Who Is This King? | Easter 2025

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the whole city was stirred and asked, "Who is this?" The crowds waved their palm branches expecting a conquering king who would set them free from Rome, but Jesus came to bring a deeper kind of freedom. This message invites us to meet Jesus as he truly is, not as we wish him to be.

Matthew 21:1-11 | additional: Psalm 118, John 3:16-17, John 10:10

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Cameron Lienhart

Cameron is the Senior Pastor of Conduit Ministries

What is Conduit Ministries?

We are all about helping people get closer to Jesus.
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Morning, friends. My name is Cameron. I'm the pastor here, one of the pastors here at Conduit. It's a joy to have you here this morning on Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday being the day of remembrance and celebration, where Jesus came into the capital city of Jerusalem the week before he was to be betrayed. Tried, crucified, placed in the grave, and then later resurrected. And the next time we meet on a Sunday morning, we'll be celebrating the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But today we're gonna talk about what led, one thing at least that led up to that moment and how we have come and are coming to process how Jesus shows up in our own lives. Okay, so today is Palm Sunday. You might see obviously the palms that are on the floor here down the center aisle. I have one here. These are not so that you like pine after warmer tropical temperatures, although that may be the case. Palms are significant in the story and life, both of Jesus and the Israelite people. I'll talk a little bit about their significance here in a moment, but I wanna start by rooting us in the story where we are in Matthew, the gospel of Matthew, chapter 21.

So if you have a Bible, you can take it out to Matthew, chapter 21. We're gonna be reading just to begin with, verses one through 11.

It says, "Now when they drew near to Jerusalem "and came to Bethphage to the Mount of Olives, "then Jesus sent two disciples saying to them, "go into the village in front of you "and immediately you will find a donkey tied "and a colt with her, untie them and bring them to me. "If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, "the Lord needs them and he will send them at once." This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet saying, "To the daughter of Zion, "behold your King is coming to you humble "and mounted on a donkey on a colt, "the full of a beast of burden. "The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. "They brought the donkey and the colt "and put on them their cloaks and he sat on them. "Most of the crowds spread their cloaks on the road "and others cut branches from trees "and spread them on the road. "And the crowds that went before him "and that followed him were shouting, "Hosanna to the son of David. "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, "Hosanna in the highest."

And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up saying, "Who is this?" And the crowds said, "This is the prophet Jesus "from Nazareth of Galilee."

There's this question in verse 10 there where the crowd or some people, the whole city was stirred up and they were asking this question, "Who is this?"

This is a central question for us this morning. And I think every day when Jesus comes into your life, and I'm not just meaning when Jesus comes, I mean, it's not just a euphemism for salvation. I mean, when you encounter Jesus in any way, you encounter him for the first time, maybe this morning is the first time that you have ever really heard someone talk significantly about Jesus and you're feeling a sense of encounter with him even in the deepest part of your soul and your spirit. Whenever you come to an encounter with Jesus,

When you first get introduced to him, you may ask kind of that similar question. "Man, who is this?

"Who is this guy? "I've heard about him." There's like movies made about him. There's stories in culture I hear about him. Maybe my grandma has told me a few stories from his life or my grandma used to take me to church, but the reality is that no one can answer the question. Who is this in relationship to Jesus for you other than you?

It's not enough for your parents to answer the question for you. It's not enough for your spouse to answer the question for you. It's not enough for a friend to answer the question for you. You must answer the question for yourself. Who is this Jesus? Because there are lots of ways, there are lots of ways that we answer that question in our lives, but not all of them represent the Jesus of the scripture.

We have lots of ways that we wanna answer the question about who Jesus is to us and for us, but not all of those answers are answers that we see represented in who Jesus actually comes to be and do in the scripture. And at the center of the story for Palm Sunday, is that dichotomy? Is the Jesus that I'm expecting and wanting to meet the Jesus that actually is, or is it just a God of my own preference, opinion, bias, and hopes?

In order to understand this part of the story where Jesus is coming into Jerusalem, the capital city, we have to know a little bit of the backstory. And if you're unfamiliar with the whole of the gospels, this is gonna be a really insufficient backstory, but suffice it to say Jesus for a period of three years has been on mission and ministry in the ancient Near East, the area around in between the sea of Galilee and the Jordan River and the Dead Sea.

Preaching and teaching and healing and casting out demons and raising the dead and multiplying food and stirring up trouble with religious leaders and gathering a large crowd of people unintentionally. Jesus never really went out to be like, okay, how do we maximize our effectiveness to leverage the crowds and get them to keep following us? We gotta get the likes, we gotta get the thumbs up. Jesus was the like just doing this thing, okay? And people were magnetized and attracted to the spiritual authority that Jesus had and also the way that he obviously channeled the spirit of God to bring authoritative teaching to the people and do miracles and do healing

And cast out demons and challenge religious leaders. So Jesus was gathering a large crowd of people around him, but he also was consistent in telling his closest followers

Just exactly what the purpose of his ministry was. And the purpose of my ministry is not, listen, the crowd isn't it. That's not the reason that I've come. I have not come for the crowd.

I haven't even really come to teach. Jesus was really specific with his disciples on regular occasion to remind them of the heavy and stark reality behind which he came. Listen, it was so unusual and it was so heavy that even after all of the times that Jesus said, hey guys, here's why I'm coming. Here's where I've come. And here's what we're going to do now as we go towards Jerusalem, that the way the gospels read it, they never come right out and say it, but it reads like the disciples are like, la, la, la, la, la, la, la to that every time. Because it's like Jesus tells them, hey, this is what's gonna happen. This is where we're going. This is what we're doing. This is why it's happening. And then it happens and the disciples are like, oh wow, right? Or they completely like change the subject of the conversation and go towards something completely different. Like, what was this thing? Well, what was Jesus telling them was going to happen? Well, specifically, he told them in the chapter before that we just read in Matthew chapter 20, exactly why they were going into Jerusalem.

They weren't going into Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover with the rest of the Jews that were there. Or maybe they were doing that, but what was going to happen was something completely different than any of them were expecting. At the end of chapter 20, he says this, chapter 20, verse 17 through 19.

And as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took 12 disciples aside and on the way, he said to them, see, we are going to Jerusalem and the son of man, which was the most common way that Jesus referred to himself, the son of man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified and he will be raised again on the third day.

Jesus flat out tells them, he like, hey, Easter's coming. Just want to let you know, don't be surprised. Don't be surprised when I die. Don't be surprised when the tomb is empty, right? He like literally says it, right? And then they're like, what happens when he's arrested? They all scatter. Oh my gosh, how could this be happening? How about when they come to the tomb and it's empty and they don't believe Mary? They're like, you're what? You're crazy. There's no, someone's stolen his body. He obviously has not like, someone took him, completely like out of their brain, forgetting that Jesus himself had said just days earlier, this is exactly what's going to happen. This is what's supposed to happen. This is the reason that we're going there. Get that in your mind. That's the reason that we are going there. He knew that the coming events throughout the week would ultimately lead to his betrayal, his trial, his crucifixion and his death and his resurrection. And he fixed his face like Flint, the word says, towards Jerusalem to go into the calling of his life to bring redemption to all of creation.

And so when we find ourselves in the story here in Matthew chapter 21, what we read this morning is we see the actual entrance into the city, which isn't, I think it's kind of like an interesting personal conversation that I'd like to someday have with Jesus. Jesus, what were you thinking as you were riding a donkey

Into the capital city of Jerusalem? Everyone cheering and celebrating your arrival, but internally knowing why exactly you were coming in.

What was your heart posture in that moment? Were you sad? Were you disappointed? Were you scared? Were you grieved? Were you, what was going on there? Because I can only imagine my own, when there's something that I don't want to do, something that I know is, so I know what I'm feeling internally. And yet probably Jesus, I don't know, Jesus' internal environment of his own heart and soul being maybe at odds to like the environment that was around him, I'm sure must've been a little bit disorienting because we see that there is a large crowd that is accompanying Jesus into the city. It's not like Jesus and his 12 bros riding a few donkeys. It says that there was a large crowd of people surrounding Jesus and coming into the city with him. And that would make sense based on what we know of Jesus' ministry. If you go back only just five or six chapters in Matthew chapter 14, you see Jesus feeding of the miracle of the 5, 000. And how these people would, these 5, 000 large group of people would consistently follow him around the Holy Land, both to see and receive miracles and also receive food.

And so we had a large, there was a large crowd of people consistently with Jesus and they were accompanying him into the city on that day.

Most of the crowd it says brought, most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road and others cut branches from trees and spread them on the road. Similar to what we see here today, they took their coats, I didn't do this on purpose, but they took their coats and they would spread them on the road and then they would take branches and they would spread them on the road as well. And some of them waving the branches. And then they were not just a silent crowd, it was not just a silent parade, but it was an environment of celebration that Jesus was welcomed into the city of Jerusalem. It says Hosanna, they were shouting before him, Hosanna to the son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

The crowd was celebrating the coming of Jesus into this capital city of Jerusalem. But the question is why exactly? Why was this crowd of people celebrating Jesus coming into Jerusalem? This wasn't the first time he'd been to Jerusalem. What was the point now of the Palm branches? What was the point of Hosanna to the son of David? Hosanna in the highest, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Why would they celebrate Jesus coming like this? The clues to why are found in the way that the celebration actually unfolded with two things in particular. Number one would be the branches and number two would be the thing that they were actually proclaiming. These were not things that were just impromptu celebrations of that particular day. Like, oh, we need something to wave in the air. We forgot our flags at home. Quick, cut up the Palm branches and we'll use those. Or there's lots of puddles in the road. We don't want Jesus' donkey's feet to get muddy. Quick, everyone lay down their cloaks. Like these were not just like random ways of celebrating someone coming into a city.

These were deeply rooted in the history of the Israelite people and had significant meaning to them. Even their proclamations, Hosanna to the son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest. These are things that they had been anticipating and had said and celebrated in history past, dating back to the leadership of Israel's most significant and prominent and important king to date, King David.

Now, we have to understand the history of King David a little bit in order to understand why the people were celebrating in this way and why they were saying and doing the things that they were doing. When David was, David was a,

Not a particular, like every kind of king had their thing, had a way in which they led, had a way in which they ruled. And David was known, among other things, for being a tremendous military ruler, a tremendous general. He was a king who was able to lead the armies of Israel into conquest over the people and conquests in the land. And so David is known, yes, as a prominent king and political ruler, but David in Israelite history is mostly known as a warrior,

One who led mighty men, one who defeated the army or the nations that set themselves up against the Lord and the Israelites. So when David would often come home from conquest and victory over the enemies of the Israelite people, the tradition was to welcome the war party back with the waving of palm bows and branches. They would lie in the streets and lie in the cities and they would grab palm branches and they would say, David is home from victory over our enemies, our king, the warrior king, the one who has set us free from oppression to those imposing or oppressing powers. They are here and they would lay them down before David as he came into the city and he and his chariots would walk over them. And victory, so palm branches or palm bows became a sign in the Israelite nation of the victory that the king had won.

The king had won, the king has won, the king has won. Palm branches were a sign of military victory. They would often, actually they had whole Psalms dedicated towards the singing and chanting of military victory when King David would come home. Psalm 118 is an example of this Psalm, or example of these military victory Psalms. You might see some of these being, some of this being a little familiar. Here we have Psalm 118, some excerpts here. The Lord is with me. He is my helper. I look in triumph on my enemies. All the nations surrounded me, but in the name of the Lord, I cut them down.

They surround me on every side, but in the name of the Lord, I cut them down.

They swarmed around me like bees, but they were consumed as quickly as burning thorns. In the name of the Lord, I cut them down. You seeing a theme here yet? I was pushed back and about to fall, but the Lord helped me. The Lord is my strength and my defense. He has become my salvation. Shouts of joy and victory resound in the tents of the righteous. The Lord's right hand has done mighty things, right? Victory. We've seen victory in the face of our enemies.

We should have the next slide there too. Verses 26 and 27. "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. "From the house of the Lord, we bless you." In verse 27, "The Lord is God "and he has made his light shine on us "with bows in hand join in the festal possession "up to the horns of the altar." And so some of the Psalms were used as victory chants of King David having wiped out the enemies of the Lord. And then they would work into the Psalms even, "With bows we wave in the festal possession. "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord "going to the altar to give praise." It was a royal psalm sung in thanksgiving for victory. And they would sing these words that we see. Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna to the son of David. The word hosanna here or the proclamation hosanna means God has saved us or God please come and save us.

So it was a proclamation of like, "Hey, the victory has come to us from the Lord. "The Lord has come and saved us. "Through our great King, King David, "the Lord has worked to bring victory over our enemies." Israel's greatest ruler, king and general. And so as Jesus was coming into Jerusalem, they were doing for him the very same thing that they would often do for King David when he came back from war, having defeated the enemies. Jesus was for them in that moment, a descendant or in a lineage of, or standing in the place of, this great warrior king rooted in the history and the tradition of the Israelite nation. And they were there to celebrate the victory that Jesus was apparently about to bring. Now listen, there's an additional backdrop to this that we might not always recognize. And that was the backdrop of probably the reason that Jesus was going at that time and likely the reason that the crowd was willing to go to, the crowd that followed Jesus around the Holy Land, that the crowd was willing to go to Jerusalem at that time, is because it wasn't just any old time.

This was the time of Passover. And Passover, we'll talk, we're gonna talk a lot about Passover in a few months when we're in Exodus and in the book and actually looking at the events of Passover. But Passover both was and is still remains

The yearly celebration of God's miraculous deliverance of His people from the yoke of slavery in Egypt. It was at that time, and listen, it remains to this very day, the most significant festival, celebration, holiday, if you wanna call it, remembrance of the Israelite people. The moment of Passover, the celebration of Passover, where pilgrimages from Israelites were made into Jerusalem, into the royal city, to celebrate once again the historical freedom that God has given to His people when they put their trust in Him. He released them and freed them from the yoke of slavery. He released them and freed them from the bondages and the chains that they were in. They were no longer enslaved to another people, but could now go and worship God freely.

And here we have this large crowd of people there in the city for Passover, Jerusalem, a city under Roman oppression, under Roman rule,

Under a Roman empire whose leader Caesar considered himself and called himself Lord and required that everyone else call him Lord as well. And so you have the Israelite people celebrating in their city Passover, the release from captivity, the release from oppression, the release from slavery that God had granted them out of Egypt. They're celebrating this holiday in a city where they're currently being oppressed, where they're currently being enslaved, and where the Roman leader is saying, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, Yahweh isn't Lord, I am Lord."

And they had tried multiple times over generations to overthrow the Roman empire, the Greek empire, the Assyrians and the Babylonians and were unsuccessful.

So it was a very large crowd of people. In fact, some early Jewish historians thought that the population of Jerusalem during Passover in the ancient Near East would have likely quadrupled in number. So been up somewhere in between the 175 to 250, 000 mark.

So we have these things as backdrops or like foundations to the story that we read about Jesus riding into the city on the donkey and the people for some crazy reason, waving the bows, the palm bows and laying their cloaks down. I don't know if Jesus was like, "Do they think I'm David? Do they think I'm David?" Like David was a military ruler and king and warrior.

And there's all of this like spiritual, I don't wanna say tension, but there's this spiritual energy going on in the city because Passover is happening as well. And they're like remembering and they're yearning and they're grieving for more freedom from oppression. And so now you get this guy who's coming into the city and for years he's been forgiving people since and healing the sick and casting out demons and bringing people back to life and challenging the religious leaders and all of their teaching and teaching with authority and then proclaiming himself to be the son of God, the son of man, the Christ, the anointed, the one whom David looked to as his board. And you begin to get a little bit of a picture behind why the crowd was so excited to see Jesus coming in on a donkey like this and waving palm branches and laying their cloaks down. It is clear. The Israelites celebrating Jesus entry into Jerusalem that day were celebrating what they believed to finally be their deliverance from Roman slavery and occupation. Finally, our warrior king is here. Just like David and just like the Egyptians, these Roman occupiers are going to be pushed out because here comes our king and look at the crowd of people that are coming with him.

And we have all of the Jews here in Jerusalem during Passover. The people's response and demeanor indicates their anticipation. Jesus is a great king who has come in a new Passover to bring freedom from Roman captivity.

Now, I don't know if you have read the story or not, but that's not what happens.

That's not what Jesus comes to do. In fact, there was a pretty vast difference between the way that Jesus came into Jerusalem and honestly, the way that he showed up in all of his ministry. I mean, if you just read back into Jesus' ministry, if you read it honestly or you're viewing it honestly, you would come to the conclusion pretty clearly and pretty quickly that Jesus was not a king like David.

Jesus was not political. Jesus was not military minded. Jesus was not a warrior in the way that David was. He's a warrior in a different way, but Jesus was a different kind of king than David, coming to do different kinds of things than David did.

And so there's a pretty vast difference between the way that Jesus came into Jerusalem and the way that people assumed that he came into Jerusalem. His purposes were different than the crowd's purposes.

His goal was different than the goal of the crowd. His understanding of his life in ministry was different than the crowd's hope, expectation, and anticipation of why he was coming into the city and what he was aiming to do.

How could there be such difference? Well, I wanna jump 2, 000 years into the future, into our own form of application to this,

Because often the way that Jesus actually is much different than the way we are anticipating him showing up and doing. What Jesus wants to do in our lives is a lot different than what we want him to do in our lives. Or the way in which Jesus gets things done in our lives is a lot different than the way in which he actually does get things done in our lives. See, I don't know about you, but I wanna grow in my maturity with Jesus. I wanna learn what it means to be faithful. I wanna learn what it means to be patient and kind and loving and forbearing, right? I wanna learn all of those things, and you know where I wanna learn them? I wanna learn them in the most positive, happy, joy-filled circumstances and experiences of my life. Lord, teach me all of the great things about what it means to follow you and make the journey easy.

But the reality is, right? That when Jesus sets out to do something significant in our lives, he almost always sets out to do it through experiences and circumstances that we would choose to avoid if we could.

But it's in the midst of and the depth of our pain, our hurt, our loneliness, our abandonment, our sickness that Jesus shows up

In only the way that Jesus can humble riding on a donkey, not on a chariot like a warrior king.

See, when our hearts are not fully surrendered to being shaped by Jesus, then when Jesus comes into our lives, we will see simply what we wanna see.

We will believe really just what we want to believe. And then we will co-opt something out of Jesus, life and ministry to kind of support our own internal or personal biases. Now, what was the bias here? Well, the bias here for the crowd of people was that they wanted military and political freedom. And you could maybe understand why they would think that would happen. Jesus did come, he said, to release from slavery those held captive. He said this by his own words. Pastor Luke read these, I think last week it was. In Luke chapter four, verses 17 and 19, quoting out of Isaiah 63, he said, "And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. "Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written.

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me "because he has anointed me to proclaim good news "to the poor. "He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners "in recovery of sight for the blind." People are like, oh yeah, I remember Jesus reading that. That's good news for us. We're prisoners, he's gonna set us free to set the oppressed free and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, to bring about the year of favor, the year of perpetual and eternal Jubilee and Sabbath. See, Jesus is coming to set us free, people. Let's celebrate, just like David, military ruler. Now listen, the freedom that Jesus offered was not merely the freedom from an oppressive regime of human slavery, but freedom from the bonds and chains to our own sin and the darkness and hardness of our own heart, that through our surrendering to him, Jesus was like, you do not need to be powerless against the sin and darkness of your life or that is in the world, for I have overcome the world.

And Jesus was clear that the freedom that he came to give and to offer to people was not a military freedom, was not a political freedom. He in fact said, go out in, you're gonna have trouble in the world.

The world's gonna hate you because it hated me first. Jesus was clear that it wasn't about military and political freedom, that he is coming to set people free in a different way. Perhaps the most iconic of his words at all, John chapter three, 16 and 17, for God so loved the world. Jesus, this is Jesus saying this about himself, for God so loved the world that he gave as one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send his son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him,

That Jesus came to bring salvation. So how could Jesus be so clear, but the people be so confused? Because sometimes there's a very large gap between the Jesus that we are pursuing and the Jesus that actually is. We have expectations of Jesus that sometimes exist outside of who he actually is and what he has come to do.

There are ways that you are likely, I'm asking Jesus to show up in my life in some ways. There are ways that you are likely asking Jesus to show up in your life right now. Now, not all of those ways are bad or incorrect. In fact, they're probably good, but we ought all to do the work of asking the question of whether or not how I'm asking Jesus to show up is actually the way that he wants to or came to show up in my life. Here's maybe just like a few examples of ways in which I've experienced or I think I've felt in my own life that I'm asking Jesus to show up and Jesus is like, yeah, that's not who I am though. It's not what I came to do for you. It's not who I came to be. So what are some common ways that we ask Jesus to show up? These are right out of Cameron Linehart's Journal of How Not to Follow Jesus, okay? We ask Jesus to be our personal hype man, okay? This is hype man, Jesus. Jesus, I'm gonna follow you.

Just come be my hype man. A hype man is kind of like this eternally permissive and encouraging of all that makes you happy and all that you need to do to just follow your heart. That's bad advice.

Anyone ever tells you to follow your heart? Man, walk away. The heart is deceptively wicked. Who can know it? The word says.

Listen, so eternally, the hype man Jesus, eternally permissive, encouraging of all that just makes you happy. Jesus exists to make life soft and to make us happy.

We want hype man Jesus when we don't wanna be challenged in our life at all by the prospect of Jesus.

We don't want our thinking to be challenged. We don't want our beliefs to be challenged. We certainly do not want anything in our lifestyle challenged. We don't want our habits challenged. Jesus exists only to hype up the decisions and the life that we are already living and we have already decided is correct. Jesus, I don't wanna hear anything about the life that I'm living and the way that I'm living it. I just want you to hype it up for me. Just tell me it's okay. I've already decided that it's okay. I need you to join me in that. Listen, beware of a life that is so convinced in its correctness that not even Jesus can call you out on it.

Beware of a life that is so firmly planted like no, I know that I'm good. Everything that I believe is right. Everything that I think is right. Every habit that I have is okay. Every lifestyle decision that I've made, totally good with the Lord. Be very, be aware, not be aware, beware.

Beware of a life that is so convinced in its correctness that not even Jesus can call you out in correction. Jesus is not a hyped man.

Jesus is a bringer of purifying fire that is more concerned, listen, that is more concerned with your holiness than he is with your temporary happiness.

In fact, he said himself in Mark 8, verse 36, what good is it for a man if they gain the whole world, but what, forfeit their souls?

Another way that we often ask Jesus to come and show up into our lives is we have hyped man Jesus, but now we have genie in the bottle Jesus. You know genie in the bottle Jesus. You've been there, I've been there. We've all been to genie in the bottle Jesus. We follow Jesus in an expectation that it will mean that we get what we want or what our heart needs when we need it. He's in our bottle, he's the genie in our bottle. When we don't get these things, we feel like Jesus didn't hold up his end of the bargain. He didn't show up. And so our natural reaction then is to say, "Listen, Jesus, I was doing my thing. "I came to church.

"I came to church. "Not even on Easter Sunday. "I was there on Palm Sunday.

"And I just asked you for this one little thing in my life, "and it never happened, or you never did it, "or I'm still waiting. "This stuff is bogus. "It doesn't work. "I'm gonna go find another genie "and some other bottle somewhere."

What we find is that our relationship with Jesus can sometimes become transactional in nature, right? Jesus, I will follow you. You do this for my life.

I will be really faithful. I need you to do this over here. Now, he has a part and we have a part. That's kind of the idea here. Our part is to receive the things. His part is to give the things. What a job, right? The main job of Jesus is to make my life easier, to make my life better, to make me more happy, healthy, wealthy.

Now, if one of those things is not happening, then the deal is off. If I'm not getting what I want in my relationship with him, I'm swiping left or right or whatever it is. I don't know.

Off to find another genie. And the third is, this is the final one. How do we often ask Jesus to show up, but in ways that he actually doesn't want to show up in our lives, is Buddy Jesus.

You got any Buddies out there? Like Buddy, Buddy Jesus gives you the wink and the finger guns, right? Buddy Jesus. That's a deep cut from a movie. If you know that movie.

Buddy Jesus. You know, what a friend we have in Jesus, but not a Lord we have in Jesus.

This is Jesus as Buddy and friend, but not Lord. We want a Jesus maybe who sometimes just tags along in our life of autonomy and independence, but we don't want a Lord whose radical call to discipleship reorients our entire life paradigm. Makes us completely change the value structure of our lives. We want a Buddy that travels the journey with us rather than a Lord that calls us to a radical place of reorienting every aspect of our life to follow him and to fulfill the mission and call of our lives. To reorient all of our time and all of our thoughts and all of our energy and all of our resources, all of our prayer and all of our work. Saying, how can I, in every single situation of my life, leverage the gospel for the glory of God in the building of his kingdom?

This is who Jesus wants to be for us. Jesus doesn't want to be a hype man for the decisions that you've already decided are the best for you. Jesus wants to purify and sanctify not just what you're doing, but the desire that you have for what you want to do. He doesn't want to just change what's happening on the outside. He wants to change what happens on the inside that makes you want to do what you do on the outside. So that all now that I want to do is to serve him and to follow him and to please him and to honor him and to love him and to worship him. He doesn't want to be a hype man for what you're doing. God wants to bring purification and holiness into your life, a radical call of discipleship that reorients every aspect of your life. This is what Jesus meant when he said, pick up your cross and follow me. This wasn't just some biblical or spiritual euphemism for coming to church one Sunday and then going out and following Jesus. Picking up a cross was a willingness to say, I will pick up this instrument of death that puts to death every part of what I think is important and value and prioritize in my life

That I may pick up the resurrected life of Jesus Christ. The question ultimately is, is Jesus a servant to our expectations or does Jesus get to set the expectations? Jesus may not show up in the way that we want him to but he always shows up in the way that you need him to. And the way that Jesus intends to show up for us is always for our ultimate good and abundant life. He says in John chapter 10, verse 10, that the thief, the enemy comes only to steal, kill and destroy, but that he, I, Jesus come that you may have life and that you may have it abundantly. Jesus has come that you might experience abundant life.

I mean, just question for reflection this Palm Sunday. If that's what Jesus has come to offer and give to you, life abundantly, answer this question. How has life been feeling lately?

Would you describe it as abundant? Might it be not a problem with Jesus himself? Like man, Jesus, you're kind of like flunking out here. You said abundant life and I'm over here in like negative life, suffering over here.

Might it be not a problem with Jesus himself but a problem with how we've come to understand and expect him to give us the abundant life. Maybe we've expected abundance to come in the midst of hype man, genie, buddy, Jesus, life. We are already living, but maybe Jesus wants to ride into your life in a way that is completely unexpected and show you a new way to abundant life, the way of surrender and humility. I mean, isn't that exactly the way that Jesus came into Jerusalem anyway?

Completely destroying the expectations of the crowd that came to expect him coming with powerful military might. But instead, in only the way that Jesus could, he turned the entire dynamic of what it means to be a king upside down on its head and showed us that humility and surrender is the way of Jesus. Let that be our way as well. Let's pray.

Heavenly father, we do pray for this abundant life promised by Jesus your son. Lord, but we also recognize that we have come to our relationship with Jesus with expectations for him that he did not set, but that we have. Maybe asking Jesus to do and be things for us that he was never meant to do or be, or is unwilling to do or be. Lord, we don't want Jesus who is just a hype man for our life and our decisions. We don't want a genie in the bottles as kind of transactional in nature relationship with him. We don't want a buddy Jesus. Lord, we want a Lord. We want the real Jesus. We want the real, we want the Jesus as he comes into Jerusalem humbled and surrendered, but resolute Lord to bring victory over sin and darkness and death. Lord, I pray, Lord, would you reveal to us now as we worship the heart and face of the true Jesus.

Lord, we come and worship now to you in response to your word, seeking your face, Lord Jesus.

Would you show us yourself, Holy Spirit, come and fill this room now with your presence, pour yourself out upon us.

We set down our expectations. We set down our bias. We set down our desire of who you have come to be. Lord, and we open our hands in humility and surrender and say, Jesus, we receive however it is that you have come in Jesus name, amen.

Maybe you've come this morning not knowing what to expect or what kind of Jesus to find here this morning. We'll invite and welcome you to receive the Jesus that is a Jesus that loves you in the middle of your circumstance, but loves you too much to let you to just stay there. Jesus is a Jesus of love. He invites you to come and know him. And we invite you to continue to come and know him here at Conduit. He'll be blessed. You are loved and go in peace. We will see you on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.