Lo, Your King Comes To You | Palm Sunday to Easter | Rev. Adam Hamilton | Church of the Resurrection

3:08 In the seat back of the chair in front of you, there is a little card where you can take notes. And I'm going to be teaching some things today that maybe some of it will be new to you. I'd love to, it's more of a teaching sermon. I'd love for you to write some of the things down and remember and reflect upon them in the coming week. I am really excited about this Lenten Sermon Series. So again, the last time we did this was 16 or 17 years ago. But I love the fact that we can take each week, we can take one day of the final week of Jesus' life. All of the Gospels are pointing towards, they're driving towards this final week. 28% of Matthew's gospel is focused on the last eight days of his life, last seven days and the resurrection. In Mark's gospel, I think it's like 32%. In Luke's gospel, depending on when you start, it's as much as 62%. And in John's gospel, it's 48%. I mean, we're talking about a huge amount of the material in the gospels just focused on this one week. And usually we get to Palm Sunday, and we have Palm Sunday at the beginning of the service, and then we have Passion Sunday, and we focus on the cross, and there's no time to really unpack these things. So I'm really geeked out about this sermon series. We're going to have a lot of fun, I think. Fun's not the right word. We're going to have, if you like to learn stuff and you like to see things with fresh eyes, I think you're going to really enjoy this sermon series focused on the focus of the Gospels, the final week. I thought I'd begin with some maps. So some of you love the maps, some of you don't care that much about them, but I thought I'd just share with you, this you recognize is the Mediterranean Sea. Here's Italy, here's Greece, here's Turkey, here's Egypt, and this right here is the Holy Land. Jesus never leaves the Holy Land. This is where he spends his entire life in that one little piece of ground right here that today we know of as Israel and Palestine.

4:41 Let's zoom in a little bit. And you remember these from previous sermons. This is the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, the Dead Sea. Jesus, his home is in this area in the Galilee to the north. He spends during the three years of his public ministry, most of his time right there in the town of Capernaum. Now, when it comes to just before the final week, so the week before the final week, Jesus begins to make his way from this area. He comes to the edge of Samaria. He makes his way across the Jordan River, comes down this way, and he crosses over to the town of Jericho. Okay, so that's where Holy Week begins. It begins in Jericho as Jesus is going to make his way to Jerusalem. All right, let me take you a little closer still. So, Jericho is 16 miles this way. Jesus has made his way in on Palm Sunday. He comes first to Bethphage. This is on the top of the Mount of Olives. All of this is the Mount of Olives. All right, so he comes to Bethphage, and in Bethphage, he tells two of his disciples, I need you to go on ahead, probably to the town of Bethany, and I want you to fetch me a donkey. Okay, so that's happening where I'm showing you on the map. This is Bethphage. Let me show you a few other things. So he's going to come here. They're going to probably come over here to Bethany. He's going to mount the donkey here. He comes to the top of the Mount of Olives. Some of you have been there with me at the top of the Mount of Olives.

5:49 So at this point, he's going to, people begin to notice. They see what's going on, and he begins to ride the donkey down the pathway down the Mount of Olives. This is probably the same route that they used in the first century. He's going to come across here, he's going to cross the Kidron Valley, and then he's going to come around here somewhere, and he's going to make his way to the Temple Mount. This is the Temple Mount. Today, this is the Dome of the Rock, the Islamic Shrine, but in the time of Jesus, that was the temple. This is where, when you're hearing about him being in the temple courts, this is where he's at. Now, from here, everything that happens on the final week of Jesus' life is in this area here. It's in a one-square-mile area, all right? So, let me just kind of show you really quickly. At night, he's going to go back and he's going to spend the night in Bethany every night back over here. But let me just show you, he is going to have the Last Supper right over here in this area. He is then going to cross the Kidron Valley and he's going to come over here and this is where he's going to be arrested. He's going to be taken for trial right over here, the first trial. He's going to be taken for the second trial right over here. He's going to be taken here to be crucified. And of course, when he first comes into town, he's going to come here to the temple courts.

6:50 All right, that's a lot to take in. We'll see that map again throughout the sermon series. All right, so in the time that remains, what I want to focus on is all of the things that were happening on Palm Sunday were clues. Matthew is a Jewish Christian. He's writing to Jewish Christians and maybe to non-Christian Jews, and he's trying to help them see who Jesus is and what he stands for. In the scripture you heard just read a moment ago, Jesus at the end of Palm Sunday gets into the town and people are saying, who is this man? That's the question Matthew wants us to ask when we're reading about the events of Palm Sunday. Who is this man? And the people in Jerusalem think he's just the prophet from Nazareth. And Matthew says, no, no, no. Pay attention. He's way more than that. Okay, so Jesus says to his disciples, go fetch a donkey for me. Now, this is interesting. From Capernaum to the Mount of Olives is 85 miles. Did he ride a donkey at any point before that? No.

7:42 Did he ride a donkey anywhere else in the Gospels? No, he never rides a donkey. So now he gets to Jericho, and from Jericho to the top of the Mount of Olives is an elevation change of 4,100 feet. It's 1,300 feet below sea level at Jericho, and they're going to travel up 4,100 feet. It's going to take them six hours to traverse that 16 miles because of the switchbacks. So you'd think he would ask for a donkey in Jericho. If it was me, I'm asking for a donkey in Jericho. We're going to travel 4,100 feet. Get me a donkey. No. He's traveled for six days and six hours, and he's on the top of the Mount of Olives, and finally he says, now go get me a donkey. For what part of the journey? For the last mile of the journey, and it's all downhill. Why are you asking for a donkey for the last mile when it's all downhill? Because it's a sign. It's not about comfort for him. It's a sign. So let me teach you a little bit about that sign, the donkey. And in Matthew's gospel in particular, he says there's a donkey and then a colt, the foal of a donkey.

8:38 So a foal is four years or younger. So there's a donkey and the colt here in Matthew's gospel because of the way he's reading the text. So let me take you back 1,600 years before the birth of Jesus, all right? 1,600 BC, and it could be 1,500. We're not exactly sure the date. But Jacob, whose name was also Israel, Jacob is about to die. And Jacob invites his sons to come before him. And he's going to pronounce a blessing. This is the final blessing he's going to give to his kids. Yesterday morning, I was with one of our members who just passed away this afternoon, and I was at Hospice House. And three of his kids were there. They'd all come into town, and they spent the last week with him, or the last five or six days with him, and described how lovely and meaningful it was to have that last few days with their dad, and how, you know, until yesterday, before yesterday, he was able to talk to them and give his blessings to them, and there was just something meaningful about that. Well, this is what's happening with Jacob. Jacob, he brings all of his sons.

9:30 Remember there are the 12 tribes of Israel? Those are the 12 sons of Israel. So he brings, well, it's a little complicated, but there's two half tribes. But anyway, so Jacob is pronouncing his blessings. Well, some of them weren't even blessings. Some of the sons, he had some not very nice things to say about what's going to happen to their offspring. But he comes to Judah, and this is what he says, Judah is a lion's cub. He crouches down, he stretches out like a lion, like a lioness. Who dares rouse him up? The scepter, that is the ruling staff, the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him, and the obedience of the people is his, binding his foal to the vine, and his donkey's colt to the choice vine. Okay, what does that mean? Well, what Jacob was saying was, Judah, from your offspring will come the kings. From your offspring will come the kings of all of my other children. It's you who's gonna have the rulers who are gonna come from you.

10:25 And then he describes Judah as a lion, and I just think this is lovely. You're a lion. Who doesn't wanna be the lion? And if you go to Israel today, you're gonna find there are lions around because the Jewish people are from the tribe of Judah. That's where the name comes from, Jude or Judah. Jewish people. And so the lion is an important signal and symbol in Israel today. And King David, you remember, what lion was David from? You want to guess? Judah, of course, we know that, right? So David was from Judah. What tribe of Israel was Jesus from? Judah, right? Okay, so this is pointing ahead. And so Matthew's drawing from this idea of the donkey to say, hey, don't forget that story back 1,600 years ago that the kings would come from Judah. And by the way, it mentions, you know, the foal to the vine and the donkey's colt to the choice vine. I mean, this is all laid out here, the young donkey and the mother donkey. By the way, you get to the book of Revelation because Jesus is from that line, the royal line of Judah. You get to the book of Revelation and it describes Jesus as the lion of the tribe of Judah. Look up in the window on the right-hand side. You see that giant lion? Did you ever wonder why it was there? It's because Jesus is the lion of the tribe of Judah, as it described in the book of Revelation. All right, so that was a prophetic word from Jacob to his son Judah, and the Jewish people remembered it. They never forgot it. Okay, so fast forward a thousand years, okay? Let me take you fast forward a thousand years to 520 BC, 520 years before the birth of Christ. So the Jewish people had been taken away. They'd been captured by the Babylonians and taken away to Babylon, and there they remained for 50 years, some of them for as long as 70 years. And so they were there for 50 years in exile.

12:02 And then finally the Persians conquered the Babylonians and they sent the Jewish people back. You know, the Persians said, you can go back home. And 43,000 of them went back to the Holy Land and they found their temple in ruins and Jerusalem was in ruins and the city walls were destroyed. And so they began starting to rebuild the temple and rebuild the walls in the city. And they struggled and stopped and started and stopped and started. And finally, 520 BC, Zechariah the prophet comes along and Zechariah says, God is telling me to tell you that there are good things in the future and wonderful things that are coming. And then he says, you don't have a king yet, because at that point they only had a governor from the Babylonians or from the Persians. His name was Zerubbabel. You have a governor and you have a high priest, Joshua, but the day's gonna come you're gonna have a king again. Now you remember what Judah was promised, that there would be a king and he would have a donkey tied to the vines and a foal of the donkey. So listen to what's said in Zechariah 9.9. Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion. Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem. Lo, your king comes to you. Triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. The exact language that was used in Genesis 49 of Jacob's son Judah and what would happen, you know, from his offspring.

13:16 ring. So Jesus was giving a signal. When he says, go get me the donkey, he's not accidentally fulfilling prophecy. He is intentionally giving a sign to the people. I'm the one you've been waiting for. I'm the king. He's not just a prophet. He is the king, the king of kings. That's how he comes. Let me just pause here for a moment. So who is Jesus to us as Christians? You know, there are people who say Jesus was a great moral teacher. One of my dear friends is a Jewish rabbi, you know, says, look, I believe Jesus was a great moral teacher. Hey, me too. I think he was a great moral teacher. But I don't pledge my life to him because he was a great moral teacher 2,000 years ago. I wake up every morning and I get down on my knees because he's my king. And I say, once more today, Jesus, be my king. You're the ruler of my life, my heart. Help me to know your will and to do it. Help me to represent you well. But I want to honor you with my life. You are my king. That's so interesting. That's, you know, Jesus as a king is such a stark contrast to the kings we have today, or the princes or royal families. Some of them get arrested for doing horrible things. And, you know, the presidents and prime ministers we have, you know, some of whom are, you know, great upstanding moral people, and sometimes they're not. And sometimes they're, you know, humble, but oftentimes they're egotistical or narcissistic.

14:34 And that's not just the Republicans or the Democrats. I mean, we just find it across the way that that sometimes happens. Not all of them. We've had a lot of good presidents too, but I mean, this is part of what happens when you have power, right? So you know the old dictum, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts. Absolutely. And so, you know, this is what it looks like. But here we find Jesus. And Jesus comes riding into town on a donkey. Can I take a minute to teach you a little bit about horses and donkeys and mules? By the way, horses, donkeys and mules and zebra are all from the equus family. I think it's equus, equi, I don't forget how they say it. But anyway, they're all from the same family, right? And some of them can crossbreed, but then they produce offspring that are infertile. Okay, so horses. In the first century, in Palestine, you didn't want a horse, really. First of all, you couldn't afford it because they were kind of expensive animals then because they were status symbols in the first century. So they were the BMWs of the, or maybe a Maybach or something, pick your favorite high-end car. But anyway, so they were the high-end, you know, and the Romans had them, and they were used for war. They were used to pull the warrior's chariots. They were ridden by, you know, by the governors and other people. They were kind of a big deal. But they weren't really that practical in the Holy Land because there's a lot of hills to cover with a lot of rocks. So if you ever walk over there, there's rocks all over the hills. And horses don't do well like that. They do well on groomed paths or at least, you know, pretty stable paths. So, you know, they really were ridden on the Roman roads.

15:55 The people who had horses in the Holy Land in the first century were probably mostly Romans. All right, so donkeys. Now, donkeys were the animal to have. They were pretty cheap. Anybody could, you know, not anybody could afford one, but many people could afford a donkey, and they could carry, you know, packs on their backs, and they were stable animals. They weren't, you know, skittish like horses. So, if you've ever had a horse, we've had a couple of them, and our horses have thrown people. I wouldn't have them now. That's why we got rid of them, because they threw people. Like, you know, they'd see something, and they'd spook, and so, but donkeys don't do that. It's amazing. Donkeys are really calm. They see something that's a little scary, and they just go home. Cool. And donkeys are actually... Now, horse people don't believe this, but donkeys are smarter than horses. There's at least been some evidence that this may be the case. Donkeys are smarter than horses. But now, if you breed a male donkey with a female horse, what do you get? You get a mule, right? Now, mules are hybrid animals. They can't produce offspring.

16:53 But mules, though, have the best of horses and donkeys. So they have the smarts of a donkey, and they have the stability, and they don't spook, but they have the size and the strength and sometimes the beauty of the mother horse. And so mules were actually highly prized in the Holy Land. The kings of Judah didn't want to ride horses because they weren't good on the hillsides. But mules were the animal to have, and they were pretty pricey. So guess what kind of animal King David rode? Did he ride a horse or a donkey or a mule? He rode mules. Mules were the royal animals for, you know, the royal steeds for the kings of Judah. So Pontius Pilate is in the Holy Land, you know, he's in Caesarea Meritima, and he's going to come to Jerusalem for the Passover, and he's the Roman governor. What do you think he's riding? He's riding a horse. Now, King Herod Agrippa, he's up in the north because he's the king over the Galilee where Jesus was from, and he's going to come to Jerusalem for the Passover. And what kind of animal do you think King Herod Agrippa's riding? A mule, right? A mule, because he's a king. What does Jesus pick?

17:59 What does he tell his disciples to go find? Go find me a mule. Go find me a mule. I'm going to come down in town on that, right? Now, kings could ride mules too, but Jesus chooses just the common ordinary mule. So, just to give you some idea, in America today, horses can range in price from, well, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right? You can get them for free sometimes. We have a horse we got for free. We still have him, although he lives with somebody else. He was a blind pony, and he just wasn't ever good for very much anything, but he's a fine horse, I'm sure. But, you know, horses, so you can get them for free, but generally you're going to spend a thousand, two thousand dollars for an entry-level horse, and fifteen thousand dollars gets a pretty good horse. And then if you're breeding, you know, high-end horses, it's going to be a million dollars or five hundred thousand dollars or something, but generally in the fifteen thousand dollar range. So donkeys you can buy in America for a few hundred bucks. Mules, I didn't know. So I looked up a mule auction this week and, you know, research for my sermon. And I was thinking, how much do mules sell for? And the cheapest mule there was $4,000. And the most expensive one was $46,000. I didn't realize mules were, you know, that highly valued. Okay. So you have horses that could be really, really expensive. The Roman ones were really expensive. And you got the mules and you got the donkeys, right? So this is maybe the BMW and this might be the Buick.

19:21 And I said earlier today, these were the Kias, but now Kias are really upscale. They're kind of expensive now, so I don't know what this is. But which of these animals does Jesus choose? He chooses the bottom of the heap, which is why I love this. He comes, and Zechariah had foretold this, but Matthew quotes it. He comes humble and riding on a donkey. Not that one yet, but he comes humble than riding on a donkey. I love it. And the word humble also means gentle or meek. So this is the kind of king Jesus is. What kind of king do we serve? Is he the arrogant, narcissistic, you know, is he the guy who's bossing everybody around? No, he's just the humble king who comes. And most of the people he associates with are the ne'er-do-wells and the nobodies and the people who are cast aside. That's the kind of king you have. I love that. And so that means if we're going to follow this King, we have to be like that, right?

20:15 We got to be striving to be like that, humble like that. I remind you of the words of Matthew chapter 11, 28, 29. By the way, this passage, when we had the stained glass window designed, I asked the stained glass window artist, would you please make sure that Jesus is saying this in how he's designed, how he's standing there? When you walk in, I want him to be saying this. So listen, come to me, all you who are struggling, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Put on my yoke and learn from me. I'm gentle and humble, and you will find rest for yourselves. My yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is light. That's what he's saying up there with his arms outstretched. Gentle and humble. That's the king that we serve. So I was thinking about that, humble. So he is our king. What does humility look like for us? And I just remind you of this definition of humility. You've heard it before. Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.

21:11 Right? It doesn't mean you think you're not good or you're not, you know, capable or you're not of value or worth. No, you have infinite worth in the eyes of God. I mean, God looks at you and says, you have value in my eyes. It's just that to be humble is to not think less of yourself, but to be thinking of yourself less often and to be thinking of other people more. This week, I was reading this story from the 1994 Super Bowl. The Dallas Cowboys were playing the Buffalo Bills. The Buffalo Bills had lost three Super Bowls already, and now this was their fourth Super Bowl, and this was their chance to finally win a Super Bowl. One of our members actually played on that Super Bowl team. So anyway, you know, the game goes along, and in the end, the Dallas Cowboys beat the Buffalo Bills. They lose their fourth Super Bowl. So discouraging. Thurman Thomas was one of the great NFL running backs, and at the end of the game, he's sitting on the bench. This is a picture of him. A lot of these guys are in tears. Now, Emmett Smith, playing for the Dallas Cowboys, was the MVP for that game. He was their running back. He was the MVP, and he sees Thurman Thomas across the field. Now, they just won the Super Bowl. He was just the MVP. What does he do? He gets his goddaughter, and he walks across the field to where Thurman Thomas is sitting with his head in his hands, and he turns to his goddaughter and says this. He says, I want you to meet the greatest running back in the NFL. This is Mr. Thurman Thomas.

22:30 Isn't that cool? I thought, that's humility. It's like, you know, seeing somebody else and noticing their pain and then lifting them up. I think about Joey Cheek. He was a U.S. Olympic speed skater who, in the 2006 Winter Olympics, won the gold in the 500-meter speed skate, or in the 500-meter race. And this was his acceptance speech. Yeah, there he was. So he says this. So, you know, you're standing there, you get to make your speech, you know, your moment of glory. And he says, I've always felt that if I ever do something big like this, I want to be able to give something back. I love what I do. It's great fun, but honestly, it's a pretty ridiculous thing. I skate around in tights. He said, if you keep it in perspective, I've trained my whole life for this, but it's just not that big of a deal. And then he said, so I always thought if I had a chance to do something, I'd want to do something like this. And he'd been working with a group in Darfur in Sudan, and they were working with children who had been through the brutality of war and had PTSD, and many of them lost parents.

23:28 and this organization was using sports to help bring healing to these kids, play therapy for them. And he said, so I'm going to give the $25,000 the U.S. Olympic Committee gives us for winning a gold medal to help these kids there. And if any of you are listening who are my sponsors or anybody else would like to help, I'd love for you to do this too. And that day they raised $350,000 for kids in Sudan so they might find healing. That's what humility looks like. Or I love this picture of this John Dixon. He wrote a book called Humilitas, A Lost Key to Life, Love, and Leadership. And he defines humility as the noble choice to forgo your status, deploy your resources, or use your influence for the good of others before yourself. One of the things I love about being your pastor is I feel like most of you get this. I mean, you were here yesterday serving, you were making sandwiches, you know, or nuts, you were making the sack lunches or weekend backpacks for our kids in the inner city school, urban city schools. A number of you were serving in other areas. This week, I came to the blood drive. I came up on Monday to give blood. I only had a little bit of time, and all the seats were filled and all the tables were filled with people giving blood on Monday. It was just astounding.

24:40 So I came back on Tuesday and I had a chance to give blood on Tuesday. And you know, I thought to myself, these people took an hour off of work to come here to get poked and prodded and to give a pint of blood for what? A sticker and a hot dog. But you didn't come for the sticker or the hot dog. Mine fell off before I got out of the room. You came because you felt like somebody needs me. and it wasn't that you thought less of yourself, you were thinking of yourself less than somebody else. That's the rhythm of life for people who have Jesus as their king. Just a couple more things about that story. So in verse 8, we read this, a large crowd spread their clothes on the road. That's a weird thing, and often we just kind of bypass that, like what was that about? Putting your clothes, your outer coat, your garments, they're on the ground for Jesus to walk on them, ride his donkey on them? Now this was another sign. The Jewish people knew this story, even though most of us don't.

25:35 So in 2 Kings 9, there is a warrior. His name is Yehu. And Yehu is with his buddies. And he goes, and there's this young man who comes up and says, I need to talk to you. So they go into this room. And the young man is a young prophet. And he says, God has told me that you're to be the next king of Israel. And he pours oil on his head. He anoints him and pours oil on his head. And God is going to use you to execute his justice in the community. Yehu walks out of the room. and his friend's like, hey, what was that about? What's going on? Oh, nothing, it was nothing. No, no, no, no, no, tell us what happened. Well, this young man just poured oil on my head and said, I'm the next king of Israel. And here's what they did. They quickly took their cloaks and spread them under him on the bare steps. Then they blew their trumpets and shouted, Yehu is king. So when you read that, that they put the cloaks in front of Jesus, this is the passage that's referring back to. That's from the 800s BC. So we've been to the 1600s BC. We've been to the 800s BC and the 520s BC.

26:29 So then what happens next? Matthew 21, 8. Others cut palm branches off the trees and spread them on the road. What was that about? Now I'm going to take you to 175 BC. Hang with me. So 175 BC, there was a king, his name was Antiochus Epiphanes. He was a Syrian Greek king, and with his armies, he invaded the Holy Land and he conquered the Jewish people. And then he said, I don't want you to be Jews anymore. I want you to be Greeks. He wanted to spread the Greek culture throughout his empire, his little tiny empire. And so he took their Torah scrolls and burned them. And he set up an altar in the temple to God, to Zeus. And he slaughtered pigs in sacrifice to Zeus in the altar of God. And he did this, you know, this kind of stuff went on for years. And finally, there was a family called the Maccabees. The word Maccabee means hammer, and it was their nickname. And they decided to raise up an army, and they couldn't tolerate it anymore.

27:23 They raised up an army, and they drove Antiochus Epiphanes out of the Holy Land. This is 165 B.C. and they went in and they cleansed the temple. You may remember the story. They cleansed the temple. They rededicated to God. And then there was only enough oil to last for a couple days, but it ended up burning for eight days. And our Jewish friends celebrate this as the festival of Hanukkah, right? So that's what's happening at Hanukkah. What they do is after this, the Jewish people, when Simon Maccabee comes into town, they cut down palm branches and they start waving them in front of him. And they put them on the ground in front of him. And they say, you are the victor, and we have rededicated the temple, and we are a people again. And they started singing psalms of praise to God, like, Hosanna, deliver us now, from Psalm 118.

28:05 And so when the people see Jesus on the donkey, and they remember Zechariah 9.9, and they remember Genesis 49, and then they remember what happened in their recent past, and they cut down the palm tree, palm branches, and they start waving them and saying, blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord from Psalm 118. I want to show you a picture. This was from the last trip I took to the Holy Land. This was just several months before the war. This is in the spring of 2023. And these were our young adults, and they were in our mentoring program. And so we're on the top of the Mount of Olives, and in the background you see the Dome of the Rock from the 600s, but that's where the temple stood in Jesus' day. So Jesus is starting to ride down the Mount of Olives on that donkey right in this spot, and he's looking down at the temple. And then what we do with this group, with any of our groups is we get big palm branches and we sing hosanna as we walk down the Mount of Olives. Here's just a little of video. It was raining and windy that day, but take a look.

28:58 Or not? So we're singing the hosannas as we make our way down. You can see the Dome of the Rock or what would have been the temple in the background. Halfway down, there's a chapel called Dominus Flevit, which means the Lord wept. And this is the place, Matthew doesn't tell this part of the story, it's in Luke, but this is the place where Jesus stops and he looks down and he weeps over the city of Jerusalem. And he says, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if only you'd known the things that make for peace, but you would not. And what he could see was that 40 years later, the Jews would, 36 years later, the Jews would rebel against the Romans, and the Romans would send three legions in, and they would crush them. And they would slaughter, Joseph says, a million Jews. And Jesus weeps because he showed them the way. It's like, love your neighbor, and love your enemy, and turn the other cheek. And, you know, if the Roman soldier forces you to carry his pack for a mile, carry it a second mile.

30:01 They didn't listen to that. All right. Hosanna to the Son of David. Son of David is a royal term as well. It was the term for the Messiah. Hosanna means save us now, rescue us. Hosanna in the highest heaven. All right. So that leads me, so who is Jesus? He is our king. What's he like? He's humble. He comes caring for the lowly, and he wants us to be humble too. And that leads us finally to this last piece, and that is what he does once he gets down to Jerusalem. So, you know, he makes his way down the Mount of Olives, makes his way to the temple courts. When he gets inside the temple courts, what he finds is there is a marketplace set up in the halls of prayer. So people are supposed to be coming there to pray, and in particular, the hall of the Gentiles, where anybody could come to pray. But they've set up a market there, and they're selling stuff. And if you could just imagine a bazaar, like, you know, even in Jerusalem, the old city of Jerusalem, there are these bazaars where people are shouting things and buying things. Or if you've ever been to the fish market in Seattle, it's kind of that sort of thing. And so people are shouting and they're selling and buying things in the temple courts of prayer. And he comes in and he's so mad. And part of the reason why he's mad, Matthew tells us that there are two kinds of merchants there. One are the money changers. So you had to offer, you had to make your offering in a Tyrian shekel. That was the coin you had to use to make an offering in the temple. And people didn't usually have those, so they had to exchange their currency.

31:24 So they had the currency exchange inside the temple instead of outside the temple. That was part of the problem right there. Now, when you got to the currency exchange inside the temple, they didn't necessarily give you the best rates. How many of you have ever exchanged money when you travel to another country? Now, can I just give you a tip? The worst place to exchange money is where? The airport. The airport. They have the worst exchange rates at the airport. So you want to go to a legitimate bank and you want to exchange there, maybe before you go, but if you exchange at the airport, that's the worst place to do it. The worst place to exchange currency in Jerusalem was inside the temple courts. And the people who were most hurt by that were the poor. And so the merchants were making money off of this. That's okay. They're supposed to make some money, but they're making money off of it. And then the priests and the other folks, they're somehow involved in this. And instead of the place being a place of prayer, it's become a den of thieves, Jesus says. And then the other was they were selling doves.

32:20 So doves were the sacrifice of the poor. If you had some resources, you had lambs that you sacrificed, or goats. But if you were poor, you sacrificed a dove. Now, if you bought a dove outside the temple, you know, I'm just going to make this up, but let's say it's a dollar for a dove outside the temple. But you get inside the temple and it's five. Now, these are certified doves, right? They're the special doves. But once more, the people who are being ripped off are the poor who are offering doves as their sacrifice. So Jesus is angry probably about a lot of stuff here. And so what does he do? He turns over the tables of the money changers. Like this is one time Jesus really ticked off. And he turns over the tables, the money changers, and he breaks open the, you know, the, whatever you call them, where the birds are, the cages where the birds are, and he drives all these people out. Because they've misused their religion, and they are harming people in the process. Now, here's what I was thinking. Like, the religious leaders were in, they were, you know, they were overseeing this. Somewhere along the way, somebody said, hey, that's not a bad idea to have it right up here in the temple courts. Let's just do that. And they'd kind of rationalized it, right? And then they rationalized the charges because, you know, any extra money was going to go, you know, to help all of us out up here, and we're all trying to do God's work. And so there was a lot of rationalization for stuff that never should have happened.

33:35 Do you think that happens in religion today? Not just among the Jewish people. It happens among the Christian people, where we rationalize stuff as like, that's okay, when God would say that is just not okay. And we support things that we shouldn't support, and we, you know, we buy into things we shouldn't buy into, and then we allow things to creep into our hearts and our minds. And that's what the season of Lent is about, is about cleansing the temple, right? And the temple here is our heart and our minds and the practices that we have. It's what we think and say and do and fail to do. And the entire season of Lent is about repenting and making ourselves right with God. So I love this. Jesus comes and he cleanses the temple just as the Maccabees did. Jesus cleansed the temple, but it's not against the pagans. Now it's the religious people who've become a little lost. And every Lenten season, we have 40 days to just pause and go, where do I need to cleanse? What do I need to let aside or set aside?

34:28 The word repent, by the way, is a word that means in Greek, it's metanoia. It means to change how you think about things that leads to a change of heart that leads to a change of behavior. How many of you came to Ash Wednesday services last week? So some of you did. It's a really great service to come to at the beginning of Lent. And during that service, we have a little card that we invite you to write a letter to God. And I really like doing this. So we write this letter to God and say, Dear Lord, please forgive me for it. And I like that we had two sides of it this year, Scott, so that we could, you know, we had enough room to actually fill it out a bit. And then after that, you come forward and we put ashes on your forehead in the sign of the cross. And those ashes are a sign of your repentance. When you're penitent, you cover yourself in ashes in the Old Testament. And so you're saying, I'm so sorry, God, for the stupid stuff that I've allowed to sneak into my life. Please forgive me." And then at the end of the service, we go outside and we have barrels that have fire burning in them, and we drop our prayers in there to know that God has promised to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

35:25 Just this beautiful holy thing. But that's just the start of the season of Lent. And so what I'm inviting you today to do is to think about what are the tables that need to be turned over in your heart? What are the practices that you've allowed in, that I've allowed in, or the thoughts, or the failure to do certain things that God wanted us to do? And this is the time for us to be cleansed of that. All right, so I got to tell you this. A lot of times I think we're blind to some of these things. You know, I think the religious leaders had convinced themselves it was okay. We just can't see what we can't see sometimes. So this week, I went to get a haircut. And by the way, I'll start off by saying this. I carry a pocket testament in my back pocket all the time. The bottom edge of it is like it pokes out from the, not the poke out, but it like puts pressure on the, like my bottom back left, you know, pocket in my pants. Now my jeans are fine. They just sort of start looking a little whiter in that spot. But when I wear dress clothes, it starts to wear the fabric a little thin right there where that one little spot is right there on my pocket testament.

36:29 And so anyway, I went to get my hair cut and then I was driving my Mustang, which sits pretty low to the ground, and I got in my Mustang, kind of slid into my Mustang, and I heard a little tear, a little rip. And I thought, did my pants just rip? And I looked down, nope, and then I reached back in the back, and everything's fine. I'm all in good shape. And so I don't know what that was, but okay. So anyway, I go to make a house call. I went to go visit with a family. Their 10-year-old son wanted to talk, and so mom and dad and he and we talked a little bit about some of the things that he was struggling with, and we shared prayer and scripture, and then I got ready to leave, and dad leans over to him and he says, hey, you might be careful. You've got a rip in your pants. I'm like, really, where? I mean, I checked and he said, no, it's on the left back pocket. I hadn't checked that. And I said, oh, thank you so much. I reached back there. I'm like, oh my gosh, here are the pants. So that is the hole that I had in my pants. And I'm like, oh my gosh, how embarrassing. Who else saw that? And, you know, I get up to, I called Levon on the way here to the church. I'm like, hey, please bring me some pants. It's Ash Wednesday. I need some pants tonight. And I'm walking out of my car and I'm looking and, you know, see like there was somebody who was going to be behind me. And I'm like, I'm just going to slow down and let him walk ahead of me. And then finally another guy comes up. I say, would you walk just a little bit ahead of me? And, you know, as we talked. But I thought, you know what? Sometimes you can't see the holes in your pants.

37:51 Sometimes somebody else has to tell you, which is kind of what the sermon is about tonight. It's just to encourage you to think about, you know, where are the places that are broken or missing or where you've allowed things to sneak into your life that shouldn't be there. Zechariah, who talked about, you know, riding on a donkey, he also said this. He was explaining to the Jewish people in 520 why God had allowed them to go into exile in 586. And he says, here's the thing. There were all these things God wanted them to do, and they didn't do it. Here's what God had said. Make just and faithful decisions. Show kindness and compassion to each other. Don't oppress the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the stranger there is the foreigner. Don't oppress the stranger and the poor. Don't plan evil against each other. But they refused to pay attention. They turned a cold shoulder and stopped listening.

38:40 That's what led them to be in exile. These were Jewish people, followers of God. And they'd gotten sidetracked. Or I think of King David, who, you remember, the friend of God. He wrote so many of the Psalms. He was this wonderful king of Judah. And then he had an affair, not even an affair. he took advantage of Bathsheba, Uriah's wife, and then he had Uriah killed, and then he lied about it. He violated most of the Ten Commandments. What happened to him? But in his pride, he became convinced that he was above the law and he could do whatever he wanted. And finally, he came to this place where the prophet Nathan said, hey, buddy, you got a hole in your britches. You got something seriously wrong in your life, and you got to repent. And every year on Ash Wednesday, we remember the psalm that he wrote, Psalm 51, and this is what he says in Psalm 51. We said it together this last Wednesday, created me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. And it goes on, cast me not away from your presence and don't take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of my salvation.

39:42 Because he was broken, because he'd allowed sin in. I'd end with this. The seven deadly sins, I always find it helpful to think about that. In the Old Testament, the greatest sin was idolatry. That is to worship something other than God as though it was God, the most important thing in your life, which is why the first commandment is, don't have any other gods before me. The second was to practice injustice. And for Jesus, you know, the most important commandment after loving God was to love your neighbor. And so to fail to love your neighbor was a serious sin. But the seven deadly sins also helped me think about, you know, where I might be struggling. So I just invite you to look at this list and say, is there any of these that I've allowed to sneak into my life. Let's put it up on the screen. Lust, gluttony, greed, indifference to the suffering of others, anger or hate, envy or pride. All right. Jesus is our king. That whole chapter is about telling us that he is the king of kings.

40:44 He's a humble king who invites us not to think less of ourselves, but to think of ourselves less and to think of others more. And he's come to cleanse the temple of our hearts. We just have to ask. So this is what Zechariah said, lo, your king comes to you, humble and riding on a donkey. Are you ready? Let's pray. Would you put your hands on your lap again, if you would, just like you're offering yourself to God. And I'd like to invite you just to whisper this prayer under your breath.

41:18 Jesus be my king. and help me to honor you with my life. Help me to follow you and your humility. not to think less of myself, but to think of myself less. And then in this moment, I'd like to invite you to just utter your own words. Here's your chance to say, Jesus, please forgive me for, and would you just finish that prayer? Create in us, O Lord, clean hearts and renew right spirits within us. Please don't cast us away from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from us and restore to us the joy of our salvation.

42:26 cleanse us from all unrighteousness, and draw us near to you in your holy name.