John 12 12 thru 19 - pub


John 12 12 thru 19 - pub - Rackcdn.com92109d972930d0830937-532396e13776475c7f9304a3aa497940.r48.cf2.rackcdn.com...

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“The King of Israel,” John 12:12-19 (March 13, 2016) 12

The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 13 So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” 14 And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, 15

“Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!”

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His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. 17 The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. 18 The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign. 19 So the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.” PRAY We are back in the gospel of John, and for the next three weeks leading up to Easter we will remain in the gospel of John and today we will focus on the events that lead up to resurrection of Jesus Christ. This morning we’ll study a Palm Sunday text, next week (which actually is Palm Sunday) we will look at a Good Friday text, and then of course on Easter we will look are going to look at an Easter Sunday text. And the main theme of this text, and of the events of that first Palm Sunday, is that Jesus is a king. In verse 13, Jesus is called by the crowd “the king of Israel” and then they sing his praises from Psalm 118, which was a messianic psalm. The crowd proclaims he is the triumphant messianic king of Israel. But what kind of king is Jesus? Three points, then we’ll take the Lord’s Supper: first, Jesus is the absolute king. Second, he is a gentle king. Third, he is the saving king. First, Jesus is the absolute king. What, if anything, do you know about kings? If you’re like me and you grew up in the United States and spent all your time here, you don’t have any experience with royalty – we don’t have any here – and you might just roughly equate kings with the President. And, even though he has power and responsibility and influence, at the end of the day, he’s a politician, and part of his job is to impress you, to kiss your babies, win your vote. If you grew up or spent any time in Canada or the UK, you would have come into some contact with royalty – Queen Elizabeth II – and so you would think of kings and queens as, basically, figureheads. They are celebrities, they hold ceremonial offices, but they don’t really have authority or power.

© 2016 J.D. Shaw

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So when we think of kings we might think of politicians or we might think of figureheads, of celebrities. But in the ancient world, kings weren’t politicians or figureheads. Instead, kings had absolute authority over everything within their kingdom. Everything in their realm was theirs, the land was theirs, the people was theirs, and they could do with it whatever they wished. There was no concept of individual, human rights. They didn’t have to win elections, they didn’t have to kiss babies. And while kings in the ancient world had limited authority, in that the boundaries of their kingdoms only extended so far, Jesus is the king over everything. His kingdom is the universe. At the very end of Matthew 28, in the Great Commission, we read this: “18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” He has authority over everything – everything in heaven and on earth. Abraham Kuyper, a theologian and one-time prime minister of the Netherlands early in the twentieth-century, once wrote, “There is not one square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” Jesus’ kingdom is the universe, and, finally, how long will his reign last? The Bible says his kingdom is without end. Every December I pull out my copy of Handel’s Messiah, and I listen to it over and over again all month long. And in the “Hallelujah Chorus,” the climax of that oratorio you hear the singers quoting Revelation 12 when they sing, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever.” 11

Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. 13 He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. 14 And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. 15 From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. Revelation 19:11-16. The Bible is abundantly clear: Jesus is an absolute monarch, with absolute, everlasting authority in heaven and earth. In light of that, I want to point out a couple of things. Number one: if you are here today, and you’re not a Christian (for whatever reason you have not given your life over to Jesus as your king), then please don’t turn Jesus into someone he’s not. The Bible is really the only source we have for the life of Jesus, it’s the only record we have of what he actually said, and the Bible makes it clear Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords. Therefore, please do not turn around now, two thousand years later, and say something like this (as so many people in our culture are prone to do): “I like Jesus, I admire Jesus. I enjoy reading the gospels. I love how he took on the religious hypocrites and he cared for the sick and the poor. But I just think he was a really good teacher love and peace. I don’t buy into all this stuff about Jesus being a king or Jesus being God. I think he was an extraordinary teacher to be admired, we can learn much from him about how to live an ethical life, but he is not someone to be worshiped.”

© 2016 J.D. Shaw

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That’s the one thing you cannot say about Jesus. It is legitimate to say, “The Bible says Jesus is king, but I don’t trust the Bible.” I think that’s wrong, there are very good reasons to trust the Bible, but nevertheless that’s a legitimate argument. Or, you can say, as Christians for two thousand years have said, “The Bible says Jesus is king, therefore I give my life to him.” But you can’t say Jesus is just a good teacher, because the Bible is our only source of knowledge about Jesus, and the Bible says he’s a king! “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God [and king]. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. Please read the Bible honestly, and either accept or reject Jesus for who he is – a king – but don’t put words in Jesus’ mouth and ignore what he actually said and make him into someone he wasn’t. It’s just not honest. To approach Jesus that way lacks integrity. Number two, if you do accept that Jesus is the king from heaven, then you must realize that he is not coming to you this morning with his hat in his hand, applying for a job to be your personal assistant, a sort of spiritual accessory to help you have your best life now, to make sure every day is a Friday. One pastor I know puts it like this – he says, “Imagine the distance between the earth and the sun, 96 million miles, was the thickness of a piece of paper. The distance from the earth to the nearest star would be a stack of papers 70 feet high. And the diameter of our galaxy would be a stack of papers 310 miles high, and our little galaxy is just a speck of the universe. Yet the Bible says in Hebrews 1 that Jesus Christ holds the universe together with the word of his power. Now, is this the kind of person you ask into your life to be your personal assistant? A spiritual accessory?” Of course not. Therefore, if you want to have a relationship with Jesus Christ, you cannot come to him negotiating what your relationship will be like. You don’t come to Jesus and say, “Jesus, I’d really like to follow you, make you my king, but what can you offer me? What will I get out of it?” You really shouldn’t even ask, “Jesus, what will I have to give up if I follow you? Am I going to have to handle my money differently, my sex life differently, my family differently?” Of course you will – he’s the king of the universe, and there is only one attitude you should have as you approach him for a relationship – an attitude of absolute surrender. An absolute king demands absolute surrender. Whatever you say, Lord, I will do. Wherever you send me, Lord, I will go. That’s the only rational way to approach the sovereign of heaven and earth.

© 2016 J.D. Shaw

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One old praise song that’s meant a lot to me over the last several months goes like this: “Lord and Savior, there is nothing we can do, but to serve and follow you, and surrender, all our dreams, all we are, all that we are to become, all our love.” But, second, he is a gentle king. Now the disciples were all excited about Jesus being this king. They’d followed him for years, and they’d seen the miracles, they’d heard his teaching, and now the disciples thought Jesus was finally going to go to Jerusalem to be crowned king by all the people. They expected Jesus to ride into Jerusalem on a warhorse and start cracking skulls – he would drive the Romans out of Israel, he’d remove the hypocritical religious leaders from their positions of power, and give the most important positions in his new government to them. And Jesus says to them, “I am going to ride into Jerusalem, and this will be my steed.” It’s a donkey, and not even an adult donkey but a donkey’s colt! A baby donkey, one Luke tells us had never even been ridden. So you can just see Jesus, climbing onto this donkey. Actually, he wouldn’t have had to climb onto a colt – he would have just swung his leg over him. And as the colt walked Jesus’ feet would have dragged in the dirt. You can just hear the disciples saying to Jesus, “What are you doing? You’re a king aren’t you? You can’t ride this thing into Jerusalem – everyone will laugh at you! You’re going to look like Michael Dukakis riding around in that tank” – anyone remember that? But Jesus insisted on riding a donkey’s colt because he wanted to fulfill a prophecy of Scripture and make a point. “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 [or gentle] and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Zechariah 9:9. Jesus wants to demonstrate that he is a gentle king. Friends, and I guess I’m speaking mostly to the Christians right now – why haven’t you more fully given your life to Jesus as your king? Why don’t you willingly turn every detail of your life over to him as your king? Why do you hold certain areas of your life back and basically say, “Jesus, I’ll trust you with the spiritual things, I suppose. I’ll trust you enough to go to church and give a little of my money away, and I’m sure if I get cancer or something I’ll trust you more, but right now I just can’t turn anything else over to you.” Why do you do that? It’s because you’re afraid of what might happen if you really, truly, radically, went all in with Jesus. You’re afraid that if you actually started doing what the Bible said with all your money, in all your relationships, in your love life, with all your thought life, that you’d be miserable. You’re afraid of trusting Jesus with everything. Now, why are we so scared of doing that? Because we have a fundamentally mistaken view of God. We think of God as a harsh, demanding king, and we’re afraid he’s out to break us. Yes, God does have a plan for our lives, he will glorify himself through us,

© 2016 J.D. Shaw

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but in order to do so he’s going to have to break us of all these bad habits we have and misplaced priorities and false hopes and dreams and it will all hurt so badly, so we are terrified of following him. We’re afraid we will be miserable because if we actually turn our lives over to him Jesus will break us. But is that what Jesus did to the colt? Remember – the colt had never been ridden. What would happen to you if found a donkey or horse that had never before been ridden and jumped on his back for a ride? Would it look back at you and say, “Where to?” No, the animal would buck and kick until it had thrown you to the ground, and then it would run away. Normally, what you have to do is “break” an animal before you can ride one, but Jesus is so gentle he just slides right on the donkey and starts riding. Friends, in our hearts we think God is a harsh, demanding king who will break us. But don’t you see? Jesus rode in to Jerusalem on donkey’s colt to show you he is not a harsh king, but a humble king. The most comforting passage to me in all the gospels may be the one at the end of Matthew 11, where Jesus says: 28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30 (NIV 1984). Friends, if God were truly a harsh king we would know it. We wouldn’t just be trying to hold back certain parts of our lives from the rule and reign of Jesus, we would be crying out for the mountains to fall on us. If God wanted our lives to be miserable, they would be. John 10:10: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Again, in Luke’s account of Palm Sunday we read this: “And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, 42 saying, ‘Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for [or, “will bring you”] peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.’” Luke 19:41-42. Does that sound like a harsh king to you – not angry because he knows Jerusalem will reject him but weeping over the city? What are you counting on to bring you peace? Is it more money, so you can add a porch on the back of the house or buy a place at the lake and there you will sit one day and then you’ll have peace? Is it just getting this job that you know you’ll love, and then while you work you’ll have peace? Is it just getting the kids out of diapers, and then you can relax in your favorite chair and watch television without being constantly annoyed and then you’ll have peace? Is it just getting this particular person to love you the way you think you need to be loved, and then you’ll have peace? Jesus tells you what everyone should know after living life for a while on earth – those things can’t bring you peace. If you count on them bringing your peace they will only wind up being harsh masters. Only Jesus will be your gentle king. You know the story of George Mueller, right? Founded all those orphanages in

© 2016 J.D. Shaw

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nineteenth century England and fed and clothed thousands of children not by raising money or taking a salary from any organization but by praying and asking God for it. And in his journal at one point he writes this: “November 27 was the Lord’s Day. Our money had been reduced to two pence. Our bread was hardly enough for the day. I brought our need before the Lord several times. When I gave thanks after lunch, I asked him to give us our daily bread, meaning literally that He would send us bread for the evening. While I was praying, there was a knock at the door. A poor sister came in and brought us some of her dinner and five shillings. Later, she also brought us a large loaf of bread. Thus, the Lord not only gave us bread but money. At the end of the year, we looked back and realized all our needs had been met more abundantly than if I had received a regular salary. We are never losers from doing the will of the Lord. I have not served a hard Master, and that is what I delight to show.” Now, finally, how we can trust him? Third point: because he is the saving king. John 12:16: “His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.” Now, you would think “when Jesus was glorified” refers to the resurrection of Jesus, when he comes out of the tomb in all his glory and with his glorified body, having defeated sin, death, and the devil once and for all. But it doesn’t: “And Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’” John 12:23-24. “When Jesus was glorified” refers not to Jesus’ resurrection, but his crucifixion. And this get us to how we can trust Jesus. Not only is Jesus determined, more determined than you are, that you will have an abundant life, not only is Jesus promising that he won’t break you, but he was broken for you. Jesus is not a harsh king, but it’s not that because we don’t deserve a harsh king. We are sinners, and God is just, so he will punish all sin. Our sins deserve punishment. Our sins deserve the wrath and anger of a holy God poured out on us forever. But rather than give us what we deserve, God gave us his son, on the cross, his body broken, his blood shed, his spirit crushed, in our place. As our substitute. Jesus isn’t just our gentle king, he is our broken king, taking our place under the wrath of God so that we might be saved. But to the degree you see what Jesus went through for you, how he was broken under the wrath of God for you, then to that degree you can trust him. And this is how you need to reason – if Jesus was willing and glad to do that for us, go through the ultimate pain and suffering in order to love us and secure our place as children of God – if he was willing to do all that for us, do we really think he will allow anything in our lives that will truly break us? Yes, there will be suffering, yes, there will be discipline and chastening, but all of it must be designed for our joy because our king is a saving king, he’s the broken king, so that we might be made whole.

© 2016 J.D. Shaw

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Last week I heard a woman talk about how two years ago she sent her oldest child – a boy – off to college, and how she worried and worried over his well-being. Calling him, Face-timing him, two or three times a day, making sure he was ok. Just about drove her son nuts. But after nine months of worry, she was finally able to relax because his freshman year went great, he made friends, he got connected to a church, he did well in school, he was happy. That following August she sent her second child – a daughter – to the same college for her freshman year. But this time, the mother said, she didn’t worry at all. Because she knew that if her daughter had any problems – had a flat tire, had a problem with the registrar, didn’t know where a building was, anything – she could always call her big brother, and because he had gone ahead of her he would help her find her way. Friends, do you know what Hebrews 2:11 says about Jesus? It says he is not ashamed to call us brothers. We have in our gentle king Jesus a brother who has gone ahead of us, he has faced down and destroyed sin and death for us, and now he reaches his hand out to us and says, “Take it – trust me and take my hand, and I promise I will as your king lead you to an abundant life. Just take my hand.” We’re about to take the Lord’s Supper. You know what this is? In the elements, Jesus comes to you and says, “Take my hand, and I will lead you into safe pasture. You will find peace and rest for your soul. Trust me, and you will find abundant life.” Here’s what I want you to do: when you get the bread and the cup, I want you to say in your spirit: “Lord Jesus, my king, I'm taking your hand again – lead me where you want me to go. Help me to trust you, King Jesus. Help me to trust that you are my gentle, saving king, and you will give me abundant life.” And, friends, he will. AMEN.

© 2016 J.D. Shaw

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