Palm Sunday (The Stones Sing Out) — Thaddeus Barnum

In the name of your son, our Lord, our Savior. Thank you for the presence of your Holy Spirit among us. Thank you for the work that you are doing in our present lives. Lord, we cannot come to your word without your grace opening our hearts, our eyes to understand and see, so come and do what we cannot do ourselves.

Let us behold you and receive from you all that you've got for us today, and we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen. Good morning. I want to call your attention this morning to a passage in Joshua chapter 4. I trust you've got your Bibles or have memorized them, or you've got a Bible app of some kind.

The Passover Lamb and Palm Sunday

Joshua 4, 19. And as we come to that text, I should bring to your mind first the importance of the day today is, and so I shall actually make my opening appeal to Exodus chapter 12 and verse three, where it finds in the beginning day of the Passover and the celebration of the Passover that the Lord says, tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month, on the tenth day of this month, the very first, the beginning of months on the tenth day of this month, every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses, a lamb for a household.

The tenth day was a very important beginning to the Passover because it was a day that the lamb was taken. It was the day that would begin the four days of testing to make sure that the lamb was without blemish, without defect, spotless.

And so today, the tenth day, the day that we call Palm Sunday, begins this conversation of taking the lambs. So when we come to the moment of the triumphal entry under stand first, that what's really happening is that in Jerusalem on that day, you've got the triumphal entry of all the lambs coming into the Passover moment because today is the tenth day.

And so we think of we think of this moment of the triumphal entry and what we're actually seeing is a fulfillment happen, an extraordinary fulfillment happen, because as all the lambs are getting ready and coming in and being taken in the triumphal entry of all the lambs.

So we're beholding the triumphal entry of the lamb of God himself who takes away the sins of the world. This is no unimportant event. There is nothing like it in all of Jesus ministry that compares to what happened on Palm Sunday.

Why do I say that? I say it because he had crowds attending him wherever he went. You can see it almost from the beginning. As soon as the signs, the wonders, the miracles, crowds were always around him.

The disciples were almost like the first secret service. I mean, the crowds would come and bump up against the Lord. But the odd part about the crowds is they couldn't see him. They didn't know him. They wanted from him, but they didn't have the eyes to see the glory of who this person is.

And even at the moment, as some of you walk through the gospel readings, you're going to find that even when Jesus turned to the disciples and said, who do you say that I am? It is Peter that would say thou art the Christ, the son of the living God.

And Jesus would respond in Matthew 16, verse 17. My father told you that flesh and blood did not tell you that my father revealed that to you. In other words, it takes an event of God to have a heart, the eyes open to see who Jesus is.

It takes that act of revelation. And that's why Palm Sunday is such an extraordinary event, because the crowd is there. The crowd that heard or the crowd that saw Lazarus rise from the dead, they're there.

But out of their mouths, out of their mouths comes praise and adoration, because it's as if the kingdom of heaven opened, as if the spirit of God came down because the whole crowd sees. The whole crowd sees they know him, they are testifying of him, they're beholding a glimpse of the glory of this person as he's mounted upon the donkey, ready to come into Jerusalem.

And out comes the praise. In particular, we could spend so much time here on each one of the different aspects of Jesus, our Lord, seen through the crowd's praise. But let me just give you three and do it with great speed.

Jesus as King, Savior, and Messiah

The first is that they are seeing that this is the king of Israel, the son of David, that the testimony of the son of David in Matthew's account that only comes from the crowd. It also comes from the children.

The children can see. I say that because when you actually go through the gospel readings, you're going to find very few people know him as the son of David. The Canaanite woman, the the Gentile Canaanite woman, knows him as son of David.

Bartimaeus, the blind man. I love that story so much because here he is, blind as he is, but he can see he knows Jesus, the son of David, and cries out, Lord, have mercy, son of David. And here it is on Palm Sunday and they know him as king.

The second aspect is they know him as savior. And this is the hard part behind the story of Hosanna, because Hosanna actually comes from the psalm that we just spoke out loud from Psalm one hundred and eighteen.

Hosanna has a dual as a dual meaning, if I could say it that way. The first one is that Hosanna is a sound of praise and it's a sound is a sound of of salvation, salvation to the Lord or a praise to the savior.

It's a it's a sound of joy, adoration that this one is the savior. But undergirding the word Hosanna actually is a cry of desperation, which is exactly how we said it from Psalm one eighteen and verse twenty six.

Save us, we pray, O Lord, Hosanna, Hosanna, save us, we pray. It's a cry of prayer. We're in desperate need. Rescue us. Isn't that interesting? One from a desperate cry, the other a sound of praise. And yet they're recognizing him not just as king, but they're recognizing him as savior.

And the next part, the third one, is they're recognizing him as Messiah out of the same text of Psalm one eighteen. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the waiting of Messiah all through the Old Testament, the one that would come to rescue and come to save.

And here he is, son of David, king, savior, Hosanna and the Christ, the Messiah. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Is there any reason why you can see you can understand why the religious leaders, the academics, the Pharisees were so ticked off because the crowd is acclaiming him as king of the line of David, the promised king that would sit upon the throne as a savior and as the Christ and the Pharisees are like dying here.

They're like this is shut them down, shut down the crowd, rebuke your disciples. That's what we heard in the Lukan account just read to us. Shut down. That's my own word. That does not come from any. It comes.

The Stones Cry Out and the Heart of Stone

It's like it's like they've got to stop, rebuke your disciples. And then Jesus comes out with this line. Are you ready for it? I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out. Now, for some people, they think that this this line and maybe it is maybe it's a throw away.

Listen, if they were quiet, the stones would sing their song. The same the stones would hear what I love about this piece of this moment of Jesus response is that it's easier. Can you hear this? Because if you can't, you're in trouble.

I'm telling you, it's easier for the stones, the dead, lifeless stones to come alive and sing praise than it is for the hearts of stone to turn and be healed. Stones. Can you hear the song of the stones?

That's what I want to look at the next three hours. Why do I say that? Do you know what it does for me? It races me back to the story in Joshua chapter four that I asked you to take up and to look at with me.

Why do I say this passage? Why spend Palm Sunday on Joshua four? Oh, I help you get this before we're done here. I say this for this reason. This is an epic moment in the life of Israel. It's one of those it's one of those moments that we knew about right from the beginning, right when the Lord entered into covenant with Abraham in Genesis at 15 and said, you are going to be my people and I'm going to enter into a legal binding covenant with you.

And what the Lord said even far back in Genesis to Abraham is he said this in chapter 15, verse 13. No, for certain, your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.

But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve and afterwards they shall come out with great procession. Verse 18. Sorry. Verse 16. They shall come out and they shall come back here in the fourth generation.

They shall come back to the land. And that's exactly the story that happens. They're taken into bondage into Egypt. They're taken into captivity and affliction for four hundred years. And what does the Lord do?

He brings them out of the land of affliction and brings them now in Joshua four to the moment where they're about to step into the promised land. This wonderful moment of finally receiving the inheritance, the promise, the blessing given to Abraham.

They're ready to cross into the into the promised land. And here they come to the River Jordan. And we find in Joshua three and verse 16, verse verse 15, or it could be 16. My eyes cannot tell the difference.

The waters of the Jordan are completely overflow. There's no way that Israel can pass. And so here comes the story, the wonderful story of how the Ark of the Covenant is going to lead the moment, the Ark of the Covenant, the incarnate presence of the Lord, the throne of the Almighty, carried on large poles by the priests carrying the Ark.

When the priests have their feet touch the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan shall part and and they shall separate and they should be up in a heap up to the top and they will flow down to the left.

And the second miracle, all of that swampy mud of a riverbed will be completely dry ground and down will go the priests straight in. The Ark will rest in the bed of the Jordan, dry ground, and there they shall stay until all of Israel has passed over.

And we have this story of Joshua three and verse 17. The priests bearing the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord stood firmly on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan and all Israel was passing over on dry ground until all the nation finished passing over the Jordan, the miracle of it.

Memorial Stones and the Faithfulness of God

And to remember it and to show it to be a sign forever. Joshua made sure that that the head of each tribe, the nation of Israel, went down to where those feet of the priests were and they grabbed a stone and they put the stone up on their shoulder and carried it to Gilgal.

Up they went down to the Jordan, big stone up on the other side, 12 stones gathered. Interesting. Also, Joshua would set 12 stones in the bed of the Jordan, 12 stones down in the Jordan, 12 stones up on the banks of the Jordan, 24 stones total, both signs and testimonies of what the Lord had just done.

When all Israel had finished passing. Up came the nation of Israel to the promised land. The moment the priest came out of the Jordan, the river came straight through. And what's the story behind it? The story behind it is that Joshua had set up those stones on the day that Israel came out of the Jordan.

That's exactly what happened. The stones were set up and they were set up so that any time a child would see it, the next generation would rise up. They would say, what, what, oh, what do these stones have to say to us?

What is the song of the stones? And there you hear it, the wonderful story that the stones sing. You'll find the actual words in chapter four and you'll find it in verse 22. Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground for the Lord your God dried up the water from the Jordan until you passed over as the Lord your God did with the Red Sea.

In other words, this these stones are here to declare once for all that the Lord has heard our prayer in the moment of affliction. When the people of Israel were under bondage, they cried out for help and the Lord sent Moses.

They cried out, Hosanna, save us, we pray. And the Lord came to their help. When they came to the moment of judgment, the Passover lamb was slain. The blood put on the doors and they were rescued out of the destroying angels hands.

And the Lord led them out by his mighty and outstretched hand. He led them out of the nation of Egypt, out of bondage and out of slavery. And there they came to the Red Sea with the Egyptian army behind them, with the river in front of them, trapped again.

And out came the cry of Hosanna. Lord, save us, we pray. Lord, save us, we pray. Has that ever happens to you? Do you know that prayer inside of you? You can't get out of it. Lord, save me, I pray. And that's exactly what the Lord did, as Moses said, Watch and see, and you will watch the salvation of the Lord.

And the waters parted, did they not? The ground became dry, did it not? And the Lord led the people with a cloud by day and a fire by night, standing between them and the Egyptian army. And they were led through on dry ground, down into the bed of the Red Sea, up out of it, onto the shore, where they began this thing, the other part of Hosanna.

Not just Lord, save us, but Lord, praise you. You are our strength and our song. You have become our salvation. And Hosanna, from from pray to intercession, help us to you've done it. You've rescued us.

You saved us. Sounds of Hosanna are everywhere and the sounds are found in the stones. You can hear them. Look at what the Lord has done. He has not forsaken us from the days long gone, days that we left Eden.

Days we've been in bondage. Look what the Lord has done. He has promised he has come to our rescue and he has saved. He did that out of Egypt. He brought us safely out of Egypt, out of bondage, through the Red Sea.

Look at what he has done. Cry the stones and now look what he's done. He's brought us faithfully to the promised land. The Lord has been faithful in the past. The Lord has been faithful in the present.

The Lord is faithful always and forever. Sounds of Hosanna, sounds of stones crying out. You know why I run to this passage? Do you know why on a Palm Sunday you're going, why is he here? Why isn't he in Luke or Matthew or do you know what day it was?

The Tenth Day and the Promise of Salvation

Do you know what day it was when the people of Israel came out of the Jordan? Do you know what day it was when these stones were set up? Do you know what day it was? On the 10th day of the first month, it was it was Palm Sunday when that happened.

Did you see it? You can find it 419. You're staring at me. You're saying, I don't believe you don't look here. It isn't here. Here's the Bible. It's Palm Sunday. The sound of the stones have always been set up with the promise that he who has saved us.

Oh, yes, he's in the process of saving us. And oh, yes, one day, one day we shall cross the Jordan. One day, we shall be home. One day, the promised land will be ours. See, the thing that's amazing about the picture of this whole conversation of Passover is it incorporates the fullness of the Bible from the moment we rebelled, the moment we sinned, the moment we fell into disobedience and were taken out of our homeland for which we were born.

We were born to be with the Lord. We were born to be in communion, in fellowship with him. But we landed in his valley of the shadow of death. And here we've been crying the ancient cry from the day we left the Garden of Eden.

Hosanna, Lord, save us, we pray. The picture of it, the bondage of Egypt, the affliction, the slavery, the captivity of our souls, not just Egypt, the world, the flesh and the devil that pound us, that hurt us, that try to destroy us.

And all the way through the Bible, you hear the echo, a savior is coming. Son of David, he's coming. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. There's a sound coming, the sound, the song of the stones.

He's come. He's coming. He will do the work he promised he would do. Oh, no, Palm Sunday, Palm Sunday, maybe nobody understood. But all of a sudden, the crowd, they understood we were in the presence of the savior.

We were in the presence of the Lord. We're in the presence of the son of David, he who promised David that a son would come and a king would rise and a king would take back that which was taken from us by the hand of the devil.

From the beginning, a king would ride victoriously in humility on a donkey. Oh, yes. The crowd knew that day, Hosanna, Hosanna, save us, we pray. And yet, praise be the Lord. The savior is here, the savior who hasn't done his work yet.

That's coming in four days. That's coming as we come to Good Friday, when the Passover lamb shall be sacrificed. Oh, yes, it's not done yet. But on Palm Sunday, it's as if it is done. They're celebrating as I'm sorry, the Palm Sunday feels a lot like Easter and Easter feels a lot like Palm Sunday.

It's just that Palm Sunday is the prophecy that Easter is coming because Good Friday is real. Do not think that Easter morning is the day of our salvation. The cross is the day of our salvation. That's where the work was finished.

When the work was complete and his blood given to his father, the Passover lamb, having accomplished all things, rose from the dead to declare victory and triumph. It's done in its full measure. It's over with.

Death is defeated. Sin is defeated. The devil is defeated. That's why we come to Good Friday, because that's the ride of the triumph of our savior who comes to rescue us and to save us. Oh, sure. No savior, savior for us.

Living Stones and the Present Work of Jesus

Let me just tell you right now, if your heart has turned to stone, you have no idea what I'm talking about. None whatsoever. The heart that has turned to stone can't hear the song, and every time the song rises up, the hearts of stone says, stop them, stop them.

What are they saying? It's as if this is that this person is the one who's going to save. I'm so sorry. The answer is, uh-huh. And guess what? Guess where the stones are now. Guess where the stones are who sing Hosanna.

The New Testament calls us. Living stones, Bible calls us living stones that are built into the cornerstone foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus, our cornerstone, we're being fitted into a holy temple in the Lord, why?

Because you and I have got a job to do. We've got a song to sing. The procession of Palm Sunday goes from the first day of the tenth day of the first month when our Lord rides in to the to the present time where we're still crying out Hosanna Palm Sunday lives.

And those who've gone before us, who've crossed over the Jordan, guess what song they're singing. They're singing the same song that the stone sang, our savior, the lamb, the son of David, he lives, he reigns, he's rescued.

And we who are here who can't fully see yet, yet the songs inside of us, we know that the savior has come. Do you believe that? See, see, the thing is this is what I want to say is that if you do believe this, I want to say that you might be trapped this morning in a very real trap because I talk with Christians.

It's my job. I work with pastors. It's my job. What do I find? I find a testimony among us as Christians where we know the song in the past. We know the song in the future. We are stuck in the song of the present.

What do I mean by that? I mean that when I ask a person, do you know this savior? Do you know Jesus has saved you? Do you know that's what he does? Have you experienced that salvation into your heart?

And I get a yes. Do you know what's coming? Do you know the glories of the Lord that awaits you? Do you know the salvation that is yet to come? When you've done this journey, you've gone down to the Jordan, you've risen to the other side, you've come to the promised homeland where we will be with the Lord forever.

Do you know that? Yes, I know that. But do you believe that Jesus saves now? Now, why do I say that? Because so many of us, so many of us Christians are in bondage now, bondage to addictions, bondage, bondage to power and money and lust and and porn and all kinds of things that the devil grips into our heart.

I had a guy the other day, he's his his addictions like the best. He's a workaholic. And it's like I don't know why, but there's like a self-righteousness that kind of comes over us like I'm doing my part.

I'm exhausting everything. I'm giving everything I've got. And his family's just completely ruined. His job's almost done. He's exhausted. Does he know the sound of Hosanna behind him in his past? Yes.

Do you know it coming? Yes. In the middle, he's stuck and all he can do is feed on anti-anxiety meds because he's dying inside. And I asked him the same question, I ask you, do you believe that Jesus saves today?

He can rescue us out of the grips that the devil has on our hearts today. Do you believe that? And he looked at me with such honesty and I get this a lot. I don't think so. I mean, I know it here, but I've been so messed up here that I've come to believe I'm going to be like this for the rest of my days.

And you know what I say to that? Praise the Lord, because here I come right alongside. That's what the body of Christ does. We see a brother or sister stuck in the grip of the devil. What do we do? We come alongside.

We come alongside. Why? Because our Savior, who has saved, who will say save today. Do you believe that? Do you believe he can rescue us where we are now? You don't have to have the faith to say yes, but can you bring us in?

Can you bring the body of Christ in and let us walk with you until you are set free in the present for what the Lord has for you today? Because as long as the Christian people no longer have the belief and the understanding of the freedom, the Holy Spirit wants to give us today, our song stinks.

We're out of chorus, we're out of tune, we're you sound like me when I sing. The Lord wants us back in tune. Why? That all the world might know the mighty hand of the Lord and fear him forever. Oh, we've got a song to sing in our day.

The Church's Witness in a Troubled World

I don't know what's happening in the world today. Do you? All the stories that we're hearing about the shootings and the and the and the and the disruptions and people are all saying that we're watching is just simply people who've got mental illness.

I don't see mental illness. Don't quote me on any of these things. I'm not diagnosing. I'm seeing that the devil is stronger in our day than I've ever seen. He's torturing our young. He's torturing our children.

Torturing us. This is the church's hour to rise and stand. You and I, we are stones on the banks of the Jordan or inside the depths of the Jordan. We have got a story. We've got a song to sing. Our savior, Jesus, he saves.

He is Lord. He is the king, the son of David. He can reign triumphantly over our present story. We come alongside the people of this world who are crying out, help us, help us. We don't know what to do.

Help us. Hosanna. Oh, my goodness, you and I, we were made for this moment. If you're held in bondage, let us come alongside and get you out so that you can sing the song that the Lord has given us on Palm Sunday.

Because when you are free, we get to sing it everywhere. When we together are free. Oh, the song of the stones. Hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Dear friends. This Jesus who saves.

How are you doing? Have you got the song inside of you? Are you bound or are you free? If you're free, sing, if not, let us come alongside and help you sing.