New King In Town

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0:02To Americans, royalty are basically like another kind of celebrity, basically, except there's a bunch of rules that we know that people have to follow when they're around royalty. If you're in the presence of the King of England, you may only sit if he sits. You have to stand if he's standing. That's one thing. If you're eating, when he stops eating, you're done eating too. You cannot keep eating. Greeting a member of the royal family, from what I read, it's done by a head bow, not a waist bow, but a head bow from men and a curtsy from women.

0:43Now, most people who meet a member of the royal family, it's going to be a very brief encounter, right? Like one greeting maybe, one 30-second conversation. Maybe if you're really an important person in Britain, you get to have dinner. But it's still just one dinner and then it's over. You might follow all the etiquette rules, but you only have to really remember them and do them for a really short time. Which makes me wonder, what if the King moved in with just an ordinary British citizen?

1:17Just moved in. Became a long-term house guest. That would be, I think that would be a really great reality TV show. And I hope to get some, if that ever becomes a TV show, I want some royalties and we'll just put it all into the church. But wouldn't that be a great reality TV show if an actual member of the royal family lived with someone and now they have to follow all of those things all the time? I wonder how quickly it would go from, what an honor, to what a bother.

1:49Now, Jesus is the King of Kings. You may know that. His claim is not just on a throne in a city, but a throne in our hearts, right? A place that doesn't just rule out there somewhere, but rules in here, in our lives. So this combination of both king and house guest is a good way to think about Jesus. He's not a king out there that we just, every now and then, we have to bow. We have to do something different in our lives. He's a king that lives in our lives, that's in our house.

2:24So let's read this passage and see what it means for Jesus to be king. And find the implications for ourselves. This is Luke 19. We're skipping ahead a few chapters to Luke 19. This is the word of God for us. Let's pay attention to it. Starting in verse 28. Let's receive it as God's holy word for us today.

2:47And when he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. But when he drew near to Bethphage and to Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tide, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, why are you untying it? You shall say this, the Lord has need of it. So those who were sent away and found it, just as he had told them.

3:20And as they were untying the colt, its owner said to them, Why are you untying the colt? And they said, The Lord has need of it. And they brought it to Jesus. And throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. As he was drawing near, already on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.

4:00Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out. And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace, but now they are 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 hem 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 know the time of your visitation.

4:58And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers. And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy him, but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on to his words. Pray with me.

5:29Lord Jesus, you are king, and I pray that you, by your spirit, would help us see what that means for us in our lives. You are a good and gracious king. There is no better ruler that we should bow our knees to. You're the only one who has the power, the authority, and you use it for our good. We praise you today, Jesus, and we ask you to please lead us as your people.

6:05Jesus, we pray this in your name. There's a new king in town. The disruptive arrival of Jesus is exactly what we need. So people call this the triumphal entry. You could also call it the controversial entry, because everywhere Jesus goes, he is stirring up controversy, and there is a mixed response everywhere he goes. And he is, he's taking no prisoners. He's going for it when he comes into Jerusalem. It tells us more, this passage, than just what happens, just the historical event of him coming into Jerusalem.

6:41It tells us what it means for him to have a triumphal entry into our lives. There's four things that we see here about King Jesus. This is the first one. He leads us with authority. Jesus and his crew come near two towns. They're about a half, they're about one and a half miles east of Jerusalem. He's on the Mount of Olives. It's not a large mountain. It's just a few hundred feet higher than Jerusalem. But it was separated from Jerusalem by a valley, the Kidron Valley.

7:14So he was on the Mount of Olives, near these two towns, approaching Jerusalem. This is just a little, I mean, we wouldn't even think of it as a mountain. But it was loaded with biblical significance. There are, there's no less than eight biblical allusions in this passage alone. But Jesus either fulfilled or he does something that is reminiscent to something that happened before. A lot of things happen in this passage. According to the prophet Zechariah, this mountain is where the Lord will appear.

7:45This mountain. The first appearance of the Lord is happening right now. That's why Jesus is coming in from the east. Because he's appearing where the prophet said he would appear. Jesus knows what he's doing. And this is the first of many ways that he is announcing him as king. He's making it public now. I am king. I'm doing all the things that you expected the king to do. So he's coming in from the east from Mount Olivet. This is the same mount where he will ascend to heaven.

8:21But this king has got a problem. He needs a ride. He needs some way to get into Jerusalem. So he's thinking of something else that Zechariah said. Something that we heard earlier in the service. Behold, your king is coming to you, Jerusalem, riding on a colt. He's thinking about that. So Jesus is the king. He asserts his authority. He sends two of his disciples ahead into the village to fetch a colt. If someone asks, tell them I sent you. Tell them that I need this colt.

8:54So that's what they go do. Now I want you to imagine yourself as one of these two disciples sent ahead to go and get something for Jesus. Because when the king comes into your life, you will be called to risky obedience.

9:14Think about it. These disciples are told to go and take someone's property. Go find it. This is what it's going to look like. Just take it and bring it to me. If Jesus isn't the king, what is this? It's stealing. It's theft. Right? Either he's the king and he has a right for that, a right to that colt and that we can go do what he says and take it, or he's not the king and I'm about to break the law. Talk about a choice that these two disciples had.

9:47Right? Jesus doesn't tell them how the owner is going to respond. He just says, mention my name. So they're walking into town. They're like, are we really about to do this? I mean, I guess we are. Jesus told us to do it. What if we get in trouble? Look, he's never steered us wrong before.

10:15Here's the point of this. We need to stop looking for guarantees before we obey God. There is no guarantee. So often, we know that he's calling us to do something. It might be a difficult way to serve. It might be a costly choice with our time, our money. It might be a hard conversation to have with someone. But his word speaks clearly. His spirit prompts us. Fellow believers call us to it. I think you know what I'm talking about. We know what God wants us to do.

10:53But we hold back. What's going to happen, God? If you could just give me more detail about what's going to happen so I know everything's going to be okay, then I'll do it. We get stuck on the what ifs, the risks, the dangers that come from following our Lord. If you're looking for a way to live that never feels risky, then I would advise you to do something other than follow Jesus.

11:23I want to invite you to a different what if game. Let's think about all the ways that God might bless us and surprise us when we obey and take risks. Let's think about that what if. All the ways we might experience His grace and His strength as we do boldly what He calls us to do. What if this turns out even better than I thought? What if I get surprised by the way that He supplies me with His strength? What if I learned to trust Him in new ways?

11:57What if I learned that He is even bigger than I thought that He was? That I can endure a bad outcome because He is close to me and I'm with Him. Those are the what ifs we should be thinking about in our heads.

12:14The other act of radical obedience here comes from the owners of the cult, right? All they hear is Jesus is asking. That's all they hear. And they let it go. Are they going to get it back? They don't know.

12:30I was talking with Russell and he reminded, he said that this reminded him of the classic movie scene where a police officer is chasing a criminal and the criminal is outrunning him and so he stops a car and flashes his badge and says, police, I need this vehicle. So they force the person out, they get in and now they're better equipped to chase the criminal, right? I looked it up. Police can actually do that unless they have policies that their department's put into place that they can't.

13:01But except for that, they have the right. If they have official police business, they have the right to stop you to take your car. So it is with Jesus, right? He has a right, a claim on your life, on everything in your life. He might commandeer your car, your time, your weekend, your money. He might commandeer any of it at any time and say, you know what, I got a purpose for this. Can you be like the owner of that cult and say, if it's Jesus saying that he needs it, okay, here you go, Jesus.

13:42This king is never going to mislead you. You can trust his leadership. Sometimes I'll call Nikki when she's at home and I say, can you go get something for me? It's either here or it's here or it's here. And she texts me back and she's like, it's none of those places. And sometimes she does the same thing to me. But Jesus tells these two disciples where to go and the cult is there. Right? It's there. They could rely on him. I don't want to press that too far, but I know this, you can rely on Jesus.

14:17When he calls you into something, when he says, I want this now, I want this part of you to be used for me. You can rely on him. He will not mislead you.

14:30He's not guessing, friends. He's not making it up as he goes along. There's a lot of great human leaders and a lot of them, if they're being honest, they're making it up as they go along. That is not the Lord. He is not making it up as he goes along. You don't have to second guess him. He knows what he's doing. Where he leads, you can follow with confidence. Here's the second thing. He redirects our worship. We're going to skip to the end of the passage now.

15:06Picture Jesus standing on the Mount of Olives. He's looking over the Kidron Valley. Right there on the east of the city is the temple. It's really obvious. He's looking right at the temple. And that is the first place he goes when he enters the city. Yeah, here's a model. This is not a photograph. It's a model of the temple. So in the middle is the temple itself. That's the tallest building there. It is 172 feet, or it was 172 feet wide, deep, and tall.

15:37And then there's other buildings around it and then that wide space that's surrounded by the big wall all around it, that is the court of the Gentiles. If you were a Gentile seeking the Lord, that was the closest you could get to the temple were those wide, that wide open space.

15:58Jews would travel to Jerusalem several times a year and come to this temple. This is Herod's temple. This is the second temple that was built. You would come for feasts. You would come for feasts like the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is Passover. You would travel several times. They would come to worship and to make sacrifices, and you wouldn't bring your animals with you to make sacrifices because it's just too much trouble. You've come from 50, 100, maybe 200 miles away.

16:28Wherever you were, if you were a Jewish person, you would come into the city, but you wouldn't have your sacrifices. You had to buy them at the temple. So the sacrifices were being sold at the temple itself. Now this all sounds pretty reasonable, so why did Jesus come in and drive everybody out? Why did he kick them all out? Is he some kind of Marxist? Is he an anti-capitalist? No, he's just passionate about people having real worship. And he sees two problems here.

17:05The first is that the merchants were price gouging. The people, they were milling around, actually could you go back to the picture for a second? They were milling around in those open areas, right? They needed a sacrifice and they had nowhere else to go. They were miles and miles away from home, from all their property. They were a captive audience. It's like being at the airport and being past security. If you've ever taken a plane, you know what this is like.

17:32Once you're past security, if you need to buy something, you are stuck. You are going to buy, you're going to pay whatever prices that they want to sell you. A bottle of water, $10. A sandwich, $20. I mean, it's outrageous. It's ridiculous. Everybody complains, but what can you do? You're stuck. If you want to drink a water before you get on that plane, you've got to go shut out $10 for it. That's what these people were doing. Except these were people coming, not coming for a flight, but coming to worship God.

18:03They had traveled so far and they were being gouged. They were being taken advantage of. They had no place else to buy their animals, their sacrifices. So Jesus quotes Jeremiah 7. They were making the temple a den of robbers.

18:22The other problem was that they were in that open area and they were clogging the way. There were booths and stalls and bags of money and all kinds of things in the way. People couldn't get to the temple. If you were a Jew coming, you had to get through all of this stuff. They were clogging the way for people to get to the temple of God and worship him. So Jesus quotes Isaiah 56. God's house should be a house of prayer for all nations. That's what the prophet says.

18:53All nations. When Jesus comes as king, he drives out what gets in the way of true worship. He casts it away. This is good news for us. There are so many distractions we live with. It's such a distracted age. So many things that take up room in our minds, in our hearts, but they don't give anything back to us. They're just clutter. I really believe that one of the biggest dangers for modern day Christians is the crowding out of our love and our worship of God.

19:30With just stuff, frivolous, trivial stuff, things that grab our attention, endless scrolling on our phones, binge-watching Netflix. There is just so much that we can do to distract ourselves all the time.

19:52It's like this. Imagine you're at dinner, a long dinner table with about a dozen people, and you're at one end of the table, and the person that you really want to talk to is at the other end of the table. Maybe it's your best friend that moved out of town and is back for this dinner, or maybe it's your spouse. Maybe it's someone that you are hoping to make your spouse. They're at the other end of the table, and you're at one, and you're at the other, and there's 12 people there, and everybody's having a conversation.

20:21How well can you really talk and get to know that person at the other end of the table? If this was your one chance to make a connection with them, it's not going to happen, right? You're not going to be able to talk to them. They're too far away. There's too much other noise happening. What did you say? I said, I like the chicken. What? You can't have any meaningful conversation with them. That is our lives without the Lord coming in. There's so much noise, and a lot of it is good stuff.

21:00I'm not saying that everything that you and I do in our lives is bad. I'm just saying that we let it crowd out the thing that should be the main thing, which is the relationship we have with God, the conversation we're having with our Father, hearing from Him, talking to Him. What we need is for someone to come and clear the decks, right? Ask everyone else at that table, you know what, find another room, and then take that person and sit you right next to them.

21:31Talk one-on-one. Now you're talking. Now you're getting someplace. That's what Jesus is doing. Get out of the temple. You're clogging the way, and you're only taking advantage of people. You're not giving anything to them. My house shall be a house of prayer. The person that comes and clears out the decks is Jesus, the King of Kings, because He wants you and me to worship Him. The Pharisees are livid about this. Verse 47 says they're intent on destroying Him, but the people, the same people that were being gouged in the temple, just before, now they're hanging on His every word.

22:14Finally, somebody who can give us life. Peter once said to Jesus, Lord, to who else shall we go? You have the words of life. The third thing is this, He brought terms of peace. Throughout this passage, we see the hostility of the Pharisees.

22:37The Pharisees, the authorities, the religious leaders, all these people, well, most of them, not all of them, most of them never really gave Jesus a fair shake. They never really listened. They had closed ears and hard hearts, and now that Jesus has arrived as King, their rejection is going to reach its climax.

23:01They're going to put Him through a sham trial and an unjust death. They're representatives of this great city. This city has a pattern of rejecting the people that God sends to it. Their rejection of the Messiah is going to lead to a great punishment.

23:18Jesus talks about it in verses 43 and 44, and what He's predicting is the siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., just about 30 years after this, after Jesus is talking here, 30, 38 years, Jerusalem would be sieged. The Roman general Titus would set up siege works around the city, just like Jesus said He would, starve out the city, inflict harm and punishment on the city, and as a Roman official. Jesus is predicting this, and all this is going to come because Jesus says, you didn't know when I was here to save you.

24:01In Luke 2, when Jesus was presented at the temple, this prophet, Simeon, was there, and he looked at Mary and he said, behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel. And that's about to happen now, Jesus is saying. One of the many passages that got fulfilled in this passage, the authorities and the rulers did not receive him as king, but here's the part I want you to focus on for us today. As he says these things, he does it through tears.

24:37The passage says, when he looked at Jerusalem, he wept over it. That word wept, it is a strong word. This is not Jesus dabbing the corners of his eyes. Jesus is sobbing. He's wailing.

24:57He's crying and he's crying out. But it's not because of the cruelty that he's about to be subject to. It's not because of the beatings he's going to get, the scourgings. He's weeping with grief because he wants the city to know and to do the things that make for peace. He wants them to repent and have faith in him.

25:31These are the things that make for peace. He brings terms of peace. They've refused and the punishment will come. But I want you to know that this compassionate king is the prince of peace.

25:44We are looking for a future that's secure, aren't we? Deep down, don't all of you want a future that is safe where there will be no affliction. There will be no suffering. There will be no injustice.

26:07Peace is still available today through him. Right now, many influential people in Jerusalem back then didn't recognize the king was there. But for you, the time of visitation is right now. Do you know him? Do you receive him as king? He brings terms of peace and the terms of peace are hide yourself in him.

26:35Now here's the last thing. Here's the last thing. He deserves our praise. We're going to close with what we started the service with, the entry itself, the palm branches waving. His disciples threw their cloaks on the ground. I noticed the kids didn't throw down their coats. Maybe we'll have them do that next year. People, not just kids, right? It was adults too back then, were throwing down their cloaks. I know it's a little cold in here. That's my fault.

27:04I turned it down. I'm sorry. I make that mistake. I turned it down too much. We shall be throwing our cloaks down like they did for King Jesus, putting palm branches and cutting them on the ground. This was done for royalty. It was like rolling up the red carpet so you wouldn't have to touch the ground, king. Earlier we heard Psalm 72. Sean read that about the coronation and the rule of a great king who would bring blessings and righteousness. These people in this passage knew that all of that was happening in King Jesus.

27:39He was the great king that Psalm 72 pointed to and another psalm was on their lips. We read it in the call to worship. Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. The Pharisees are grumpy about all this. It must have been so, so, what a disappointing way to live, right? The Pharisees are just grumpy all the time. Here's Jesus and they are just not having any of it. To them it's inappropriate. Tell them to stop Jesus. You're not the king.

28:14Tell them to stop. But it can't be stopped. This is everything that his ministry has been building up to, but not just his ministry, all the promises of the prophets, all the words of God, all of the actions of God in history, they've all been building up to this. This is a seismic event. If people weren't praising Jesus, Jesus says the stones themselves would cry out. Did you know that dogs and other animals can sense when a natural disaster is about to happen?

28:47That they will run or they'll whimper or they'll hide when they can sense that an earthquake is about to happen, for example? Humans know nothing and animals are responding.

29:00God's word says that creation is groaning for liberation, liberation from the bondage that it's in, and creation can see that its liberator has arrived.

29:15Jesus says, don't be quiet, because otherwise the rocks are going to sing. They might not have as good of voices as you. Why are the disciples praising God for all of the good things, all of the mighty works they had seen? Have you ever had an aha moment? Have you ever just out of the blue, a whole bunch of experiences suddenly come to mind, and they all fit together with some amazing clarity? Right? It happens all at once. You realize something.

29:50That's what's happening for them. They've been following Jesus for years. All of the things that they've seen, the healings, the exorcisms, the control over nature, the authoritative teaching, bringing people back to life, the shining glory on the mountain. All of that has crystallized in their mind, and they're like, this is it. The king is here. They realize that it's happening, and they're overcome with joy and with praise. Friends, don't hesitate to praise the king.

30:24Don't hold back. Have you experienced his grace and his mercy in your life? Do you know his forgiveness? Do you have your sins covered, and you know the peace that comes, the peace that surpasses all understanding? Has he touched you? Has he changed you? Has he brought some new life in you somewhere?

30:49Then lift up your voice. Don't let the stones do it for you. He wants to hear your voice. There was a praise song that I remember singing a long time ago. Ain't no rock gonna cry in my place. As long as I'm alive, I'll glorify his holy name.

31:14Listen, could that be the posture of your heart as you leave here today? I know Monday's gonna come before you know it. I know what happens to you on Monday. It happens to me too. It's so easy to forget, to go back to the pace of life and we forget. Can you ask God with me to hide that desire to praise him in your heart? That you would say, you know what God, I don't need any rocks to praise God. I'm gonna do it on my own. Praise God for what he has done in your life, no matter how big or how small it is, no matter what you're still waiting for.

31:52And I'm gonna give you one more reason as we close today to praise the king. Because he's the king that serves his people. He didn't come in on a chariot. He didn't come in on a war horse. He didn't come in decked out in armor. He came in on a colt. That's a small service animal. This is like choosing to come into a city on a moped instead of a Harley.

32:24Mopeds aren't cool. They don't look cool. They certainly don't sound cool. They got that ehhh, you know, sound. That is not impressive. He is riding in on a moped, not some big impressive Harley. And he did it to fulfill scripture, yes, but because his work as a humble servant was not finished yet. Because remember, he was not going to a palace, but he was going to a cross. He was not going to get a robe put on him, but to get flogged. To get your sins put on him so that you could get the robe.

33:22There's no other king like this. There's no other king like this. He deserves your praise because he served you. He brought you to him. He put the robe of righteousness on you, and he took your sins on him.

33:50He's a great king. He is a good and gracious king. Let's be bold to praise him, to obey him, because he did it all for you. Let's pray. Jesus, we praise you because when you came in, Lord, you deserved all the honor. You deserved a robe, but what you put on yourself was our sins, and that's exactly what we needed so that we could get the robe of righteousness.

34:38Lord, I want you to be king in my heart over everything I have, and I want that for everyone hearing my voice too, because we know that it is for our good. Even when obedience is difficult, even when our lives are cluttered with so many things that distract us from you, even when we fail to praise you, Lord, your reign over us is for our good.

35:13Will you clear out the clutter in our hearts, give us voice to praise you and to follow where you lead. Lord, we love you, thank you, and we praise you for the work that you've done. Lord, you get all the glory, and we pray this in your name.