Don’t Forget the Passion
Luke 19:28 When he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples 30 and said, “Go into the village ahead of you. As you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say this: ‘The Lord needs it.'”
32 So those who were sent left and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?”
34 “The Lord needs it,” they said. 35 Then they brought it to Jesus, and after throwing their clothes on the colt, they helped Jesus get on it. 36 As he was going along, they were spreading their clothes on the road. 37 Now he came near the path down the Mount of Olives, and the whole crowd of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the miracles they had seen:
38 Blessed is the King who comes
in the name of the Lord.
Peace in heaven
and glory in the highest heaven!
39 Some of the Pharisees from the crowd told him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.”
40 He answered, “I tell you, if they were to keep silent, the stones would cry out.”
Last week I mentioned Luke puts a lot of emphasis on the coming Messiah and Jesus as this Messiah. Luke also emphasizes the great coming King. And, again, Jesus as this coming King. Actually, the two go together: the coming Messiah is the coming King. What was happening on this (Palm) Sunday back then was a joyous and loud proclamation that Jesus was one and the same. It was a crazy and unstoppable celebration welcoming the Messiah King. But this celebration did not just happen out of the blue. Nor was it the result merely of what Jesus had been doing over the last three years. There was a history connected to this event, a long history.
We go all the way back to the time of the patriarch Jacob who predicts the coming King: “The scepter will not depart from Judah or the staff from between his feet until he whose right it is comes and the obedience of the peoples belongs to him.” (Gen. 49:10) We see this in Psalm 2 where the Lord says, in speaking of the coming Messiah, “I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain.” In the prophetic book of Isaiah: “For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders. … He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness from now on and forever.” (Is. 9:6-7) Micah 5:2: “Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are small among the clans of Judah; one will come from you to be ruler over Israel for me.” And of course, Zechariah 9: “Shout in triumph, Daughter Jerusalem! Look, your King is coming to you; he is righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (9:9) There is this long history of coming King descriptions and predictions.
Now we are kind of used to these prophecies and it would be easy for us to take them for granted. So let me tell you one thing that is fascinating about these prophecies that we could easily miss, something that sets the Old and New Testament religion apart from all others. All others. The people of Israel – the Jews – were given a specific prediction about a coming King, and (here’s the fascinating part) somehow – in spite of all their unfaithfulness century after century – this prediction of the coming King was never lost; it was preserved among them. I’m talking about 2,000+ years. Show me some other religion that #1) had a specific prediction about some coming great individual, and #2) somehow held on to that prediction for 2,000+ years when nothing appears to be happening. Specific predictions within religions are dropped or forgotten if nothing happens. But the Jews somehow hung on to this coming-Messiah King promise for 2,000 years, even when they themselves were not faithful to the true God! This is hard to explain!
It’s kind of like the person who tells us of his future plans to become someone great. And at first we might be taken, excited for him, believe him. But then as he continues to predict his upcoming greatness and we see there’s no progress, it can get old fast. We realize his prediction was just a lot of hot hair. He finally drops the prediction himself.
But the prediction of the coming Messiah King never went away. Amazing.
So then we come to 2,000 years after the first prediction of the coming King, and Jesus of Nazareth shows up. From very early on, the King title was applied to him. The angel told Mary before she was even pregnant, that he would be given “the throne of his father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end.” (Luke 1:32-33) The shepherds were told the infant Jesus was the heir to the kingdom of David and the Messiah (Luke 2:11). The magi asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?” (Matt. 2) One of his first disciples, Nathanael, said to him, “Rabbi, … you are the King of Israel.” (John 1:49) The title was applied to him throughout his life.
And if we jump ahead to his trial and crucifixion, the Jewish leaders, Pilate, the Roman soldiers, and others freely admitted that Jesus himself and many others believed him to be the long-predicted coming Messiah King. “He is saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king,” (Luke 23:3) the Jewish leaders said to Pilate. “You are a king then?” Pilate said to Jesus (John 18:37). Both the unbelieving Jews and the Roman soldiers mocked him with those titles: “He saved others; let him save himself if this is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One!” … “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself!” (Luke 23:35-37). And then in one of the most touching testimonies in Scripture, the repentant thief on the cross said to him, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (Luke 23:42)
My point is this: The Jewish people throughout their 2,000+ year history, had these predictions of the coming Messiah King and, unbelievably (you might say) fervently believed that this prediction was going to come true in spite of the long wait of nothing happening.
A second point: Many people were at least beginning to wonder if Jesus of Nazareth was this promised Messiah King, especially because of all the miracles he was performing. Nicodemus fell in this category: “Rabbi,” he said to Jesus one night, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him.” (John 3:2). The Samaritan woman at the well was similar. She said to fellow Samaritans, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” (John 4:29) At one point people asked, “When the Messiah comes, he won’t perform more signs than this man has done, will he?” (John 7:31)
And of course, on this (Palm) Sunday, a large crowd had become convinced that Jesus was this King, because, as we are told in our text, of “all the miracles they had seen.” In other words, they put two and two together. “He performs miracles like no one else ever, like our Scriptures say the coming Messiah King would, and therefore he must be the King.”
But there was another reality taking place as well: Many rejected him as the coming King, and they did so not because they didn’t believe that he performed all these miracles. They knew he performed them. We can say they rejected him in spite of the miracles. As Jesus himself said, there would be those who “will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” (Luke 16:31) No amount of evidence will work with the hard-hearted.
But here is one thing that everyone had in common at that time. It didn’t matter if they were the ones who rejected him as the coming Messiah King, or who were still wondering if he might be the coming Messiah King, or even those who were convinced he was the coming Messiah King. At this time, no one grasped how the coming King needed to operate – what was necessary for him to do – in order to be the true Messiah King. And they were ignorant of why he would need to operate in this way. Those who rejected him as the King were elated with the way he operated. But his disciples were confused and fell into despair when he chose to operate the way he did.
For this Messiah King, humiliation and suffering must come before glory, death comes before life, defeat comes before victory. But he was not so much seeking to accomplish his own glory, life, and victory, but ours.
We have enemies we can never defeat. And it is humiliation, passion, suffering, and death alone that can defeat them. Could you take the devil and win? Could you somehow prevent and defeat your own death? Could you pay for any and all your sins? Actually, you could pay for your sins, but you would have to spend eternity in hell to do so. The passion – the suffering – of Christ, and only his passion, would defeat these enemies for us.
Upon the arrest, suffering, mocking, crucifixion, and death of Jesus, the disciples were asking, “What in the world is going on? He’s been defeated. He lost. He died. And so will we.”
But they failed to grasp the other great prediction found in their Scriptures – a prediction just as old as the prediction of the coming King. It was a prediction Jesus himself had told them: “Everything that is written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles, and he will be mocked, insulted, spit on; and after they flog him, they will kill him, and he will rise on the third day.” (Luke 18:31-33) He predicted this and they did not grasp it. But they would. And so must you.
After Jesus rose from the dead, he started to walk with two of the disciples who were prevented from recognizing him. They were distraught since Jesus had been crucified three days earlier and the only thing they knew for sure was that he had died. They said to him, “…our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him. But we were hoping that he was the one who was about to redeem Israel.” So Jesus said to them, “‘How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Wasn’t it necessary for the Messiah to suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted for them the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures.” Later that evening, he appeared and explained the same to all the disciples gathered together: “‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ … ‘This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead the third day, and repentance for forgiveness of sins will be proclaimed in his name to all the nations” (Luke 24: 20, 21, 25-27, 44-48).
The great Messiah King. The Old Testament never gave up on predicting that this one would come, and Jesus claims that he is this one, both by his words and his work. But the heart and center of his work, his way of operating, as King – also predicted in the Old Testament and by Jesus himself – would be his passion, his suffering, his crucifixion, his death. They are inseparable from his kingship.
This is why you can hear and know that the devil has no power over you, why he cannot separate you from God’s mercy and love. This is why you can hear and know that eternal death is not the final word for you, but eternal life is. This is why you can hear and know that your sins cannot be held against you, that each and every one is forgiven.
Amen.
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