Perpetual Misunderstandings

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek takes us through his series on the book of Matthew called

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Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Recast Church.

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How's everybody doing this morning? You guys doing all right? Looks like the sun is out. It's going to be a good morning.

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So, I hope you guys have all had a great week, and I hope you have had opportunities to see

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God working in your life, in the good and the bad. A couple of just brief announcements here. There's a family meeting that's going to be happening tonight, so what time is that?

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It's from 5 o 'clock to 6 o 'clock. We're going to be meeting right out here in this space, so if you regularly attend

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Recast, and this is kind of what you're calling your home church, then we encourage you to come out to that. It's kind of the area in the format in which we gather together to pray over the different things that are going on, and it's a way to become informed about stuff that's going on at the church.

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I'll be giving a report, and the different staff will be giving reports about what's going on in their areas of ministry, so take advantage of that.

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I hope to have a good group out here, and then also a reminder that the community groups are starting up here, and even if you haven't signed up for those, it's not too late, and so just contact

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Spencer at spencerrecastchurch .com, and you can contact him there, and he can get you plugged in on that.

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So, again, I hope that you've walked through this week with God through the ups and downs. I hope that you've grown in your faith.

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I hope you've connected to others in community in whatever way possible, and I hope you've even had a chance to sharpen your skills in serving one another.

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I believe that each week God gives us opportunities, whether we have eyes to see them and we have the will to take advantage of them,

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God gives us opportunities every week to grow in our faith, grow in community, and grow in service, and one of those very important opportunities is this gathering, and so we're here.

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I hope that your heart is here with the intention of investing in your own faith, of growing in faith, and then also looking around and seeing that you're a part of a community.

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There are others here who love Jesus that are walking with him, too, and so this morning we're going to come to God's word.

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His word is powerful. Anybody say amen to that, that God's word is powerful? Has it had an impact in your life? Has it changed you?

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His word is living and active, and the Scriptures tell us that the very words of God are living and active, and I want to stretch that metaphor just a little bit this morning for a moment before we read our text, thinking about God's word being alive and living and breathing.

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The word of God breathes, and I liken that to some sections of Scripture are like an exhale.

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They are out towards the world. They have an outward focus, and it's towards the outward world that the word's seeking to impact and change the world through our obedience to commands and rules and things that God desires of us.

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This would be a text like last week, where we saw Jesus respond to desperate people, two desperate blind individuals, and it was easy then that we could follow the pattern of Jesus and even talk in terms of some very specific things that we need to be doing.

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We need to stop and give attention to others we saw last week. We need to listen to them. We need to feel with them, with sympathy.

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We need to offer healing, which is really, at the end of the day, the gospel that we have to provide to people, and then we need to enlist them as followers of Christ.

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It was a passage last week that was pretty straightforward in application. It's pretty easy to understand what

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God desires of us from a passage like that, right? How many of you like passages like that? You like to come to God's word and then walk away with a bit of a to -do list.

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Anybody lean more in that direction? I think I'm that way. I think many of us are. Then when we come to a text like the one we're looking at this morning, as I read it, it's going to become apparent that there are not easy handles to grab a hold of.

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What I mean by that is we can understand what Jesus is doing in this text. The question is, what do we do about it?

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It becomes a little bit more tricky and a little bit more difficult for us to figure out how do we apply this text to our lives.

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Are we supposed to go out and buy a donkey too? Are we supposed to go on a trip to Jerusalem and march in riding on a donkey?

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What are we supposed to do with a text like this so -called triumphal entry that we're looking at here today?

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It's not simple. Go do these things to obey. Instead, I would say that the living word is seeking this week to not exhale but to inhale, to breathe in.

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It's setting forth the foundational beliefs for us as a body of believers in Jesus Christ.

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It's seeking to bolster our faith and strengthen us internally. How many of you know you need those seasons?

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It's not all just go out and do, but you need seasons of building into your own life, of breathing in God's word and being strengthened and built up so that then you have some information about how to go out and live.

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Some passages of scripture give us marching orders, but others give us the reason and rationale for why we march in the first place.

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You get what I'm saying? That's one of these. This is one of those passages here bolstering us and building up our faith.

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This so -called triumphal entry of Jesus is informative to us. It's significant for what it indicates to be true about our

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Savior, about Jesus Christ. I'm saying this here at the start of this message because I'm convinced that we develop an appetite for to -do lists.

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We develop an appetite for a certain flavor of scripture. Just tell me what to do and I'll go on my way. Then we encounter a passage like this or encounter large chunks of scripture that are like this that are informative.

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The main application is to change our thinking and we go, I can skip that and hurry across that to get to the good stuff, the stuff that really challenges me.

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We prefer the straightforward texts that are easy to apply to our lives directly. We expect every sermon to be a message.

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It looks like three steps to being a better dad or five ways to be a better student. You can think of all the different ways that you would categorize sermons that you like and they give you the to -do list.

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But in his gospel here, Matthew, Matthew is writing to us and he says, let's pull up here and let's take a break from us for a minute.

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Let's watch our Savior come into the city. Let's take in the crowds with our imagination.

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Let's calm down a minute from our busy doing and let's watch him.

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Let's wrestle with our own identity, I mean, our own thoughts about his identity, about who he is, about who our

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Savior is, about who is Jesus Christ. And let's allow the way he enters into Jerusalem to add further depth to our understanding of our

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Lord and Savior. So, if you're not already there, open your Bibles please to Matthew chapter 21 verses 1 through 11.

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And again, this is the living and breathing powerful word of God that wants to breathe life into us, that wants to breathe into our hearts a change in the way that we view

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God and our Savior. So let's listen in. Now, when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethpage to the

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Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples saying to them, go into the village in front of you and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her.

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Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, the Lord needs them.

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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 foal of a beast of burden.

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The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks and he sat on them.

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Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.

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And the crowds that went before him that followed him were shouting, Hosanna to the son of David.

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Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. And when he entered

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Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up saying, who is this? And the crowd said, this is the prophet

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Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your grace and your mercy that gives us moments of pause, that gives us texts like this where we can breathe in for just a moment and hear in the gathering of your people here in this context to see

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Jesus Christ, see him working on our behalf toward our salvation, see him fulfilling prophecies, see him in his humility, see him in even his willingness to be misunderstood by the crowds to see him in a situation where he's received the best that humans can offer here and it's not that much.

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So father, I pray that you would open our hearts and open our eyes to our savior who has loved us deeply, who has loved us with a will to come here and live in this sin encrusted place, this place that is just hard and gnarled and broken, even in our very hearts.

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Thank you for the loosening that you're doing in our hearts, the way that you're taking out those hearts of stone and replacing them with hearts of flesh that beat for you, that love you, that want to honor you.

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And father, I pray that from hearts that are being transformed, we would lift up our praises to you at this time. Father, that you would be honored, that you would be glorified in this time that we have together and that we would be transformed and changed because we encounter you through your word.

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In Jesus name, amen. Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated, get comfortable, as comfortable as possible.

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And if you need to, if you need to get up at any time, you can feel free to do that.

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And then also keep your Bibles open to Matthew chapter 21, verses one through 11. So you could just follow along in that,

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Matthew 21, one through 11 is our text. And if you notice, like in my Bible, right next to the number 21 there, it says the triumphal entry.

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And the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem is a pretty ironic title for this section of scripture, primarily because it preserves some of the very misunderstandings that Jesus is trying to avoid and they're preserved here in this title.

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Some of the very things he's trying to do to make sure that we don't see this as a triumphal entry is ironic that we would then call it that down through the ages.

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And that's why I've been saying kind of the so -called triumphal entry. We'll get there as we go through this text. But to understand what's going on here in this text requires us to understand a couple of things about the life of Jesus and the expectations of the

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Jewish culture of his time. What's going on here? It's a little bit rare. It's a little bit strange that he's riding a donkey into Jerusalem and they're laying down palm fronds, shouting at him and Jerusalem gets a little bit disturbed about it.

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And that's the end of the story. And so what's going on here? Well, first of all, throughout the

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Gospels you have to understand that Jesus discouraged people from referring to him openly as Messiah.

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Now there's recordings of people calling him the Messiah or the Son of God and he would regularly say, it's not my time yet.

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Be quiet. Be quiet about that. Don't go spreading that. Don't spread the word that I'm the Messiah yet. It's not my time.

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And the reason for that secrecy likely had two interrelated reasons that we see as kind of themes throughout all four of the

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Gospels. And really the three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there's a big theme of this going on in those three

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Gospels. The reason for that secrecy, the first is simply that he was working a timeline.

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He's got a timeline of events that he's intentionally orchestrating. He had ministry to accomplish, things to do before his sacrifice.

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So he paced his revelation, the revelation of his identity, so that the knowledge of his identity would peak in this final week of his life, which by the way, chapter 21 through chapter 28 all occurs in his final week.

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So we're now entering the final week of Christ, a large chunk of the Gospel of Matthew dedicated to the things that he did in his final week of his life.

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And the second reason that's kind of related to that is that he kept his identity secret due to misunderstandings about the nature of who the

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Messiah would be and what kind of Messiah they were looking for. Think about it though fairly, it's really clear from the

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Old Testament prophecies that the chosen one would come to save his people. That's part and parcel of what they were looking for as a people when they thought a

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Messiah, when they thought about the one that was predicted to come in the future from the Old Testament, he was going to be a savior.

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And it would make sense that the oppressed and occupied Jews during this time imagined and told stories to their kids about this victorious, militaristic

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Messiah that was to come and would finally be the one who would liberate his people, would be the idea.

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And you can imagine parents and grandparents passing these stories down generation to generation of the

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Old Testament and how God was going to bring forth a mighty conqueror who he was going to send to give liberty to his people.

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And so certainly in that context where they were looking for somebody to oust the filthy

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Gentile Roman occupiers, they were an occupied people during this time, their territory was occupied, they didn't have their own standing military, they had the

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Romans marching the streets and policing them and telling them what they can and can't do and all of that.

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Can you imagine what it would be like to live in that context with the hope that there was going to be a military leader who was going to be raised up to set you free?

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Can you imagine that? Go ahead and raise your hand if you can picture that kind of hope that they have in that generation and in that society.

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But that wasn't God's plan during this era. This wasn't what God meant by save his people in the

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Old Testament. The Messiah was coming first to save his people from sin and he will come again to exercise final and ultimate victory.

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In other words, he comes the first time riding on a donkey. In Revelation, we went through the book of Revelation a couple of years ago as a church and those are all online if you want to listen to me walking through the book of Revelation, but we saw him there in the future.

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He's going to come back, not on a donkey, but riding a white war horse, but not this first time.

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This first time riding on a donkey. One further and important cultural observation that comes to bear on our understanding is the cultural divide between North and South in Israel, something that we're probably not regularly aware of.

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We recognize a little bit of divide North and South here and stuff like that, but Galilee in the North was considered the backwater, uneducated area.

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The North was the uneducated area, the backwater, they had an accent and all of that. They were looked down on for their accent and further for their distance from the religious life of big city

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Jerusalem. All of the who's who of Judaism were in Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin, the central hub of the religious life and laws and rules and all that came out of Jerusalem, out and so outward spread out like a spoke and like ripples out to these outer areas like Galilee.

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It's very unlikely, hear me carefully, because you've probably heard this said many times, it's very unlikely that these crowds that surrounded

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Jerusalem here in this text are the very same crowds that later in the week are going to shout crucify him.

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Now there may be some overlap, we know that people are people and so at the end of the day it's likely that maybe some of these

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Galileans that are here in this crowd filtered down into the temple precinct while they were and maybe they were in that crowd, but these are primarily

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Galilean outsiders to Jerusalem that are there welcoming in their prophet, welcoming in and shouting and getting attention for their guy from Galilee.

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I mean how many of you have noticed that you can have somebody that's out of favor, but as soon as you're in a different area, you build him up.

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He's from Michigan, right? We might even boast about some people, she's from Michigan, Madonna's from Michigan.

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You can think of some people that are from Michigan and you go, yeah, she's from Michigan. Do you really want that? Like when you really think about it, are you really glad for that or is that a, do you get what

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I'm saying? And so they weren't necessarily excited about Jesus when he was in Galilee, but now when they're marching into Jerusalem, they're like, he's our boy, he's our guy.

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Are you getting what's going on here in this text? They're kind of building him up despite the fact that they haven't necessarily followed everything that he says, but some of these people are indeed followers.

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Some of these people in these crowds would be genuine disciples of Jesus. They want to live like him. They want to honor him.

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They want to follow him. And certainly the 12 disciples are in this crowd as well. But here in this text, he's being paraded by the

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Galileans as their special miracle working prophet. You see at the very end of the end of the text in the last verse, but this whole scenario is a large crowd who's been following Jesus up from Galilee to Jerusalem for Passover and they're making a big deal about him.

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And so Jesus knew, Jesus knew and declared to us openly that Jerusalem and her religious elites were not going to accept him.

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As a matter of fact, he talked about them mocking him, flogging him and crucifying him.

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That's the expectation that he has when he gets to Jerusalem. And even our text this morning in verse 10 shows that the city itself,

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Jerusalem, didn't even know who this man was. He's barely known there. All they knew was that he was coming into Jerusalem like Aladdin's arrival into Agrabah.

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And so they're kind of like, okay, who is this guy? Who is this Prince Ali? Who is this Jesus that's coming in and marching into the town?

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So after 16 miles of walking up the road that gains 3000 feet of elevation from basically

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Jericho all the way up into Jerusalem, everybody in his entourage would be a bit tired. And yet Jesus set a plan in motion and you've got to notice that it's

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Jesus's plan. This is his plan. He initiates this. He's the one who's in charge and in verse one, he enlists two of his very tired disciples to run into Bethpage, a small town, which is really a small settlement just to the east of Jerusalem.

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It is so close to Jerusalem that it would be fair to call it the burbs. And he gave specific instructions.

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He says, go into town and you're going to immediately, as you come into town, you're going to immediately notice a donkey and her young colt tied up with her.

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Go snag those, bring them to me and I'll do the rest. Now and he says further, if they challenge you for shoplifting or I don't know if you call it shoplifting if you steal a donkey or if you call it donkey napping or whatever.

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I mean, I don't know what the words are there, but he says, if you're accused of taking and stealing this donkey, just tell them the

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Lord needs them and the owner will send them at once.

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Now that's predictive prophecy that Jesus is issuing here. He's literally saying this is how it's going to go down.

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If somebody challenges you, you tell them this and then they will respond from their heart and they'll let you have it. And the way that Jesus uses the phrase, the

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Lord needs them. It's not a phrase that's generic. Now sometimes you see Lord and it just really at the end of the day, without that definite article the in front of it, it really just means sir or master or something like that.

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And so he isn't saying to the owners of the donkey, go tell them that the Lord needs them or a

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Lord needs them or a master, not just some routine ruler or some bigwig needs them, but rather what he's implying here is that God himself needs these two donkeys right now.

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God needs them. And what Jesus is doing by this phrase, he's tying what is happening here to the very purposes of his father, the very purposes of the almighty.

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What's happening here is significant and it goes beyond his tired feet and I just need a donkey to ride in.

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What he's about to do is the plan of God himself. And for the owner of the donkeys to agree is to serve the very purposes of God in that moment.

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The Lord needs them. Okay, you can have them. Now I don't recommend that you try this. Again, this passage is not an act just like Jesus text.

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It's rather a watch Jesus to know who he is and what he wants to say of himself kind of passage.

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You know, walking out of Myers with a box of Twinkies that you haven't paid for is not going to go well for you and it's probably going to go even worse if talking to the security in the parking lot, you say, the

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Lord needs them. Like that's going to be weird, okay? You might end up with not just a little bit of jail time, but a psych eval too, right?

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But don't try that. Just pay for the Twinkies, okay? So verse four explains this strange behavior of Jesus.

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This is all for a specific purpose to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet.

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And it's a specific prophet. I'm sure you just study him all the time. I'm sure you're very familiar with Zechariah, right?

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And you're just, Zechariah is my favorite book of the Bible or whatever. But in Zechariah 9, 9, this is all laid out for us.

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The king coming into Jerusalem, humble riding on a donkey, messianic prophecy of the one who is to come.

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And the fact that Jesus intentionally, think about this, Jesus intentionally set out with the purpose to fulfill this

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Old Testament prophecy in Zechariah 9, 9. And that might disturb some people.

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The fact that Jesus is going around trying to fulfill prophecy, it could look at first glance, right? Like he is just trying to manufacture circumstances to make him look like the

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Messiah. Do you hear what I'm saying? It's all written for him, so he just goes out and he acts a certain way so that everybody will think that he's the

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Messiah. And so in this text, I just want to point out that we're faced with two viable options, really reasonable options regarding what

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Jesus is doing here in this text. Either Jesus was the Messiah and he's working a plan to fulfill

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Old Testament prophecy, that's option one. Or option two, he is not the

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Messiah and he's intentionally trying to trick people into thinking that he is. Well, one of these options shows a good man doing his father's will.

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The other shows a megalomaniac doing a bad thing to deceive the world. So who is

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Jesus? Who is Jesus? I think most of us here have decided what we think about Jesus, but then let me encourage you to allow this very passage to add a more firm foundation to your convictions.

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He says he's fulfilling prophecy. By this, he's saying, I am the

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Messiah. I am the King coming into Jerusalem. And you are seeing it here in this passage, and those present were seeing it with their own eyes, and they got the implications of it.

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But in verse five, we see the quote from Zechariah 9 .9, and in doing this, he shows himself to be the prophesied coming

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King. But meanwhile, he's intentionally arriving as in the form that the prophet said that the

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Messiah would come in. How? In humility, mounted on a donkey, a young male donkey specifically, and a donkey that according to Mark and Luke's account of this very story, tells us it's never been ridden before.

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This is a young, immature donkey that's not been broken yet, and he's going to ride it into Jerusalem. The disciples did what

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Jesus told them to do. These two disciples, tired as they might have been there, they go into town. They do exactly, and we don't even know if they had to give the passcode, the

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Lord needs them or not, but they show up with a mama donkey and her little donkey son. And they cover the donkeys with their cloaks, and Jesus sat on those cloaks.

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Now, I agree with all four commentaries here that I read this week that Matthew, who is very familiar with the way to ride a donkey, is not trying to paint a circus sideshow of Jesus riding on two donkeys at one time.

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That's not what's going on here. The mother is along, likely brought along intentionally to comfort the little guy who's going to bear the king of kings through the streets, busy shouting, all of that stuff, and so mama is there.

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He's never been ridden, and the them in verse seven can also be understood as the cloaks, so that when he says, when

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Matthew records for us that he sat on them, don't think that he sat on both donkeys, he sat on them, the cloaks that the people put on the donkeys.

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And all four other gospel writers highlight only the one young donkey, because that one stood out as the one that he rode on, and I think that it's quite likely one commentator brought something out that was interesting to me, and I just pass it along to you.

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Matthew was more detailed, obviously, in his account, and he records both donkeys. One commentator said it's quite likely that maybe

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Matthew was one of the two that actually went to get the donkey, so it stuck out in his mind a little bit more, and the account would have been more close to his recollection, and therefore he records both donkeys for us, because he was there trying to lead them through the streets back to Jesus so that they could do this thing.

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But now here comes the main misunderstandings. Most of the crowd, it says in the text, spread their cloaks out on the road, a very large crowd, by the way, that's a way to interpret that phrase there.

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Most of the very large crowd spread their cloaks out on the road, and others cut branches from the trees, these would be palm trees, palm fronds, according to one of the other gospels, cut the palm branches down and spread them on the road.

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What's going on here? Why would you do that? We talk about this on Palm Sunday, right, and almost every year the little kids will wave palm branches or do different things in different churches, but it's been recorded in some non -biblical accounts from this very era, a book called the

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Apocrypha, books that kind of are more history, they're not scripture, but they actually tie into the actual events going on during biblical times.

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There's a couple of recordings and a couple of books called Maccabees, and it basically explains that this was a behavior done for a victorious military king or leader who's coming into his town.

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What do you do when all of your military are out and you don't know, you don't have internet, they can't reply back, you don't have the news, you don't have anybody reporting how the battle's going out there, and then they come back, trumpets blaring, we were victorious, and people come out in the streets and they lay down palm branches and lay down their cloaks for the military leader to come through on parade, and that's what they would do.

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So that what we see going on here is the image of them thinking, the crowd's thinking, here is our victor, here is the one who's going to provide us final victory over these filthy

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Romans. This is the first and fundamental misunderstanding of what's going on here in this text.

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And I don't know about you, but when I read this account, I think of the people who spread their cloaks on the manure covered ground,

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I think they got the raw end of the deal. I would have been team palm branch, anybody with me? I mean if that's an option, if that's an option, either throw my shirt down so that he can ride over it, or cut off a branch from a tree and I'm going that way, right?

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But think about it, they're welcoming him in as a victorious military leader.

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That comes with all kinds of expectations on Jesus. But Jesus takes the intentionally humble stance of riding on a donkey.

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Donkeys didn't usually tread over those palm fronds. Donkeys usually didn't tread over people's cloaks.

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It was usually a war horse with a powerful, mighty leader riding into town.

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And instead, he intentionally follows Zechariah and says, no, in humility, I'm coming into this city in humility riding on a donkey.

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Jesus doesn't silence them, however, but he is showing them something different from what he is doing than what they are doing.

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They're doing something different. They're doing something that's misunderstanding what his actions are showing and intended to show.

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They want this to be the start of a revolution. He wants them to be able to reflect back on this event later down the road as one more case study in his showing meekness, in his showing humility.

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Well, in this context, the crowds all took up a chant as the donkey cuts this unimpressive line through the crowds.

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And the first word that they say is an amazing translation, hosanna.

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I don't know why it's not translated. It's funny, sometimes we just don't translate the word. I think maybe it just becomes a routine so that now over the course of time, people like to shout hosanna instead of the translation, but the translation is save now, save now, save now, save now.

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That's what the crowds are shouting as Jesus rides this donkey into town. What do they mean by that?

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What do you think they mean by that? Conquer the Romans now. Set it up now, man.

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Let's get this. Let's roll. I think if Jesus stands up and pulls out a sword, it goes down right there.

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They're ready for that. That's what their expectation is. Save now, son of David. Save now, Messiah.

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We see you as the Messiah. Do it. Save us. Set us free.

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Blessed is this guy who is coming in the name of the Almighty God, in the name of the Lord.

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They're quoting the messianic expectations from Psalm 118. I encourage you maybe this week, go back and read

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Psalm 118 if you're looking for something kind of encouraging about the Messiah coming in. Again, they shout, save now to the highest.

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Hosanna in the highest. What does that mean? Save to the highest heavens. In other words, save completely.

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Save thoroughly is the gist of Hosanna in the highest. Save completely,

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Jesus. They don't mean ... I want you to think about this. I don't believe for a second that those people in that crowd meant, save me from my sin.

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How misunderstood is Jesus? Is he still misunderstood today in the same light?

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Save me, Jesus. Give me wealth. Save me, Jesus. Give me my health back. Save me, Jesus. Give me my spouse back.

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Save me, Jesus. Give my kids health. Whatever it might be, but we'll shout, save now, and we don't mean our sin.

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Our deepest need is not on our radar often when we think, save now.

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The crowds most likely in this context are crying out for insurrection. They want the

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Romans out. This huge crowd from Galilee has been around Jesus just long enough to misunderstand his agenda.

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From this perspective, I would rather not call this the triumphal entry, but instead something more like the perpetually misunderstood entry.

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Some people may be moved to think, okay, well, good, finally Jesus gets the recognition he deserves here.

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But no, I suggest to you that in this context, full of humility and calls to serve one another, who is greatest in the kingdom?

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He brings forth a child. Who is going to be first in the kingdom? The one who serves and is slave to all.

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Words that he's just said to his disciples on the road to this event. This humble king is willing to even be misunderstood even as he enters

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Jerusalem for this final week of his life. There's a misunderstanding in this event as the true king comes into Jerusalem.

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They got some things right, didn't they? The people are recognizing him as king, and he is.

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The people are calling for him to rescue and save now, and he is indeed the only one who can save them from their deepest need, their deepest enemies.

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The people are rightly calling him blessed, and oh my goodness is he blessed, the very son of God.

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The people even recognize that he's arriving in the name of the Lord, and he is. But the vast majority of them have little to no understanding about what he means when he says he will save.

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His type of salvation is not really what they want. It's not really their gig.

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They will walk away from him and forsake him the moment that he is not there to meet their perceived needs.

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The moment he doesn't give them what they want, they all split. The whole city, it says in this text, the whole city of Jerusalem was stirred up by this raucous arrival.

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Stirred up is a negative word. It means disturbed. It's not like, oh, he got a lot of attention as he was coming in.

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No, no, the city's on edge. This puts the city on edge, and the city, think about it,

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Jerusalem is so prone to violent riots. It's right to be disturbed at this point.

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Someone claiming kingship in this political climate will not make for a fun weekend in Jerusalem.

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This entry puts the people on edge. This entry puts the Roman overlords on edge.

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Notice that the city asks a question. Who is this guy?

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Who is this guy? I can imagine the Galileans beaming with a false sense of pride as they're willing to claim him as their special miracle working prophet from Nazareth, and his name is

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Jesus. What can we tell about Jesus from this passage?

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What are we supposed to change? Again, it's not an easy passage to go, go do these things, but it is a challenge to go think these things.

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Go let these things be a part of your fuel for life. Three statements that flow out of this text that are here for us to adopt into our understanding of Jesus Christ, our

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Lord and Savior. The first is that he was making this stuff happen, and at first that just sounds like a mental thing, but just follow this process for a second.

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Jesus was in the driver's seat steering the car all along toward this final week, and then through this final week.

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He's still in charge. He's driving. All the while, he's taking off prophecy after prophecy after prophecy to give a full evidence for us all that he was indeed the one predicted in the

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Old Testament. This is one more opportunity here in this text to move us to fall on our knees in thankfulness that he would be walking toward the place of his crucifixion while most of us would be running as far away from Jerusalem as possible if we were in his shoes.

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Can you see Jesus' love for you here in this text? Start there. Start with his great love that would carry his footsteps and every step, even to the point of riding that donkey into Jerusalem, heading toward the place of his sacrifice for you and me.

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Can you see his love for you in the things that he does? The second thing is his demonstration of humility.

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In Luke's account of this, the Pharisees confronted Jesus, and I just want to point out that it's all humility, and yet at the same time, the praise and the worship, he's worthy of all of that.

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The Pharisees, according to Luke's account, confronted Jesus and challenged him on the basis of the things that people are saying of him in verse 9.

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Are you going to put up with this, Jesus? You know they're calling you the son of David. They understood the implications.

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You know they're shouting Hosanna, right? They know that they're calling you blessed in the name of the

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Lord. They're using messianic titles for you, Jesus. Are you okay with that? Are you going to stand by and let that happen?

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And how does Jesus respond? He says, if the crowd shut their mouths, the rocks themselves would cry out in praise.

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What does he mean by that? I'm worthy of this. He doesn't back down. He doesn't say that.

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They're getting it wrong. Yeah, okay, okay. Everybody be quiet. Be quiet. Calm down. Silence. You got it all wrong.

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I'm not worthy of that. No, he doesn't fix that. He doesn't correct that. He was worthy of all of that adoration, and yet he intentionally comes into Jerusalem demonstrating humility.

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He rides on a donkey. He downplays his own hype. And from this, we understand the way our master shows us is always a pathway of humility.

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If you are following this one, you will be moved toward humility.

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To downplay your own hype is one of the most Jesus -like things you will ever do.

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Third, last, he was misunderstood. He was misunderstood.

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If Jesus himself was misunderstood, do you think we as his followers might be occasionally misunderstood as well?

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Our mindset of victorious living and everybody loving us and everybody liking us ought to be shattered at every turn as we observe the life of Jesus.

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This is a call to shift in our mindset. We can easily, easily, easily be moved, especially in our current culture of materialism, to define blessings as only ever good things.

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So we want to call this entry triumphal, even as Jesus is being deeply misunderstood at the core of his purpose, at the very core of his mission.

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But it is exactly at the point of this misunderstanding that he is showing his followers the way.

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He will show us that the pathway to the cross runs through the gauntlet of misunderstanding. So let's come to communion to remember this

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Lord, this King, this Savior. The one who has showed us his great love by marching this final week toward the cross.

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The one who humbled himself, not portraying all of his hype.

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The one who was even misunderstood for us. So if you belong to Jesus, then let me encourage you to take the cracker to remember his body that was broken for us, and take the cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for us, and do this in remembrance of our great

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King, who has indeed done what was needed to save us in the highest.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for our Lord and Savior. I pray that you would, through this text, give us all a fresh vision of his great love demonstrated as his feet and his actions tick off prophecies as he marches toward Jerusalem where he will be betrayed, where he will be mocked, and flogged, and misunderstood, and crucified for us.

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So Father, I pray that in light of these things in this text, that we would take communion in a different light, a light that thanks him for the salvation he has given, and even just at the end of the day, just being thankful that it's not all about health, it's not all about wealth, that those of us who have gone through dark times and lost things that we love and lost people that we love, and Father, there's just been a hardship wave after wave it feels like for months now, economic and health -wise, and our nation, and the election, and Father, just so many things that are just pounding us right now.

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So I pray that you would allow this morning to prove to be a pause in our week to take in the glory of Christ, his love for us, his sacrifice for us, his salvation for us in the highest.