Palm Sunday

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Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethage to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying, Go to them into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her.

Untie them and bring them to me.

If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, The Lord needs them, and he will send them at once.

This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, Say to the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey on a colt, the foul the foal of a beast of burden.

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them.

They brought the donkey and the colt and put them on their cloaks.

As he sat on them, most of the crowd spread with their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees, and spread them on the road.

And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest.

And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirring up, saying, Who is this?

And the crowd said, This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

That was uh Miss Callie Vignell, if you don't know her.

She was a fifth grader when I first arrived at CCW, and I wanted to get some children involved in scripture reading.

And when I thought of that, I thought of Callie Vignelle.

So thank you, Callie, for doing such a great job.

I also want to begin with a lot of thanks.

I want to thank Pastor Rick for the opportunity to preach on Palm Sunday.

Uh and I know uh Pastor Dave made a little joke about always getting the hard text a couple weeks ago.

And so I thought Pastor Rick was pulling my leg when he said, you know, yeah, sure, y'all can switch.

You can do Palm Sunday.

So I'm very excited to bring to you the word of the Lord from this text.

I also want to thank a few more people.

I want to thank the worship team for leading us in worship.

Of course, Callie for leading us in scripture reading, the audio visual team that makes it possible for you to see and hear me at all right now.

Uh thank you to all of you and all of the multitude of ways that you can serve in CCW, in kids' department, in Sunday school ministry, in hospitality, in parking, in safety.

Thank you all so, so much.

As a pastor, it's so, so, so encouraging to know that I'm a part of a serving church and to be encouraged and spurred on by all of you that do serve.

It's so encouraging.

So, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, as Paul introduces himself so oftentimes, I introduce myself to you.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We're about to pray, pray for illumination of the scripture that we're about to dive into, but we're also going to pray for a beloved church member who was in an accident last night.

Our friend David Russell was in a motorcycle accident and he had surgery last night and he is recovering, but we are praying for continued recovery, specifically in his leg, specifically for blood circulation.

So if you wouldn't mind bowing your head in prayer with me.

Father, we praise you for your goodness and for your grace.

We praise you for the word of the Lord that was brought to us by our sister Callie.

We praise you for all of the servants here at your church at Chelsea Westover.

God, we thank you and we praise you for our Savior, our King, our universal ruler, Jesus.

To no right of our own could we claim ascendancy to heaven.

We are sinners.

We have disobeyed God.

We have fallen short.

And in spite of that, Jesus descended to this earth, lived a perfect life, and bore the price that we were due to pay for our sin.

We praise you for these things and the celebration of those things that reaches its pinnacle during this, the holy week, God.

And so we ask that this scripture would speak to us.

God, hide me behind the cross and let your word be proclaimed.

Father, for our brother David Russell, we pray for him.

We lift him up to you.

We thank you for him.

God, we thank you for the testimony that you have already provided in his life.

We thank you for his family.

God, we thank you for the medical attention that he's already received.

We pray for it as it continues.

And God, we lift up this very specific prayer request.

We pray for his blood circulation in his leg.

We pray for healing over those arteries, over those blood vessels, so that he might recover and have an even more powerful testimony of your goodness and of your grace.

Be with us today.

Be with David and the Russell today.

Encourage us and grow us and shape us by your word.

And we pray all of these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I have been reading a lot more this year, guys.

Please clap.

Thank you.

So I like to read a lot.

I'm a chronic book starter, and I am a chronic not finisher when it comes to books.

I finished my books when I was studying in school, and so that was the meeting the quota of reading for me, and I'd try to start other books, and I'd get too in too deep to stop, but I just couldn't keep going.

And so I've been trying to improve on that.

And so I've been reading a lot this year.

And when I was focusing on this text, I remembered one of the books that I read this year, and it's called The Prodigal God by the late Presbyterian pastor Tim Keller.

And in this book, Keller is going through Luke 15, where Jesus is giving a sequence of parables.

He gives the parable of the lost coin, he gives the parable of the lost sheep, and he gives the parable of the prodigal son, all in quick, fire, back-to-back succession.

And he notes that in the first two parables, the parable of the lost coin and of the lost sheep, there is someone actively searching, actively going after that which is lost.

The shepherd leaves the 99 to seek out the lost sheep.

The person who loses the coin tears apart the house to find it.

And he flips that illustration over with the story of the prodigal son because in this story we don't see anybody searching.

The father is indeed waiting on the porch, waiting for the prodigal's return, but we see no one go out to seek and save that which is lost, like we do in the other two parables.

And Keller makes the claim that it isn't the father's job to have gone and sought the lost son, because it is this younger prodigal son that has squandered all of the father's riches and left in the first place.

He said, it is the older brother that we learn about at the end of the parable, whose job it should have been to have gone and sought out the lost son and brought him home.

And so Keller ultimately ties this illustration to Jesus, saying that Jesus is our older brother that seeks to save that which is lost.

That's the tie that he makes in that parable, and that's all I could think of when I was reading about the triumphal entry.

Jesus is literally going, physically, literally moving his feet, walking into Jerusalem to seek and save that which is lost.

So the first point in my notes that we have from this text is that number one, Jesus is an active Messiah.

Jesus is an active Messiah.

We get the adjective active from the fact that in the face of pending betrayal, a pending crucifixion, a known coming death, Jesus did not take the Jonah approach and run off.

He didn't go into hiding.

He didn't disappear.

He didn't even still approach but enter the city under the cover of night so that no one would notice.

No.

Remember the title of our passage.

It's the triumphal entry with a great procession and with many people from Bethany and from Bethage, right?

They are coming to town to see this triumphal entry.

It's no secret that Jesus is arriving to town.

He is actively coming into town and he knows what's going to happen.

We get this word Messiah, this claim that Jesus is the Savior of the world, from the crowd's declaration in verse 9.

If you haven't gotten there yet, our chapter is Matthew 21, verses 1 through 11.

Matthew 21:1–11

I know there's many accounts I could have chosen from.

This is the text that we are in today, Matthew 21, verses 1 through 11.

Matthew 21:1–11

And we get these messianic claims in verse 9, where the word of God says this.

My brother Luke, the son of Jamie.

It doesn't mean the same thing as just describing mere lineage of a father and a son.

It is describing a lineage that was prophesied thousands of years earlier in the Bible, saying that the Son of David was to be the seeking and saving Messiah that would rule over everything, would restore everything.

So we don't get the messianic claims just from our own head because we like Jesus so much and we said, yeah, we'll just stick that claim on him.

We see it from our text in the original audience saying, This Jesus guy is the son of David.

This Jesus guy is the ultimate Messiah, the prophesied king that would deliver the world and rule forever.

Jesus is addressed as the son of David many times in the Gospels, mostly in the book of Matthew, and most notably in this text in chapter 21, but he's also mentioned to be the son of David in Matthew chapter 9.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

Or if you want to flip there, you don't have to, but it's the account where Jesus heals two blind men.

And these two blind men, they approach Jesus and they say, Have mercy on us, son of David.

These blind men yet see Jesus as the Son of David, the coming Messiah, the one who saves.

And so Jesus, seeing their cries for mercy, obliges, heals them, offers them sight and mercy.

And then he immediately does something weird.

He charges them to tell no one.

That was one of the most confusing things when I really started to grow up and tear apart my Bible.

I was like, why is Jesus always walking around telling people to tell no one?

This is like super awesome.

And I loved how in our own disobedient, sinful flesh, most people, after it says he charged them to tell no one, it says they turned around and told everyone they knew.

And so the word got out.

But Jesus charges them to tell no one.

He's not ready to make that prophetic messianic claim that we see here in this text.

But in this text, in Matthew chapter 21, Jesus is ready to make his public debut as the Son of David.

Matthew 21 · chapter mention

He proceeds into town on a donkey, on the robes of the crowd, while palm branches are waving, and the crowd is saying, Son of David, essentially meaning Messiah, Savior of the world, the one who comes to seek and save and restore everything.

And Jesus says, yes.

Jesus acknowledges his messianic status here in this text.

It's a common atheistic argument to say, well, Jesus never said he was the Son of God.

Jesus never said he was the Savior in point-blank phrase.

It gets really no more point blank than this.

The crowd is affirming his saviorship, his messiahship that he had been prophesied from before, and Jesus affirms it.

He doesn't say, hold the boat, not yet.

You know, I'm not that guy, calm down.

Jesus affirms this messianic claim.

Jesus is an active Messiah.

Now the disciples are relishing in this moment.

We've seen the disciples follow Jesus, all of his earthly ministry.

We've seen them understand, sort of, really not understand a majority of the time.

We've seen the disciples thinking, this is our moment.

This is our time to make the difference, to make the power grab, to take over the area and to usurp the Roman authorities that are there at the time.

The disciples are happy.

They are thumbs up, double thumbs up, that Jesus is making this messianic claim.

But the way Jesus goes about making this messianic claim, they're probably not quite as thrilled about.

So that leads us to sub point A, which is that Jesus is a humble Messiah.

Jesus is a humble Messiah.

Let's look at verse 5 and see what the prophecy says.

The prophecy from Zechariah says, say to the daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.

So Jesus displays this humility first and foremost out of a prophetic necessity.

Jesus sees and knows the scripture, of course, and knows this prophecy is about him.

He is the king, he is the one entering humbly.

And so, that's the first and foremost reason why Jesus is a humble Messiah, because it is what is foretold.

It is what has been foretold.

And so Jesus fulfills Zechariah's prophecy regarding being a humble king as well as by entering on a cult, just as we see in the prophecy.

Now to ride into town on a donkey was not kingly behavior.

Donkeys are not the trusted steed of the kings of nations.

If you want to be a king, you ride in a chariot or on top of a war horse.

You don't take the back of a donkey, much less a little baby donkey, a cult, unbroken cult donkey.

You don't do that if you are the king.

But Jesus is humble.

Our Savior is humble.

He does not change the script right here at the end of his life in the Holy Week.

He doesn't go from being humble all throughout his earthly ministry to then making this grandiose entry into Jerusalem.

He stays humble.

He's consistent from where he's been teaching.

In Matthew 11, he tells us that we can go rest in him because he is gentle and lowly or humble in heart.

In the Gospel of Mark, he tells us that he came to serve and not to be served.

This is not a kingly behavior to serve and not be served.

A king is served, right?

But our humble Messiah, our humble King Jesus, comes in the form of a humble, gentle, lowly servant riding on the back of a donkey.

Now, Keller, the man that I referenced earlier, said something in his Palm Sunday sermon that I really liked.

He said that Jesus was humble.

Jesus was humble, but he was in no way modest in his triumphal entry.

So that leads us to point B, which is that Jesus is a triumphant Messiah.

Jesus is a triumphant or a triumphal Messiah.

Just because Jesus is arriving by way of a humble donkey, just because he's been humble and low and servant-hearted in his entire earthly ministry up unto his death that we see on Good Friday, we can't forget the fact that he's literally marching into town of Jerusalem with the religious elites, with the Roman rulers, and letting everyone hear and know that he affirms that he is the Son of David, the coming Messiah, that is going to overturn everything and be the ultimate and supreme ruler of all.

Excuse me, guys, excuse me, guys.

So it's often popularized today to negate the fact that Jesus affirms himself as the Son of God and say, well, the Bible just teaches that Jesus was a really good moral teacher.

He never made claims that he'd be a savior of the world.

He never made claims to be the Son of God.

He was just a really good moral teacher.

And it was this moral teaching that was so contrary to the time that that is what outraged the authorities so much that they crucified Jesus.

Let me tell you, the Jesus that is just a good moral teacher is a Jesus that cannot save.

Jesus is more than a good moral teacher.

He is that son of David, and he is that Messiah that we see promised here in the scripture.

And I love this argument popularized by C.S.

Lewis.

He calls it the trilemma, so three problems, or the liar, lunatic, lord dilemma or argument.

And he said this about this notion.

I quote, I'm trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him, that is Jesus.

I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.

That is the one thing we must not say, claims Lewis.

A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.

He would either be a lunatic on the level with a man who says that he is a poached egg, or else he would be the devil of hell.

You must make your choice.

Either this man was and is the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.

You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God.

But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about him being a great human teacher.

He has not left that open to us.

He did not intend to.

Jesus, in his earthly ministry, in this triumphal entry, doesn't give us the option to say, that's a great teacher.

He taught me how to be kind, how to be loving, how to be joyful, and buck stops there.

The buck does not stop there.

Jesus is giving the choice.

Jesus is giving the option.

He says, and he gives the option to the original crowd.

He gives the claim that a coming Savior, excuse me, he left them with only one option, and that is to reject him as Lord or to accept him as Lord.

That's the only option they have left.

Not just a good teacher.

He's either Lord or He's not Lord.

Accept His Lordship, deny his lordship.

It's not a gray zone that Jesus has presented us.

It's a matter of black or white.

So he presented this choice to the crowd, lordship or not.

And this text presents the same thing to us.

This text presents us, picture ourselves as a part of the crowd now.

And so that leads us to the second point.

And that's the crowd, we're fickle worshipers.

The crowd, we're fickle worshipers.

I have to confess that Kirby and I really enjoy, Kirby's my wife, if you're a visitor.

Kirby and I really enjoy watching crime documentaries.

We really like seeing justice be served.

We really like seeing if we can figure out what happened before they get to telling us what happened.

And so we were watching one crime documentary recently where in the first story or first episode, they were talking to the alleged victim of a crime.

And they gave the most outlandish banana story that I've ever heard in my entire life, saying that somebody robbed them in a scuba suit or something like that, and that kidnapped someone and held her for ransom and all this banana stuff that I was like, there's no way this happened.

And so Kirby and I, after two episodes with our Sherlock Holmes caps on, were ready.

This was an inside job.

This was an inside job.

They hooked this all up themselves.

They want to get the ransom money for themselves because nobody gets robbed by somebody in a scuba suit and does all this stuff.

And so we were dead set to believe this after two episodes.

And then two more episodes showed.

And then you get the professionals who actually do this for a living in there, and they start talking about all the evidence that they actually found, and all of the, you know, electronic paper trail that they found.

And turns out that these people were indeed kidnapped and held for ransom by somebody that came into their home in a scuba suit.

And so it was like at first, Kirby and I were so set.

We were so convinced that we'd crack the case.

We considered not even watching the rest of the episodes.

We were like, what else are they going to talk about?

Because wrap it up.

Lock them up.

We got them.

And then two more episodes go by, and we were persuaded of otherwise.

After the evidence was all out on the table, we realized just how shaky the sand was in our personal, original verdict.

And so we see something similar in the crowd here.

The crowd was quick to acknowledge Jesus as the Son of David because of all they had seen and heard of his ministry.

This made them point A, willing worshipers.

They were at first willing worshipers, and they would turn out to be vocal adversaries.

Point B after persuasion.

I gave you two at one time, so I'll say it one more time.

At first they were willing worshipers.

After persuasion, they were vocal adversaries.

The problem wasn't necessarily with the crowd's declaration.

Remember, see, here in verse 9 through 10, I read, and the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest.

And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, Who is this?

And the crowd said, This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee.

We see here in this picture that the crowd is saying and doing all the right things.

They've affirmed his lordship over all, that he is the Messiah.

They are worshiping him with shouting and praising and singing.

They are laying down their garments on the ground for a donkey to tread upon.

They are waving palm branches, shouting, Hosanna, save us, the translation, pray or please save us.

They're saying all the right things, right?

But the problem wasn't with what the crowd was declaring, the problem was with their expectation.

Remember, over the span of a week, we go from this king's coronation to a king's resurrection with a crucifixion in the middle.

How in the span of a Sunday to a Friday do we go from worshiping someone as Lord to choosing a convicted murderer to go free while Jesus the innocent gets crucified?

They changed their mind over the course of a week because Jesus didn't appear to be the king that they wanted him to be.

The Jewish people were very short-sighted in their view and in their hope of what the Messiah would be.

And they overlooked the prophecy fulfilled and right before their eyes, like in verse 5, and instead they exchanged the humble king riding in on a donkey for the hope of a made-up, warlording Messiah that they hoped would charge in on a horse with a sword and overthrow the Roman government.

They're very short-sighted in their hope of what the Messiah would do.

Now, we must recognize that Rome was the global superpower at the time.

Rome had their handprint over all of the known world, so it seemed, at the time.

And yet the crowd scope of their salvation was still too narrow.

Jesus' mission was even bigger, even greater, even more vast than just to merely overthrow the Roman government.

Jesus is the Messiah.

He is the great ruler.

He reigns above it all, like we sang today.

And he submits all earthly powers under his feet.

And he ushers in a new heaven and a new earth, restoring all things to as they should have been, crushing sin once and for all through his death and resurrection.

Rome was a big thing to tackle in the mind of the Jewish people, but it wasn't the biggest obstacle standing in their way.

Because of this misconception of who Jesus is and what he would accomplish, the same crowd that worshipped him on Sunday is the same crowd that crucified him on Friday.

If you'd like to, you can turn with me to Matthew chapter 27.

Matthew 27 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 27, we're going to read verses 20 and 21.

Matthew 27 · chapter mention

Scripture says this.

The governor again said to them, Which of the two do you want me to release for you?

And they said Barabbas.

This text, Matthew 27, verses 20 and 21, is the condemnation of Jesus.

Matthew 27:20

Once again, the crowds were persuaded by the religious people.

This crowd of people, once again, still in Jerusalem, was the same crowd composed of the same people that worshipped him on the way in to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.

This is just a question of personal reflection that I'd like to pose to all of you who claim your trust and faith is in Jesus.

Are you deeply committed to your faith in Jesus?

In a world that tries to convince you that he is not what you need, are you steadfast in your faith that he is your greatest need?

I was convicted of this question.

I was convicted by this question during my study.

Once again, the people, I mean, it's hard to imagine, but seeing Jesus with your own two eyes, to be there, to have been the people that saw his miracles.

Bethany and Bethphage are where his best friends Lazarus, Mary and Martha were.

They'd seen some stuff, y'all, over there with Lazarus, I'll tell you.

And so these are the people that have seen those miracles.

They worshiped him, and yet they rejected him.

The book of Psalms says, prophesying once again about our Savior, that he truly was the stone that the builders rejected.

Here he is, your Messiah.

And yet they say, No, thank you.

And while we're at it, crucify him.

Give us a rabbis.

Even though he is the stone that the builders rejected, the scripture goes on to say that he has been made the cornerstone, the foundation of all things.

Which moves us further to our third point, which is that Jesus, the Messiah, requires our worship.

Jesus the Messiah requires our worship.

Our authentic worship, I might add.

I had already submitted my notes to uh Miss Heather, and she already had them hot off the press by like Tuesday.

And so I was like, should I text her and make her run 75 more copies of my sermon notes just to add the word authentic, or can I just say that?

And so I figured I'd just tell you if you want to put a little arrow up there.

Jesus the Messiah requires our authentic worship.

And I want to add that because we've seen shallow worship, right?

We've seen shallow worship in our own text.

We see Matthew chapter 21, verses 1 through 11, they start doing all the right things, apparently, and yet their worship isn't genuine because they've been persuaded to crucify Jesus.

Matthew 21:1–11

So Jesus the Messiah requires our authentic worship.

But what determines, what determines authentic worship?

Point A in your notes is our answer.

Our worship for who Jesus is and what he has done.

Our worship for who Jesus is and what he has done.

Like the crowd in our text, our worship of Jesus cannot be based on what we wish Jesus is or what we wish he would do as conjured up by our own hopes and ambitions.

Our worship must be based on who Jesus is and what he has done.

Like we discussed before, Jesus made his intentions abundantly clear by the nature of his triumphal entry.

But the crowd were too concerned about their own ideas about the Messiah to notice.

Jesus made clear what he intended to do.

Jesus made clear that he was the Messiah and he was going to overturn everything and submit everything under his feet.

And the people who were face to face with him were the ones that missed it.

Because they were too busy mulling over the idea of a made-up Messiah.

And I can promise you, as someone who's fallen victim to a false messiah, nothing that you can conjure up in your mind is greater than the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

Who Jesus is and what he has done and promises that he has said he will do have all been fulfilled by Scripture.

We need not to add or subtract from that.

Finally, as I begin to close, I might grow long-winded, we'll see if that happens.

But finally, in point B, our worship begins with faith and repentance.

Begins with faith and repentance.

If we revisit C.S.

Lewis's trilemma, just a personal question: Who do you say that Jesus is?

Who do you say that Jesus is?

Is he a liar?

Is he a lunatic?

Or is he Lord?

In today's passage, Jesus has made it abundantly clear.

Abundantly clear what he says he is.

Jesus has made plain his case that he is Lord and King over all things.

That he is the Son of David.

That he is the Savior of the world.

He would go on from this text to prove that in continuation by going to the cross.

By dying on that cross for our sins.

And for having power over death, resurrecting from the dead three days later.

He has proved it from our text today.

He goes on to prove it further in our text that we'll be going over, I bet, probably next week, that Jesus goes down into death, but it's not powerful enough to hold him.

And he resurrects from the dead so that all that come to faith and trust in him will be saved.

He has invited you to this salvation.

Like we said, he didn't come discreetly saying, Hey, by the way, I'm the Messiah.

He came in boldly, triumphantly, inviting, saying, I am.

I am the Messiah.

I am the Son of David, the one that comes to take away the sins of the world, the one that comes to serve, not to be served.

And he has served you in his life on earth, in his death on the cross, and in his resurrection.

Will you accept him as Lord?

Don't delay.

Don't say I'll believe that one day.

Don't say I want to mull it over.

If God is inviting you, you can know that the check is signed, sealed, delivered for your salvation.

There's nothing for you to do, no way for you to measure up, no way for you to climb the ladder towards God because I'll let you know that ladder is broken.

No matter how many steps you repair, they will continue to break, and you will never, ever, ever, ever ascend to the throne of God under your own will and accord.

And our Savior, who knew that, went to great lengths out of love for you.

That's what this holy week is all about.

He went to all those great lengths to glorify the Father and to save you.

If you are within earshot of my voice and you wonder, I don't know if he's invited me.

On behalf of our Lord today, he is inviting all of you.

If you're listening online, he is inviting all of you.

Will you accept him as Lord over your life?

Will you accept him as Lord over your life?

You need a Lord and you need a Savior because of your sin.

I need a Lord over my life and I need a savior because of my sin.

Pastor Rick, Pastor Dave, Pastor Benji, all the pastors, all the best Christians you know need a Lord and a Savior because of their sin.

Sin is disobedience or a straying away from the will of the Lord, and because of that sin that is present in the hearts of all men, of all people, we need a Savior.

And the only Savior faithful to save is Jesus.

Faith and repentance.

Faith in repentance was our point.

That's faith.

What's repentance?

Repentance is a turning away from our sin.

In the kids' department, if you don't know, I'm the children's family pastor over there.

I always use Weston Wright because I want the kids to see the same kid when I do this illustration every time.

I have Weston get on stage, that's Rick Wright's son, our pastor, and he walks towards one direction.

And I tell him to go, go, go, go, go.

And I let him know that repentance is when Weston decides to turn around.

Stop going that direction and go the other way.

We don't just stop where we are.

We don't slow down heading this direction.

We stop, we repent, turn from our sins, and we pursue obedience to Christ.

I don't want to glance over faith and repentance.

Like it's just some simple or easy, trivial thing to do.

This life is full of suffering.

We've seen from our text today, this life is full of persuasion the other direction.

You need go no further than turning on the news to see what is pulling the other direction from Christ.

Families are being pulled away from Christ.

Media is pulling away from Christ.

Entertainment's pulling away from Christ.

Everything is pulling at your heart for something.

Everything is asking for you to claim it as a liar, a lunatic, or as Lord.

Like C.S.

Lewis poses.

And I pray that we will call the lunacy in our day as it is.

And I pray that we will claim to be Lord what is Lord, and that is Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

We can be all too quick to point at the crowd in Matthew 21 and try to take ourselves away from it and say, look at how bad those people were.

Where there are people in our midst today who have heard the counsel of the Lord and what he has done to save, who still haven't come to Christ.

Before you came to Christ, if you are in the Lord, guess what you were before you came to the Lord?

You were a member of the crowd, a rejecter of Jesus.

Maybe you worship Jesus with hollow words until you came to a true faith in Christ in a later stage of life.

I don't know your personal story, but I know.

I know that Jesus is our Lord.

And that great joy and blessing awaits those that accept him as their Savior.

When you lose your job, will you still worship and have faith in Jesus for who he is and what he's done?

When the diagnosis isn't what you wanted, will you still worship and praise Jesus for who he is and what he has done?

When you lose a loved one, will you still worship Jesus for who he is and what he has done?

It's a short list of hard things that everyone in this room has been touched by, no doubt.

But I was reading Charles Spurgeon last night before I went to bed, and I was just, I was nervous.

That's why I read.

I normally don't read before I go to sleep because I'll just fall unconscious just about.

But I was reading last night for some comfort, and I paraphrased him when he said something along these lines.

He said that if you have no earthly blessing, if your time on earth receives nothing of joy, of peace, of financial prosperity, of health, of anything, if you receive no earthly gift, which is actually seldom the case, it's actually seldom the case.

I would say just as many people that have been harmed by things of this world or things that have happened, just as many could raise their hand and say that they have experienced a tremendous blessing in this life from the Lord.

But let's just imagine if you experience no joy, no blessing on this side of heaven, it is still worth it all to spend forever free from sin with Jesus.

Eternity without Jesus is not worth a time on earth that's fun and easy.

Jesus has died to secure a bigger scope, a bigger picture.

Not just defeating Rome, not just giving us pleasure on this side of eternity.

Jesus has died and resurrected to secure joy forevermore.

Pain free forevermore, blessing forevermore, worship forevermore, praise forevermore to the ruler of all who has subverted everything underneath his feet.

Because the fact of the matter is that Jesus, in spite of the rejection, in spite of the unjust death sentence, he went to the cross to secure your faith and your freedom from sin forever.

I close with the question: Who do you believe this Jesus of the Bible is?

We're excited you joined us for today's message.

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Thank you again for joining us on the CCW podcast.

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