And here he is riding into Jerusalem on a cult with a crowd of people singing, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

He's riding into this cultural center, the place where the elites are, the place where the influences are, the religious elites are.

Everyone who decides the culture is in this city.

And here he comes riding in.

And we see their reaction in verses 38 to 39.

We see it when they say, sorry, they see it, we see it when they say in 39.

And the fair some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, rebuke your disciples.

And he answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.

See, the elites, the religious elites, expected a great king, but they only saw a poor man.

They only saw someone of no stature, someone who is not a mover and shaker.

Just this humble man that's coming in with a crowd of people of his disciples saying this.

And it's interesting when we look at this, because we are we're coming to this text, knowing the ending of the story.

We already know it.

Everyone knows it.

That they they say this about Jesus' disciples, but then they abandon him.

So they actually didn't know who he truly was.

Both sides get it wrong.

His disciples abandon him, they don't see him as the great king, truly.

And then also the religious elite elite reject him and then end up killing him.

Both sides get it wrong.

So how do we go from here?

How do we go to this mind in our minds about worshiping the king?

Well, the text shows us it's easy to worship Jesus in a way that he's actually not, that we're actually worshiping something else.

That we we put these ideas in our minds that who Jesus is, who he should be, what he should be doing for us, and we worship him that way, or we think we're worshiping, but we're actually not.

Or we reject him wholeheartedly.

Jesus' whole whole ministry, he avoided attention.

He always never wanted attention when he did a miracle.

He would always tell the person not to just go around and talking about it.

But here he rides in as the king publicly.

Why does he do this?

Jesus knows it's time for him to come and die on the cross, to save sinners, to come and save those who are cannot save themselves.

Jesus rises into Jerusalem, the place where the divine meets humanity, to die on a cross, and three days later rise from the dead in history in history, in the physical, not in the abstract.

And that is the God we must worship.

We must worship the God who comes into the world, the God who sends his only son into the world to save those who can't save themselves.

We must worship the Jesus, the King, the one who dies on the cross and then is made alive, that is rises from the dead.

See, as we enter into Holy Week, we need to reflect on the cross.

We must reflect on the cross.

That is the heart of Christianity.

Without the cross, Christianity is nothing.

Without the cross, no one is saved.

That is why we every year we reflect and we reflect and we praise God about what he did through his son, sending his son into the world, so that everyone who puts their faith and trust in him can have eternal life.

See, it shows us that Jesus is the all-knowing King.

It shows us of the evidence of his kingship.

And it shows us that we need to worship the risen King who died on the cross for you and me.

So as we go, um, as we go and we reflect on this, take the time, take the time during this holy week to remember the triumphant king as he comes, but the one future king, the future king, because he's the king there as he enters in, but he is glorified as the king of the of the of the universe when he rises from the dead on Easter morning, and we'll celebrate that.

But we have to go through the part where he dies, and we'll come together and we'll reflect on that as well.

Let's remember the risen King.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's word today.

If you live in the Port Perry area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

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Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.