We're going to jump into this
Easter story, beginning with what we call Palm Sunday.
The Bible references it maybe in your notes as the triumphal entry
of Jesus.
This week
in biblical history, this week in world
history is the most important week that the world's ever seen, honestly.
And it is the week that the Gospels speak most about.
In the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
There's 89 chapters in all.
Four of those chapters deal with Jesus's life.
In the first 30 years, only four chapters.
85 of the 89 deal
with the last three and a half years of Jesus's life.
And of those 29, deal with the last week.
And so it appears to me
as if God says, listen, I want you to pay attention to this.
For whatever reason, God, so
that you don't need to know a lot about Jesus early life.
We don't know anything about his teenage years.
Those young adult years, you know, like like in God, in his sovereignty.
Just figured you don't need to know that.
But I do want you to pay attention to
is the last years and especially the last week,
the most important week
in history, those important week and humanity.
This week,
we call it Palm Sunday.
The Bible might reference it as the triumphal entry, but it's very,
very important.
This week.
Palm Sunday, the triumphal entry happened.
We know historically on the 10th of this, on
they didn't have names for months like January, February, March.
We understand that right.
So this month that this happened was called the month of Nissan,
not the car, but the month.
And it happened on the 10th of Nissan.
That's important because in Israel's history,
the 10th of Nissan was significant.
The 10th of Nissan is when Israel
crossed the Jordan River and entered the Promised Land.
Okay.
Same day the 10th of Nissan is when the Hebrew people
would select a lamb to be sacrificed at the Passover meal.
It was on this day.
It was on this day
when Jesus rode into Jerusalem,
fulfilling John's word.
John the Baptist, behold the Lamb of God
that takes away the sin of the world.
Was on this day
that Jesus rides in Jerusalem, the 10th of Nissan, the
the day that held special meeting for all of God's
people.
Such a significant time.
This was in Jerusalem, as all these lambs are being brought
into the city to be selected by families to be their Passover lamb.
Upon selecting the lamb, they would take the lamb
home, and the lamb would live with them in their house
for the next few days before it would be killed
and prepared and
eaten.
It was it was this day.
And so so this was such a high day.
There were three feasts that every able bodied male Jew
must travel to Jerusalem to celebrate each year.
This, the Passover,
the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Booths.
So this is one of the three kind of high holy days.
And Jerusalem is so overrun with people.
Traditionally, and according to rabbinic law,
one lamb could feed up to but not more than ten people.
So let's just assume
that there's one lamb for every ten people.
There's an estimate of 250,000 lamb
that are being brought into the city,
which means there's 2.5
million at least people.
It's overrun because this is what they do.
And it's on this day, the 10th of Nissan, that Jesus comes into Jerusalem.
One of the things
that I want to, as we go through John chapter 12,
if you have a Bible, you follow along with this John chapter 12.
One of the things I want us to realize,
there's three things we'll pick up from this triumphal entry.
One of them, this first one is this.
And I think we all understand this,
that Jesus is more appealing than religion.
Jesus is much more appealing than.
Have you ever heard anybody say, you know what?
I don't like organized religion, but I'm intrigued by Jesus
ever that that might be you.
Because we have at some level, we know that Jesus
is more appealing than religion.
And so in this triumphal entry story, this Palm Sunday,
the next day, the large crowd, really large,
that had come to the feast, heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.
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.
As part of the mandatory feasts
that the people had to participate in.
They had traveled
the same roads year after year.
They had gone through the same religious practices
year after year as part of this feast.
They see the same people year after year.
There's nothing new about this.
They did it.
Their parents did it.
Their grandparents did it.
Their great grandparents did it.
They grew up talking about they grew up doing it.
It's just what you did.
They got there.
They sat in the same seats.
And if someone was in their seat,
there's a little bit of an issue.
Because it's just what you did.
Right.
It was a part of their religious practice,
and the good ones were there every time.
Right.
And into this system,
this stale, stagnant
system of religious burdens and whoops,
Jesus is a breath of fresh air.
It's been said that people
who are nothing like Jesus, like Jesus.
And Jesus like people
who are nothing like him.
And in this system,
the people cry out.
Hosanna!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
I want you to know something.
I was reading this and praying over this just this morning
and this stuck out to me.
I underlined it in my Bible and I wrote down just this morning,
I want you to know verse 13,
well, let me go to 12.
This large crowd had come.
They heard Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.
So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying, Hosanna!
Blessed are you in the name of Lord.
I notice this this morning.
Jesus hadn't showed up yet.
They heard that he might be there,
and because of the possibility that he might be there.
Okay.
The possibility
of Jesus's presence prompted a prepared response.
To get this, the possibility
of Jesus's presence prompted a prepared response.
Jesus might show up, and if he does, I've already got one in the chain.
But like, I'm going to like this.
Mean something, you know what I'm saying?
Like, I'm not going to miss my shot.
To meet him, to greet him, to worship him.
I don't want to miss this. But.
They already.
They came ready.
They came prepared.
They heard he was on his way.
And so they prepared a response ahead of time.
Let me ask this.
What response have you already prepared
while you were getting ready this morning,
while you were driving over this morning, while you're walking through the doors
this morning before I opened up the Bible,
what was your already prepared response?
Because Jesus might show up
or have we fallen into the set?
This what we do? This where I sit,
we're going to do this many songs.
I was going to do a little thing.
He'll talk a little bit.
We'll do a song, walk out.
Right.
As I'm looking at this this week, it's
I've been so burdened by it and I just, I'm feeling of myself.
How religious have I become?
God, I don't want a religious church.
Knowing he might show up,
it prompted a prepared response ahead of time.
I'm not going to wait to see how I feel
when it's done.
To determine what I do give
and how I respond.
Do we realize
who might be showing up?
Yeah.
Good.
And they shout.
Hosanna!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
What they're doing is they're quoting a psalm.
Psalm 118
I want you to understand what is their saying.
Psalm 118, verses 2324 through 26.
The psalm says, this is the day the Lord has made.
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Save us we pray, oh Lord, oh Lord, we pray.
Give us success.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
We bless you from the house of the Lord.
This is the psalm they're quoting.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
That Psalm begins in verse two.
I mean, this portion of that begins with this.
This is the day the Lord has made.
It was this day, this very day
that God had prepared.
It was this very day
God had prepared this day
from the foundations of the world, that this would be the day
that the Messiah would come into Jerusalem.
That's what this
Psalm means.
This is the day.
It doesn't mean every day is this day.
You know, I mean, we kind of understand.
Oh, today's the day Lord's made us. Thank you for giving me another day.
There was this was a prophetic psalm that there would be a day.
And I will rejoice in this day.
And when they say, save us, that is the word
hosanna that's used here in John 12.
Save us. This is your day.
Blessed is you who come in the name of the Lord,
like they're realizing who this is, and because they're realizing who it is,
it prompts him for a prepared response
because they know that Jesus is special.
He's so much more appealing than religion.
This is the day.
See, they knew the grind of religion
and the new Jesus was different.
They understood that it was grace over
grind and
grace over grind.
You know, the grind of religion.
Galatians chapter two, verse 16.
Yet we know that a person is not justified, made
right with the father by works of the law, by the grind,
but through faith in Jesus Christ.
So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified, in
order to be made right with the father by faith in Christ,
and not by the grind of the law of religion,
because by the grind no one's justified.
That's why Jesus is so much more appealing than religion,
because it's grace over grind.
Religion is pro grind.
Jesus is grace.
Listen, some of us have tried
and you can continue trying to hustle your way to holiness.
Where you can learn to walk with Jesus. You.
One of them is going to lead to burnout.
The other is going to lead a life.
Religion says do more,
do better, right?
And at some level, we fall into that trap.
I gotta do better.
I gotta do more.
Here's the problem with that.
You can do a lot and you can do a lot of good.
But how do you know you've done enough?
You might do more and do better than the person sitting on your right, but
you might not do more and do better than the person sitting on your left.
And so where's the standard?
Who determines what's enough?
And religion keeps shouting to you do more,
do better, do more, do better, do more, do better.
And Jesus says, I've done it
and it's finished.
What I know.
And you know this two
is that Jesus didn't die to make us religious.
He died to make us alive. Yes.
Amen.
And what I know for me and what you know for you,
is that rules in our hands don't fix rebellion
in our hearts.
The grace of God does that.
And this is why we know.
We realize that Jesus is so much more
appealing than religion.
This is the day,
the day that Jesus rode into Jerusalem.
That was the day that God had made
to tell the world.
There is a way
that is so much more appealing
than the religious system that you're living in.
There's a way to be right with God.
That's the first thing that I look at when I look at this triumphal entry story.
This account, this historical account.
The second thing is this.
And this is really important for us to understand
that Scripture is more reliable than opinion.
Scripture is more reliable than opinion.
Look at verses 14, 15 and 16.
And Jesus found a young donkey
and sat on it just as it is written.
This is scripture.
Fear not, daughter of Zion.
Behold, your King is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt.
His disciples did not understand these things at first.
Have you ever read the Bible? Not understanding the first?
Yeah, we're in good company.
But when Jesus was glorified, then they remember that
these things had been written about him and it'd be done to him.
So here's the thing.
Scripture is more reliable than our opinion.
Everybody has an opinion about who Jesus is.
Everybody has an opinion about God.
Everybody has a opinion about how to be right.
Everybody has a opinion about religion.
Scripture is more reliable.
We can't trust our opinions because our opinions change all the time.
See, culture has an opinion about who Jesus is.
Culture has an opinion about being.
What about what being right means?
Culture has an opinion about what truth is.
Culture says this.
You can find and determine your truth.
Jesus says, I am the truth. You know,
and Scripture is much more reliable than opinion.
I want you to understand something.
All through Scripture, people
spouting out their opinions about Jesus.
In Mark chapter eight,
people had opinions and some thought he was a good prophet.
He's a good teacher.
He's a good prophet. Is good religious man.
Well, he was, but he was a lot more than that.
Your opinions were wrong.
In John chapter nine, they had an opinion about Jesus and their.
Their opinion was just.
I don't know who he is, but we know he's not from God.
Can you imagine?
That was their opinion
when reliable, but it was their opinion.
In John chapter ten.
And so we're not exactly sure who he is, but we think he's possessed by a demon.
Others said we're not quite sure.
We think he's insane.
That was their opinion.
And in our culture we say, oh, you got a right to your opinion.
Your truth is your truth.
And Scripture would say, well, no, you're just
you're just wrong.
I don't care for your opinion.
Your opinion is not right.
And that's what I love about the Bible.
Like it's it's.
It's pretty blunt and pretty honest.
We can have opinions.
Most of them.
We're going to be wrong here.
Scripture is more reliable than our opinion.
And what I see in John 12
is this quote from Zechariah nine, verse 15 of John 12.
Fear not, daughter of Zion, behold,
your King is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt. Now.
Everybody had an opinion about who Jesus was.
Scriptures more reliable than opinion.
And Scripture has determined the truth of who Jesus is by the fact
that prophetically in Zechariah nine nine, I think I have that up there, don't I?
Yep. In Zachariah nine nine, there's this prophecy 100 years
before Jesus ever, ever sat on that donkey.
Prophecy says, oh, daughter of Zion,
shout our Jerusalem, your King is coming to you.
Righteous having salvation.
Is he humble and mounted on a donkey called the fall of a donkey?
Everybody had a part of who Jesus is, but prophetically, scripturally,
biblically it told us who he is.
Doesn't matter your opinion and what the prophet Zechariah said
and what Jesus fulfilled and John records is this he's a king on a donkey.
That should tell us everything we need to know about who Jesus is.
Doesn't matter your opinion. Here's what I mean.
Kings road donkeys in times of peace.
And they rode horses in times of war.
Jesus is coming into this is the day the Lord has made.
Let us rejoice and be glad in this day.
Your King comes to you riding on a donkey.
He's offering us terms of peace.
It's what he's doing
in Scripture.
Time and time and time and time again says, yes, he is the King.
Yes, he is Almighty.
And yes, he is the way to peace with the father.
Him riding on a donkey was in the fulfillment of Scripture
to drive home the point that this is his peace.
He is the peace treaty with us
to understand
that he will come back.
And the book of revelation says he's not riding the donkey,
he's riding a horse
because the time for the peace treaty is done,
and then it will be for war,
and he will destroy evil and destroy sin once and for all.
And by that time, if you've not come to the father
by the peace treaty of the sun, it's too late,
and you will have missed it.
Scripture is more reliable than opinion.
In Luke's account of this,
of this event.
When Jesus is as it
is, is approaching Jerusalem on the donkey.
This is what
this is what Luke tells us.
And when he drew near and saw the city seize Jerusalem,
he wept over it, saying,
would that you,
even you would had known on this day
the things that make for peace.
But now they're hidden from your eyes.
For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade
around you and surround you and him, you in on every side
and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you.
And they will not leave
one stone upon another in you, because you did not get this,
but you did not know
the time of your visitation. And
so you missed it.
This is the day the Lord has made you see.
I am offering you peace.
And you missed
the day of your visitation.
And the grand, eternal cosmic sense.
This was the day.
Of our visitation.
But I believe.
That each one of us has a day of visitation.
When Jesus comes to us and says.
This is who I am.
And it's very clear
you can choose to be at peace
with the father through me, or you can choose to reject it.
Friends, I don't want you to miss
your day of visitation.
When Jesus
wept over the city and pronounced these words, he says, you've missed it.
And now your eyes have been darkened.
I don't want you to miss this day.
God is merciful and gracious
to time and time again.
Present us with a day of visitation.
Don't reject it and deny it
so long that your eyes grow dark to it.
How did they miss it?
How did they miss this day?
The day the Lord has made?
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
What problem? Why did they miss?
Why does Jesus then say, but you missed it.
They should have known it.
They should have seen it,
because God has been talking to them from time immemorial.
That this is the this day is coming.
How did they miss it?
This day?
They should have no,
because this day was prophesied over
483 years earlier, almost 500 years earlier.
This day was prophesied to the day
500 years
earlier through the prophet Daniel.
Daniel was one of the was one of the Hebrews
that was taken into captivity into Babylon.
And he served many different kings and regimes.
And he was he was he he was a man above men.
And he was a godly man.
He was a great prophet.
And Daniel was reading
the ancient texts of the earlier prophets
who had prophesied over Israel, that they would be
taken into captivity for 70 years.
And he's at the end of that 70 year
period, is realizing that that 70 year period is coming to an end.
And he's reading Scripture because Scripture is more reliable than opinion.
And in that moment, he's praying to God, saying, God, what?
What are what is next?
Where are you?
Speak to me, and God gives him this prophecy
about this day
that the Lord has made.
And in Daniel chapter nine, verse 25.
The prophecy says this know and understand this
from the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem
until the Anointed One, the Messiah, the ruler comes.
There will be seven sevens and 62 sevens.
It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.
So make sense? You get it.
Remember how the disciples read the first time
they understand it, but later they did.
Yeah, this is that time for us right now.
Listen, this is what he's saying.
Jerusalem after the captivity, the Babylonian captivity.
First difference is here in the captivity, the northern ten tribes.
And then Babylon took over Syria and came down
and got the the, the southern two tribes after the Babylonian captivity.
During that time, all of Jerusalem was just in shambles.
It was torn to the walls are broken down.
The the the the buildings were destroyed.
It was in complete shambles.
And the prophecy.
Prophecy.
And Daniel says there's going to be a time when an edict
is going to be given to go back and rebuild that city.
And from the moment that that edict is given until the appearing of the Messiah,
there's going to be seven sevens and 62 sevens.
They should have no right.
I mean, it's obvious, right?
Here's what's going on.
We know
that when the Bible uses that word sevens,
it's a seven year period.
Okay.
So that we're talking about a seven year period.
And what Daniel it said there'll be 69
seven year periods
okay. So seven years is one cycle.
Another seven is two cycles. No sevens, three sales.
There'll be 69 of those cycles.
Those 69 seven year periods
from the command to rebuild Jerusalem till the Messiah shows up.
So now we have a timetable.
Now our difficulty in
this is we don't understand the Babylonian calendar.
Our calendar a year is 100
and or 365 and a third days in our calendar year.
Their calendar year was 360 days.
It was a lunar calendar, not a solar calendar.
And so all you have to do 69 seven year
cycles times 360 days per year.
What you come up with is 173,880 days.
So all you have to do is determine the day the edict was made.
Count forward 173,880 days.
And you should know that the Messiah showing up, you follow.
That's the prophecy in Daniel 925.
Okay, so understanding history, biblical and
and and Babylonian history.
King ATA Xerxes gave the command
to go back and rebuild Jerusalem.
And he did that
on April,
that he did that on March 14th, 445 BC.
On March 14th, our calendar.
March 14th, 445 BC,
ATA Xerxes gave the command to go back.
And so you fast forward 173,800 days.
Guess what I say. You come to.
Palm Sunday.
The 10th of Nissan,
which translates on our calendar April 6th.
That's why I wanted to preach this last week.
Is this wild or what? Am.
And Jesus weeps and
he says, guys, you missed it.
This should be so apparent to you.
You're either incredibly ignorant
or you're incredibly negligent.
You missed the day.
And it has been in front of your eyes in vivid detail for five,
nearly 500 years.
Don't miss your day.
Do you see how precise Scripture is?
How precise God is, how detailed God is?
Do you see it?
If he's
that precise in details, don't you think he can handle the details of your life?
Yeah.
And your kids life.
Yes, yes, yes.
So if he can handle it,
why don't we trust him?
All the time. All.
He sees, though.
Everybody had an opinion about who Jesus was,
and they knew he was more appealing than religion.
They didn't realize that Scripture
is more reliable than their opinion.
Listen, everybody in your world has a platform,
but not everybody has the truth.
Jesus is more appealing than religion.
Scripture is more reliable than your opinion.
And here's the third thing.
Following is more important than debating.
Well, that's light up all along.
Look at this.
Please understand
that following is so much more important than debating.
You had four groups of people
in this passage starting verse.
Start in verse 16.
His disciples.
That's one group 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.
The crowd.
That's the second group
that had been with them when he called Lazarus out of the tomb, like they saw it
and raised him from the dead, continue to bear witness.
The reason why the crowd went to meet,
him was that they had heard he had done these things, the signs.
So there was a third group there that that that they didn't see
Lazarus being right. They just heard the talk about it.
The third group,
so the Pharisees, the
fourth group, said to one another, you see that you're getting nothing.
Look, the world's gone after him.
There's four groups,
and all four had an opinion about him,
and all four debated the reality
and the truth of what they had seen and what they had heard.
And though all four groups debated about, there was only one small group
that actually followed.
And following is so much more important
than debating.
The blessing is in the doing,
not the debating.
I want us to understand this
that inspection without action is deception.
And this is this is my concern for us.
Because we can
we can follow along the Easter devotionals and read through the Gospels.
About this week.
And we can come and we can read and study and listen and inspect all we want.
But inspection without action is deception.
We think we're growing.
We think we're being made into the image of Christ
because we've inspected.
But inspection without action.
We're just being deceived.
James says the same thing be doers of the word
and not just hearers inspecting and so deceive yourselves.
My concern for
people like us is that there's a lot of inspection
with very little action, so results in a whole bunch of deception.
And. See, religion is often
made up of a whole bunch of religious spectators.
Who like to debate
but don't like to follow. You.
And what Jesus has invited
us to is not spectatorship.
There's not debate, but apprenticeship.
Yeah.
He says, I want you to apprentice after me.
Say the things I said, do the things I do.
We want to know what he knows.
He wants us to do what he's done.
So make sense.
See, observation is good.
No doubt.
But it must lead to conclusion, resulting in devotion.
It's good for us to observe.
It's good for us to inspect.
But until it leads to a conclusion
that results in devotion.
Devotion that says.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
This is the day I am coming with the previously prepared response,
because I know, I know
the one in whom I'm going to encounter,
and I'm willing to follow
to apprentice after.
Not just know about him.
To understand.
Understand.
And Jesus comes into Jerusalem
with this offer of peace
and weeps.
Because though they saw,
and though they heard, and though they should have known better,
they weren't going to do,
And he wept.
You and I don't need more rules.
And we don't need louder voices.
You and I need to believe and receive
the king who came offering peace with the father. Yes.
Involves two things.
Repentance
and following
repentance
and apprenticeship.
Repentance means
I'm headed in the wrong direction.
And I'm going to agree with God that it is the wrong direction.
And I'm going to go the opposite direction.
And when repentance has happened,
apprenticeship is the result.
This is what Jesus invited us into.
He did invite us into simply praying a prayer.
He didn't invite us into walking down an aisle.
He didn't invite us into anything other than repentance
is an apprenticeship.
Religion
says I'll try to apprentice without repentance.
Jesus invited us to repent.
And the change of direction
looks like apprenticeship.
Do you follow?
Well, let's not get so comfortable
with our religious repetition.
That we refuse to repent
and never learn the lifestyle
of an apprentice.
This is Palm Sunday.
This is the day that the Lord has made.
Let's rejoice
in the day of his visitation.
To come in repentance
to peace with the father.
And follow hard
after him as apprentices of Jesus.
I want you to pray with me.
Father.
Thank you.
Thank you that you love us.
And you loved us so much that you sent your son into this world,
to go to the cross and to be the sacrificial payment for my sin
and for our sin.
Thank you that you've made that offer
available, that you have established terms of peace.
Father, forgive me, for when I have missed
your day of visitation in my life. You.
Forgive us.
Father, I repent.
Of when?
I've made this about ritual and duty.
And I've missed your heart.
Friends, I want to give you the opportunity
to do what Jesus has invited you to do.
Repent
and apprentice.
And in this moment, I invite you.
The first step of that
to say, father, I repent.
I know the way I have gone.
And I repent.
I repent of my apathy.
I repent of my worry.
I repent of my lethargy.
I repent of my anger.
I repent of my alcoholism.
I repent of my pornography.
I repent.
You fill in the blank. You.
I repent of the hurts
that I've carried year after year and chosen not to forgive.
I repent.
Of my anxiety that I carry because I truly don't
trust your hand. Oh.
I repent
because I think that I am the one
who doles out justice.
I repent.
And this day, the day that you have made.
I choose to be your apprentice.
Jesus.
I choose to be your apprentice.
I want to talk like you.
I want to walk like you.
I want to do the things that you've done.
I want to be your apprentice.
This is the day.
God, I pray
we not miss our day of visitation.
I pray
that we're not playing around with religion anymore,
that we realize who it is
that has visited us.
And we respond to you
in appropriate measure.
You've given us, all of you.
We give you all of ourselves.
This is the day.
In your name I pray. Amen.
Amen.
Listen, it's a good day
because it's a day he has made.
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
But this day leads to Friday,
and then we call Friday.
Good Friday.
The events of Friday were not good, but the outcome was
because the events of Friday led to the events of Sunday.
And so I want to invite you back on Friday
night at 6:00,
as we look from the Gospel of John
about what we call Good Friday,
the reality of what happened in that time with Jesus and his disciples,
and the rear, which actually happened on Thursday.
Didn't happen on Friday.
And then the crucifixion that happened Friday.
So we're going to look on Friday about what happened Thursday.
That set the stage for Friday.
I invite you back for that.
And then on Sunday.
The resurrection.
I would love to talk
with any of you who are making this
this decision to repent and to apprentice any of us here.
Would.
And it was start here.
But the welcome center me here.
I mean, we're just here's the thing I don't know or I truly don't know a lot,
but I do know this, that you can't Lone Ranger yourself through this phase, right?
You can't.
And so I would love the opportunity to talk with you.
You want to talk personally. That's great.
You want to fill out one of those cards in front of you? Felt it.
Put it in a little bucket out there.
Start here.
Something.
Just communicate with us so we can walk with you through this.
Don't try to do this alone,
you understand?
Yeah.
Hey, it's a good day, I love you.
Let's sing together.