The Gracious, Loving, Generous King

And turn in your Bibles for the Old Testament readings.

Zechariah 9, we'll be reading verses 9 through 13.

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion.

Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem.

Behold, your king is coming to you, righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a

donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow

shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations.

His rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.

As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless

pit.

Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope.

Today I declare that I will restore to you double, for I have bent Judah as my bow, I have made

Ephraim its arrow.

I will stir up your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece, and wield you like a warrior's sword.

You may be seated.

Would please stand again as we do the New Testament reading.

New Testament reading is Matthew chapter 21, verses one through 17.

Now, when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethpage, to the 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.

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, and on a colt, the full of a beast of burden.

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.

Most of the crowd spread 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 then 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.

And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple.

And he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.

He said to them, it is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers.

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple,

Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant.

And they said to him, do you hear what these are saying?

And Jesus said to them, yes.

Have you never read?

Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies have you prepared praise.

And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.

You may be seated.

Good to see you all this morning and good to see some of you we haven't seen for a while.

Welcome home and I'm just glad to see you.

Breaking new ground here, you know?

Stand up base.

Wow, that's pretty cool.

Yeah, all right.

Take your Bibles and turn to Luke chapter 12.

Luke chapter 12.

This is Palm Sunday, the day that we remember and consider and

meditate on the Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem so many

centuries ago.

The proclamation of him as king.

Before we look at our text today, let's pray.

And ask God that he would help us.

Father, we are here because

of what Jesus has done for us.

We are here to praise and to honor and to glorify you

in all this service.

We are here now to hear your voice as you speak to us from your word,

as you direct us, as you change and form our beliefs

and our attitudes, our values, our affections.

So now we pray that you would help us to listen carefully to your words.

We thank you for the scriptures that are before us.

They are our life.

Help us now as we listen to you in Jesus' name, amen.

Jesus and his disciples began their trek to Jerusalem from far off Galilee, and like many others, they were headed to

the holy city to celebrate the Passover.

As they walked the dusty roads, other pilgrims joined them and soon their ranks had

swelled to hundreds and hundreds of people.

Word began to spread that Jesus, the prophet, the miracle worker was in their midst and a certain excitement began to

build like a giant wave starts to build in the ocean.

And soon that wave of excitement was carrying them along with unbounded enthusiasm.

When they reached the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent a couple of disciples ahead to the village to get a donkey

and a colt, or unbroken colt.

And as the wave of enthusiastic crowd swept Jesus along, he mounted that colt and he

rode down the Mount of Olives and through the gates of Jerusalem.

And Jesus did that on purpose.

He purposely did that.

He was saying by this action that he was indeed the promised Messiah, the ruler God

had promised them centuries before.

At that moment, he fulfilled Zachariah's words, say to the daughter of Zion,

see your king comes to you gentle and riding on a donkey on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

The pilgrims by now were wild with excitement.

They start spreading tree branches before the king.

They start laying down their cloaks in front of him.

It's the, if you will, giving Jesus the red carpet treatment, treating him like

a king.

And they start to shout and they start to sing all the words from the Psalms that talk about this king.

Hosanna to the son of David.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.

Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.

The residents of Jerusalem start shouting back, what's going on?

Who is this?

And the crowds respond, this is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth and Galilee.

What is going on here?

It's really quite simple.

Jesus had all along been preaching that the kingdom of God had arrived with

his arrival.

And now he reveals why that is true.

The promised king had arrived.

I am the king you've been waiting for.

The king and his kingdom have arrived.

Now, when the Pharisees, who were immune to such enthusiasm about Jesus, said to him,

teacher, they did not recognize him as king.

They said, teacher, rebuke your disciples.

And Jesus responded with, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.

In other words, the king and his kingdom has arrived and everybody sees it.

And if no one sees it, it's obvious that the rocks would start to cry out.

Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.

You see, the king arrived that day.

He's the ruler that we've waited for.

And now he rules a kingdom from his throne in glory in heaven.

But we need to ask the question, what kind of a king is he?

He entered Jerusalem not on a stallion ready to force submission, but rather on a

donkey, a meek, gentle, humble king.

And so we picture ourselves welcoming the king into our city and into our hearts, a king who is

humble, a king who is gentle.

But sometimes I wonder how many of us look upon the lowly servant king and think that this is just camouflage.

Maybe beneath his lowly exterior, there's a terrible power and authority just getting

ready to burst out.

Maybe this is merely a veneer of gentleness, hiding the real Jesus who's ill -disposed and

angry towards us.

But Jesus is at pains to help you think differently about him and

his father, God.

The king who comes in the name of the Lord perfectly represents and speaks for God.

And this morning, let's consider what Jesus the king says about his father and his kingdom.

Let's consider carefully the words that Jesus says in Luke chapter 12, verse 32.

Luke 12, 32.

And I find this verse interesting because it appears that Jesus goes to great pains to

explain exactly who he is.

Luke 12, verse 32.

We're just gonna spend our time on this one verse.

Fear not, little flock, for it is your father's good pleasure to give you

the kingdom.

Oh, it's the first thing he says.

The first thing he says is fear not.

Do not be afraid.

Do not be afraid.

Now, we have much to fear in this world.

If you would look at this whole chapter, you would see that in verse four, he says, I tell you, my

friends, do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more that they can do.

You will fear, in that context, as he talks about that, you will fear because people will try to kill you

for pledging your allegiance to Jesus.

There are people out there, he says, who will try to kill you for being a follower of me.

And then in verse 11, he says, and

when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend

yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.

He says you're gonna be fearful, you're gonna be anxious about what to say when you

will have to answer for your faith in Jesus and when your answer's gonna

determine whether you are free or imprisoned, whether you're going to live or whether you're going to

die.

Now, I'll be honest with you, I get anxious about preaching every week

and I have a week to prepare what I'm going to say and I'm going to say it to people who,

I think, like me.

But he's telling them, don't be afraid when you don't have any time to prepare and you're

gonna speak before people who hate you, right?

Don't be afraid.

In verse 22, and he said to his disciples, therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what

you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on.

He says, you're gonna be afraid for the essentials of life.

Here's something else that you can be anxious about.

There's always something to fear, right?

There's always something to be anxious about.

But when you get down to verse 32, Jesus indicates that you might be afraid of something else.

And it's fascinating to me that he begins here saying, fear not, little

flock, fear not, little flock, for it's your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

There's another fear we have that might go deeper and Jesus kind of hints at it

here.

It's this, God is not the kind of God who really wants to be good to his children.

It's kind of a fear that all of us have and he addresses it here.

Hey, don't be afraid.

Look at what God is like.

We fear that.

Sometimes the fear rises in our hearts that God does not want to be gracious to us.

We're afraid that he really does not wanna be generous and helpful to us.

Sometimes we give intellectual assent to the fact that God is good, but we

feel in our hearts that maybe that goodness is a bit constrained.

Maybe God is like the judge who some clever attorney has backed into a corner and so

he, on some technicality, so he has to be gracious even though he really wants to send you to jail.

But he has to, you know, he has to be gracious.

We're waiting for Jesus to get off the donkey, pull out a sword and start

swinging it, right?

Yeah, God is good, we think, but he begrudges his benefits.

And if we don't say this in our words, it's the attitude that we have in our hearts.

God is good, but he begrudges his benefits.

He's constrained to be good to us, to do nice things.

But really he's kind of angry and if he had his way, he'd vent his anger.

Well, what does Jesus tell us about this God, his father and ours?

He says, first of all, do not be afraid.

Why not?

Because of God's grace.

Jesus says, it is your father's good pleasure to give you

the kingdom.

It is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Good pleasure is one word in the original text and it's translated in a variety of ways, to

delight, takes pleasure in, well -pleased.

When you sit around the Christmas tree handing out gifts, do you take pleasure in giving

gifts to your children?

Do you take pleasure in that?

How many of you have ever said, this is just too much fun, I cannot take it

any longer.

I'm not gonna do this.

This is the last Christmas I'm doing this.

I just can't take it.

No, why not?

Because you love to do that.

You love to do that.

God does not act in this generous, gracious way that is presenting to you Christ the King and his

kingdom to hide some malicious motives.

He doesn't do it to hide some malicious motives.

It's not like you sitting there around the Christmas tree waiting for the kids to show up and rubbing your hands and saying,

you know what, I cannot wait to hand out the gifts to the kids because that's just gonna set them up for, man, when I get after them, they're

just really gonna feel miserable then, right?

That's not how you do that.

At least I can't imagine any of you doing that.

No, you're acting out of your deepest delight.

You're not setting them up for the fall.

You're acting out of your deepest delight.

You're doing what you love to do.

You're doing this good thing because you just love it and so it is with God.

He gives you Christ and his kingdom and he takes pleasure in doing that.

It is his joy.

It is his delight.

It is his pleasure.

It is his gladness.

It is his great desire to give you Jesus and the kingdom.

It is his pleasure to do it and he goes on to say, it is your father's good pleasure to

give you the kingdom, to give you the kingdom.

Now, my brother -in -law, Alan, and many of you know Alan, Alan is

just an amazing negotiator.

I mean, he's always negotiating.

Okay, when they lived up the road from the family farm,

they rented it and the owner was saying, we're gonna get rid of the house.

We're gonna put all this under crops.

So Alan moved down to the farm and built another house, but man, so here's

what he did.

You know, he goes, okay, you know what?

I'll take that gravel out of here.

I'll take the gravel out.

So he dug up all the gravel in their old driveway and took it down and put it on the new driveway.

He goes, you know, you want these trees.

You wanna get rid of these trees?

Listen, I'll take those off your hand.

So he took those trees and he took them down to where he's gonna live and he sawed them all up and made boards out of them and

that became the paneling in his house.

They're tearing down the high school.

They're tearing down the high school in town.

He goes up and he says, you wanna get rid of that hardwood floor, don't you?

Yeah, tell you what, I'll take it off your hands.

And he reworked it all and that became the floor in his house.

I'll never forget the time we went into the Hy -Vee grocery store late at night.

Our families had been out that somewhere on a trip.

We went in, he sees these donuts.

Now, donuts in a grocery store, right?

Y 'all go into the store and you see these donuts sitting there, right?

What do you do?

Well, if you like them, you buy them.

Not Alan, you know what Alan does?

He goes in, he says, look, it's evening, isn't it?

It's night.

And tomorrow you're gonna sell those donuts cheaper because they'll be day old.

I'll take them off your hand now.

Can you imagine going into the store and negotiating for donuts?

He did it.

I mean, he does that.

Now, listen, why do I tell you that?

Because you gotta understand, God does not come along and say, hey, I'll make you a good deal on this kingdom.

What do you got to offer?

Right?

He doesn't do that.

Nor does he say, you know what?

This kingdom costs me a lot.

This kingdom costs me a lot.

In fact, it costs me my son, right?

You're gonna have to pay a pretty penny for this.

He doesn't do that.

There's no way you can merit this kingdom.

There's no way you can earn your way into this kingdom.

God takes pleasure in giving it to you, in handing it to

you.

Thing is, you have to receive it.

It's interesting.

If you look ahead in Luke chapter 18, if you wanna look there, Luke chapter 18, verse 17, he says

something about receiving this kingdom.

He says, truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a

child shall not enter it.

You know how absolutely depraved we are as human beings?

God says, I'll give it to you.

And we start saying, well, let me make you an offer.

I've got to find some way of making it up to you.

And he says, no, you receive it like a child.

How does a child receive a gift, right?

So your dad gives you, your little guy, let's say, let's say,

let's say Andy Green gives Joe, when Joe's about that tall, gives Joe a slinky for Christmas,

right?

When his dad gives him that, does Joe say, how much do I owe you, dad?

Or what do I have to do to earn this, dad?

Children, that doesn't even cross their minds, right?

He just took it knowing that it was a gift because little children do not think about earning

gifts.

And so Jesus says to us, the father's gonna give you it, you gotta receive it

like a child.

Don't, I mean, can you think how, absolutely how our depravity produces the most

incredible stupidity that God is gonna give us something, but we as human beings are always wanting to

say, oh, no, no, no, don't give me anything, what do I need to pay?

How can I earn this?

And when you tell people the good news that Jesus is willing to give it to them,

what do they do?

What did you do for years?

You rebelled, didn't you?

I'm not gonna take that.

I'm not gonna do that.

I don't want that.

We're like the most ungrateful, ridiculously stupid children who someone gives us a gift, a dumb

child is gonna say, I don't want that.

An ungrateful child is gonna say, don't give me anything.

It's the father's pleasure to give it to you.

All you have to do is say, oh, okay, thanks, right?

That's it.

God is not stingy, he's not a Scrooge, he is not tight -fisted, he's generous.

He gives you his kingdom and his king.

There's no fear here.

God takes delight in giving us this kingdom.

Jesus says, don't be afraid.

Why not?

Because of God's love.

He says, don't be afraid because of God's grace.

Now he says, don't be afraid because of God's love.

Jesus says, your father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.

He does not say, your slave master has given you lodgings.

He does not say, your employer has given you your wages.

He does not say, your king has condescended to kind of give you some things in a begrudging way.

He says, your father has taken delight in giving you his kingdom.

A father cannot help but take pleasure in giving good things to his children.

Those of you who are dads, you know what that's like.

You love it.

You go out and you buy your child a bike and you can't wait to get home that night and surprise him with it.

You buy your little girl that doll and you can't wait to get home and give it to her.

You're just absolutely looking forward to that.

Why?

Because you're the father.

You love them.

God does not act begrudgingly or miserly or deviously.

He acts like a father.

He gives to you generously without ulterior motives.

There's no ulterior motives.

This is God's love.

He is your father who gives you the kingdom.

By the way, the older I get, the more convinced I am that we do not think God enough.

We do not think enough.

We do not think him, wow.

We don't think of him as father enough.

That's what I wanna say.

We do not think of him as father enough.

Is he the king?

Yes.

Is he the sovereign?

Absolutely.

Is he a God of unapproachable holiness?

Yes.

All of those are true, but it's also true that he's our father.

If you have come and received this kingdom and have embraced Jesus

and you have said, I am not worthy of any of this.

I am a sinner.

I am undone.

Oh God, have mercy on me.

I believe in Jesus.

He then becomes your father.

We don't think enough about him.

We don't think of him as a father enough.

He is our father who's holy, right?

He is a father who is love.

He is a father who is sovereign.

He is our father.

In Christ, he is our father.

And here is love that casts out fear.

Do not be afraid, little flock.

We are the flock of Jesus.

He's the shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.

We are his flock.

He cares for us.

Now, the Parkers, Lydia and Lee, you know, my girl, Lydia, and

my boy, Lee, and all the kids.

I don't know if you knew this the other night, their little goat, Poppy.

I had four kids, four.

Count them, one, two, three, four.

Poppy popped out four little goats, all right?

And we saw the films of that and the kids are there.

It's all, I mean, they love these little things, right?

They love those little things.

And if you're raising that sort of thing, there's just an attachment to that, right?

Some of you have experienced that.

There's an attachment to these little things and these mommy goats and things.

Well, we're Jesus' little flock.

We're his flock.

He knows each one of his sheep.

So I haven't got all the names yet.

There's Gail and Lucy and two more names.

I haven't got them all yet, but they're all named, right?

Listen, Jesus knows every one of our names.

He knows each one of us and he knows all of us.

We're his flock.

And you know what he says in John chapter 10?

He says he gives up his life for his sheep.

He says, no one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.

I lay down my life for the sheep.

He knows each one of us so well.

He knows all of us so abundantly that he lays down his life for us.

The father did not begrudge the gift of his son and the son did not begrudge his giving.

We are his flock, his little flock.

None of us are gonna be lost in the shuffle.

It also says that the father's love for us is not based on our greatness.

We're a little flock.

You know, the famous and the powerful and the rich always have somebody looking after them,

but not us.

You know, we're not loved.

I don't know if you've noticed that.

Can I give you an example just this week?

Everybody is going crazy about the Cinderella story in

the NCAA basketball tournament.

The Cinderella story this year is Oral Roberts University made it to the Sweet 16.

Now, you know, I haven't followed basketball that close.

They may still have gone on.

They still may be there.

They may have been eliminated, but they made it to the Sweet 16 of the basketball.

Oral Roberts University.

But then there's a writer, the sports writer in USA Today says that is awful.

This is no Cinderella story.

This is a school that has backwards morality that violates the

canons of human decency because they say in their rules that you

cannot be homosexual and you cannot practice and have any kind of sexuality outside

of marriage.

This school should never have made it even into the tournament ever.

We should not allow things like that.

We are not loved, folks, but

we are Jesus' little flock.

The powerful, the with it people, they have enough

protectors.

We don't have any except the king.

We are his little flock and he will not

leave us.

This is a little flock that God loves.

Here's the last thing I wanna say this morning.

We don't need to be afraid.

Why not?

Not only because of God's grace, not only because of God's love, but we do not need to be afraid because of God's

gift.

Jesus says your father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.

Now, the kingdom in the gospels is not referring to some geographical entity.

It means whenever you see it talking about God's kingdom in the gospels,

Jesus is talking about the rule of God, where God rules, and

his rule is a saving rule.

It is God intervening to restore harmony everywhere.

We are in under his rule.

We are those who are being restored to harmony, and what that means is that the

omnipotent authority and rule of the king of the universe will be engaged forever

on behalf of this little flock.

God's rule will be exercised on behalf of this little flock.

This is what God gives to us.

The rule of King Jesus for our ultimate good.

The rule of Jesus sometimes seems hard when he tells us to follow him and obey

his commandments, but the reason why it's hard is not that he's hard.

It's that our hearts are still too attached to the world.

God gave us this king to rule for our ultimate good.

He knows what's good for us.

He's given, God has given us the kingdom in this king, and because of that gift, rather than

living life in fear, you can live life on the edge, and again,

maybe I need to expand this a bit and preach on the rest of the verses in this little paragraph, but

notice, we don't have to be afraid because it's God's good pleasure to give us God's kingdom so

that what?

We can live life on the edge.

So what?

Sell your possessions and give to the needy.

Provide yourselves with money bags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail.

Where no thief approaches and no moth destroys, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

We can live life on the edge because it's God.

God loves to give us his kingdom, little flock.

So why did Jesus ride in triumph into Jerusalem?

Simply proclaim that the king and his kingdom had arrived.

So what does that mean?

It means it points to a life without fear, especially the fear that God is

angry with his little flock and delights in pouring

out his wrath, but Jesus describes the kingdom he brings in different terms.

This kingdom and its king is a free gift from God.

It is a gift given to you by the love of our great God, who is the father of this little flock.

It is a gift that God delights to give.

Some of you here are strangers to that kingdom.

And I want to say just a few words to you.

It's the little flock that's in that kingdom.

And if you're not part of that flock, if you haven't said, oh Lord, I am a

sinner, I'm undone, then he's not your

father.

And there is anger and wrath waiting

because you haven't just said, Lord God, I'll

take this free gift.

Come to Christ and his kingdom and you will find a joyous relationship with a

great God.

Father, thank you for your word.

Thank you for the promises you give to those you love.

Father, I pray, first of all, that if there's any here who are not part of that flock,

that they would heed the warning that you are angry,

and there is judgment.

But Lord, as we look at this, we see that you take pleasure

in rescuing people.

It's your pleasure.

You love to give this good gift.

So I pray that if there's any here today that do not embrace

Jesus, that they would find instead,

that they would look to this God and accept his

gift.

Repent and choose to follow Jesus.

For your flock here today, Father, I beg you, remind us of your goodness

and your grace and your love and your unbelievable

generosity.

Help us to rest in that love

and help us to love the kingdom that you've given us.

Thank you, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.