04-13-14 A Good Day To Crown A King

It was a good day to crown a King!

There was no doubt about it,

it was a very good day to crown a King.

Jerusalem was bulging with people for the Passover feast.

It always made Rome nervous

to have all of those Jews together,

but then making Rome nervous

was all part of the game.

And today...

well today everyone knew

it was just a very good day to crown a King.

The weather was warm,

the skies were clear,

the road was packed with people,

and the gossip was running wild.

The stories about this Galilean rabbi,

this country boy from somewhere up north

were unlike anything anyone had seen or heard ever before.

“Did you hear the one about

when all of those people followed Him into the hills -

thousands and thousands, they said -

and when they got hungry

they say He took some kid’s lunch

and transformed it into a feast for the whole crowd.”

“Oh, yea?

Well I heard He was at some wedding feast a few years back

and the host ran out of wine.

So, do you know what He did?

They say He turned 180 gallons of water

into the best wine any of them had ever tasted.”

“Is that right?

Well, I heard this straight from my own cousin.

(He lives just two doors down from where it happened.)

See, this synagogue official at Capernaum

had a daughter who was near death.

So he begged Jesus to come heal her,

but by the time He finally arrived

the little girl was dead.

So, do you know what Jesus did?

Well, they say He went right on in to her room,

stood before that tiny corpse

and brought her back to life again.”

“Oh is that right?

Well I heard one story floating around

about how He took some of His disciples up on this mountain

and while they were up there

Moses and Elijah appeared to them and talked with Jesus.”

Yes,

it was a very good day to crown a King,

and at last they had found a King worth crowning.

Here He was,

a man who could give them everything they wanted.

He could heal their sick,

He could feed them,

He could crush the power of Rome,

He could even raise the dead.

He made those fussy, picky, arrogant Pharisees and scribes

look like ignorant fools.

He wasn’t all bound up

with endless lists, and rules, and regulations.

He was...

well, He was REAL.

He wasn’t afraid to sit down and talk with a man

who didn’t always make it to the synagogue every Sabbath.

He had a way of making you feel like He really cared about you.

He was everything they had ever wanted in a King.

He looked right,

and He talked right,

and He acted right,

and most of all He delivered the goods.

Yep,

this was a very, very good day to crown a King.

And then, suddenly,

as if from nowhere,

there He was -

in the center of the crowd,

riding on that little donkey,

heading right into Jerusalem.

As soon as word began to spread

the crowd just went crazy.

People ripped off their coats

and threw them down in front of the donkey,

paving the way for the coming King.

Children and adults alike

broke branches from the trees

and waved them frantically in celebration.

And everywhere people were shouting -

“Son of David - SAVE NOW!!!”

And there, in the center of it all was Jesus,

just sitting silently on His donkey,

not waving to His fans,

just sitting, apparently unmoved by this crowd,

almost as if He was ignoring them.

But it made no difference to the crowd

because this was a good day to crown a King,

and this was indeed a very good King to crown.

They followed Him all the way into the city,

cheering, and screaming,

and pledging their allegiance to Him and Him alone.

But when the day was over,

and His entrance was completed,

He simply dismounted and walked away.

Now, why would He have done that?

He did it

because He knew men’s hearts.

He knew why they had chosen Him King that day.

They chose Him King

because they believed He could deliver the goods.

They chose Him King

for what they believed they could get from Him,

for what He could do for them.

And the truth is,

they didn’t really choose Christ at all that day,

they chose themselves -

their wants,

their needs,

their desires,

their hopes,

their goals and priorities for life.

They chose themselves

and then called it choosing Christ.

And of course He knew what was going on inside them,

and He knew, too,

what would happen

as soon as they discovered

that His path that week

was not heading to a crown

but rather to a cross.

If we were to take the time

to trace through the few days following that entrance into Jerusalem,

we would see a man with His face set resolutely toward death.

It was no accident,

no mistake,

no bit of bad timing.

It was always, only, exactly His choice, clear and decisive.

In less than three days

Jesus so deeply intentionally offended

and irritated

and embarrassed the political and religious Jewish national leadership

that they had no choice but to kill Him.

Everyday during the first part of that week

Jesus took up His stand in the Temple,

in the very heart of that Jewish society.

In our culture

it would be the equivalent of buying 4 hours of prime-time

on every network at once for three evenings in a row.

Jesus began His offenses

by throwing the whole temple system into chaos

when He overturned the money-changers’ tables

and then drove them from the Temple.

Then He plunged into open debates with the chief priests and elders,

debates that publicly showed them to be the idiots they were.

He compared them to a son who promised his father

that he would go and work in the vineyard

and then afterwards did nothing at all,

and with that parable told them they were exactly the same way and telling them,

MAT 21:31... "Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you.”

And He didn’t stop there.

He went on to talk about a land owner

who entrusted his vineyard to stewards,

stewards who then murdered the land owner’s son

in an attempt to take the vineyard for themselves.

Then He asked them what they thought the landowner would do to such stewards.

They responded,

MAT 21:41 "He will bring those wretches to a wretched end, and will rent out the vineyard to other vine-growers who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons."

To which He then responded by telling them

that they were those murdering, unrighteous stewards

and the same fate awaited them.

From there He took on the Pharisees and the Sadducees,

giving them the most powerful condemnation He’d ever spoken.

MAT 23:13 "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.

MAT 23:14 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows' houses, and for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore you will receive greater condemnation.

MAT 23:15 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.

MAT 23:27 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.

MAT 23:33 "You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?

It was no mistake,

no accident,

no one’s choice but His own -

they would kill Him His way,

His time,

His decision.

On Palm Sunday thousands of Jews waved palm branches

and cried out, “Our King! Our King! Save us now!

Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Just a few days later

that King hung on a cross, dead.

And everyone of those who had proclaimed their allegiance to Him

discovered that they had not really chosen Him,

they had chosen themselves

and then called it Jesus.

Where He was going

they would not follow,

and when He would not deliver what they demanded

they quietly laid down their branches

and went in search of another savior,

one who would SAVE NOW!

I do not condemn them, of course.

I could not without condemning myself as well,

because, if I would have been there,

I would have done the same thing.

And, apart from the life of my Lord within me now,

I would do the same thing still.

But there is a passage in 1 Peter 4:1-3

that helps us understand this better from a Christian perspective.

In those verses Peter says,

Therefore, since Christ has suffered (death) in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he who has suffered (death) in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. For the time already past is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties and abominable idolatries.

You see,

the pattern that we see illustrated for us

in the relationship between the Jews and Jesus on Palm Sunday

is exactly the same pattern

that Christ follows in His relationship

with everyone who calls Him “King”.

At some point after the excitement calms down,

and the crowds go away,

He puts His hand on our shoulder

and points us to the cross.

And His words to us,

spoken in love,

are all too clear.

“Follow Me.”

“Arm yourselves also with this same purpose...”.

And it is not surprising

how many people will see that cross

and will then quietly excuse themselves

and lay down their palm branches

in search of some other savior who will “SAVE NOW!”

There has to be someone else who will deliver,

something else that will make the pain go away,

someplace I can go, something I can do that will work way better than this Jesus thing.

One of His parables predicted it.

MAR 4:5-6 "And other seed fell on the rocky ground where it did not have much soil; and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of soil. And after the sun had risen, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.”

And Peter says,

Arm yourselves also with this same purpose...”

If we have named Christ as King in our lives

the time will come when He will point toward the cross

and ask us to follow,

not as additional payment for our sins

because that debt is already paid in full,

but because there is a quality of life in Christ

that can only come to us

through our own internal dying process.

And how we respond to that request

will help us to know

whether we truly chose Christ as our King,

or whether we really chose ourselves

and called it Christ.

You see, there is a dying process

that is a part of every believer’s walk with the King.

I cannot tell you what your cross will look like,

I can only tell you

it will look like death,

and you will seek to avoid it if at all possible.

That isn’t wrong, folks.

That’s part of being human,

even when that human is God Himself.

MAT 26:39 And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will."

But our Lord wants His people truly free,

and there will be points at which we will see our cross,

and our Lord standing next to it,

and we will know His request, “Follow Me.”

There is much I could say

about life after death,

about His adequacy during the dying process,

and His riches poured out on us in the life that follows.

But I do not think it will help much,

because, if we cannot trust HIM,

then what He has promised will not motivate us either.

I know the religious industry in our nation

is deeply committed to marketing a Palm Sunday Christianity -

a Savior who will SAVE NOW on our terms.

It’s only natural -

such a savior is so much easier to market than the real thing.

But I know, too,

that what our spirits truly long for

is not a God who will give us what we think we want,

but a God who loves us enough,

and understands us enough

to give us what we truly need

for the most fulfilling life we could ever know.

I have been a Christian for nearly half a century now,

and in that time

I have learned a few things at least

that have made my walk with the King

a little easier in some ways.

One of the things I have learned

is that I am a very poor judge

of what will bring me true fulfillment in life.

When I look back over all the things I thought I wanted,

all the things I have asked my Lord to give me

or to remove from me

so that I could be happier or more effective,

what I see now is a long list of things

that would have robbed me of some of my greatest wealth in life

had He chosen to answer my prayers.

Something else I have learned,

(though of course I still frequently forget it and must then remember it again),

is that everything that comes to me from the hand of my God

is motivated by His heart longing to be good to me,

and to reveal to me greater depths of His love.

There are some of you here this morning

who have been trotting along next to your Savior,

waving your branch in the air,

and crying out to Him, “Save now!”

But then, suddenly, you watched

as He stopped,

and dismounted,

and walked right up to you

and placed His hand on your shoulder.

You have seen the love in His eyes,

but now a kind of terror has set in

because He has guided you out of the crowd

and is now leading you into what appears to be a very dark place,

a place where you do not want to go.

You can turn around if you choose,

and run back to the crowd.

But to do so would mean

that you would have to turn your back on your Savior,

and that is something I think

that you do not really want to do.

And if the place where He is leading you seems very dark indeed,

if it seems like death,

maybe these words of David will help.

PSA 139:11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night,"

PSA 139:12 Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.

I do understand the tremendous attraction of a Palm Sunday Jesus,

one who seems like He can just walk us through the sunshine

right on up to our crown, our victory, our glory.

But I know, too,

that most of what we think we long for

can never,

will never bring us the true freedom

or the quality of life our God wants us to know.

And most of all

I know that, just as with our Savior,

the only true path between the crowd and the crown

is the one that leads to the cross.

It doesn’t end there, of course,

not by any means.

In Him there is always a resurrection that follows,

and a new life,

and a crown of victory.

But if, right now, you see His hand leading you first to the cross,

trust Him,

and do not turn away in search of some other Savior who will SAVE NOW.

The salvation you seek,

and the life you long for

can come, will come through the only true Savior this world will ever know,

your Lord Jesus Christ.