Sermon: Don't Give the Stones a Chance!

Julius: The Holy Gospel, according to Luke chapter 19, beginning at verse 37. As Jesus was approaching the slope of the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the miracles they had seen, saying, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. Some of the Pharisees from the crowd said to him, Teacher, rebuke your disciples, he replied. I tell you, if these people would be silent, the stones would cry out. The gospel of the Lord. Praise be to you, O Christ. Grace, mercy, and peace are yours from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. We pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. The words of the song were profound, but nobody believed them. A few years ago, when I was studying in Germany for a year, I was in the professional city choir in the city of Leipzig, where Johann Sebastian Bach was a composer, and we sang a lot of his songs. And one of the songs we got to sing was his Christmas Oratorio, a famous glorious Christmas song. And it starts with glorious Christmas praise. Jauchet dem Herrn Fro Lochet Hochpreisetage. Praise the Lord, rejoice, rejoice, rise up to sing this day. Glorious words, followed up by a song using the words of Luke chapter 2, talking about Christmas, Jesus coming down to earth, the Son of God, taking on human flesh to come and live for us and eventually die for us and save us. And so we sang, Praise the Lord, for that. And in this choir of 60 or so people. I was the only one who believed it. After a year in the choir I was saying goodbye to everyone, coming back to the United States, and I said, Well, I hope to see you again in this life, but if not, I hope to see you in the next. They all laughed at what a funny joke that was. Because we all know there isn't an afterlife. They were singing the words, but they didn't believe it. I don't think any of us are sitting here thinking, praise to the Lord the Almighty. Okay, we don't believe those words. They're just they're just pretty to sing. We're Christians. But we can sing the words even with all our physical heart without having our spiritual heart in it, can't we? Praise to the Lord the Almighty, that was the first hymn. Praise to the Lord the Almighty. my soul, praise him. That's what matters. my soul, praise him. He is your health and salvation. Let all who hear now to his temple draw near in joyful adoration. There's a reason we have to encourage ourselves to do that. my soul, come along with me. Because it's so easy to just say the words without thinking about them. It's hardly even intentional half the time. Just daydreaming. Maybe I'm tired. Should be instead of coming to the Lord's temple in joyful adoration, sometimes we come in sleepy resignation. Words are there, but where's the heart? I wonder where the heart was on Palm Sunday. Luke chapter 19, Jesus riding into Jerusalem on this donkey, humble to bring us salvation, and people are putting palm branches in front of him and coats, and it is a party, and everybody is singing, especially the children. They're all crying out and praising the Lord, and they are using good words. Words from Psalm 118, a messianic psalm prophesying Jesus, the cornerstone that the builders would reject. Here he is. And so they're singing, here's the king. The one promised, the one who will come and save us from our sins. And they're singing that. But are they really thinking about what they're saying? Because just a couple days later, when Jesus is fulfilling those words, not just as a party king, not just as a king that makes everything seem wonderful all the time, but as a humble king, a king for the dark, a king who is willing to suffer and die. crowd is nowhere to be seen and there's no song to be sung. Did they realize that when they were singing on Sunday, they were singing about what was gonna happen on Friday? At least the Pharisees are paying attention to the song. You have to give them that much. They say, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. And Jesus replies, I tell you, if these people would be silent, the stones would cry out. Teacher, rebuke your disciples. Why do they say that? Because they're paying attention to the words. Well, they know what everybody's saying. They're saying this is the promised Son of God. This is the Savior. This is the king, which means he's our king. And they didn't like that. They didn't like other things Jesus said too. Jesus came into the world and what did he say? Repent of your sins and trust in the good news that I have come to forgive your sins. That's it. Come into my gracious kingdom. And they said, What now? I need to repent of my sins? No, I'm pretty good. Maybe those people, but me, Jesus? Are you looking to are you talking to me? They didn't like that. So they say, Teacher, stop this song, stop this singing. Well we don't want to be like the Pharisees, but we do like to be the king of our own hearts. So there's a little bit of that in us, in our sinful nature, where we say, Jesus, are you gonna be the king of my life? When his words come into our lives and they say, You have to do this, you have to repent of that and we go, Wait, whoa, whoa, who's in charge here? Jesus rides in on Palm Sunday, and people are not praising him perfectly. So why does he come? Why does he come for people who are gonna stop singing the second he starts suffering? We're gonna tell him to be quiet whenever his words come up against what they want. Why does he come? Well, because Jesus doesn't come for the applause. Jesus comes for you. That's why he came. Jesus knew he was coming into a world of fair weather fans. Jesus knew he was coming to people who would never be able to praise him perfectly because of their sin. That's why he came. He knew that the Father's standards are so high because he is so holy. And the only way we can earn our way to be with him forever in the afterlife is to praise him perfectly our whole life long. And we can't do that, and we deserve not that glorious afterlife praising God. But the eternal grumble of hell where all we think about is ourself and our little kingdom and all of God's glorious, praiseworthy blessings are gone. Jesus wanted those for us, for people who didn't deserve it. And so he comes, even though they'll stop singing. He comes to die. That's why he came as a humble king, so that he could be rejected, so that he could suffer, so that he could die to forgive our sins on the cross and sing the loneliest song there all by himself. My God, why have you forsaken me? He's saying that by himself, so you don't have to. The Lord will never forsake you. And in a way, when Jesus died, the stones did cry out. Do you remember what happens? Jesus cries out, It is finished. I've saved them all, I've forgiven them all. He cries out, he entrusts his spirit to the Lord, he bows his head and dies, and the earth shakes, and tombstones split open, and people emerge back from the dead as if to cry: Jesus has won and conquered sin and the devil and death. This grave is open, your grave will open, heaven is open for you. And Jesus proved it without a doubt three days later when he rose again from the dead and put song back in the mouth of his disciples, who can now properly sing some other words from Psalm 118: I will not die but live and proclaim what the Lord has done. We will. It's just what happens. Notice Jesus doesn't demand praise here. He just says it's gonna happen. Because what happens when wonders happen? Praise happens. Think about if you're a big baseball fan and you're in stadium and the pressure is mounting and the pitcher's doing really well, and then he does it, he pitches the no-hitter. What does the audience do? They stand, they applaud, they cheer. Why? Because the pitcher told them to? No, because they witnessed something amazing. At the end of a concert, when that song is played just right and everybody heard it. And they were with rapt attention, but then it stops. People stand and give a standing ovation and say bravo and say more. Why? Because they have to? No. Because of how wonderful it is. When a child does something they've never done before, you say, Wow! When a friend finishes the race, you pat them on the back. Why? Why do we praise? Because it's all part of the experience. We might say it's an additional gift. And so when Jesus is saying, if these people are quiet, the stones will cry out, he's just saying, Do you know what I'm doing here? This this plan of salvation? What I'm doing here is so amazing. Trust me, somebody's gonna clap. And it may as well be us. Jesus today is coming to us again as our humble King, riding into our hearts through word and sacrament. You know what happens when that happens? We sing, we praise. And yes, we do the best we can, the best organ you can do, the best singing you can do. Why do we do that? Because of the heart. Because of the most important part. The heart that knows and trusts Jesus came for me. For me. And so if Jesus says, if I don't say anything, the stones are going to cry out, I'm going to say, well, I'm not going to give them the chance. Because Jesus didn't come for the stones. He came to save you and guarantee you the joy of praising Him for salvation now and forever. Amen.

Luke 19 · chapter mention Luke 2 · chapter mention Luke 19 · chapter mention