#3488 A Curious Incident
Matthew 21:1 11 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, Say to the daughter of Zion,
Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a
colt, the foal 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 crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the
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. Thanks be to God for his Word.
Father, as we turn now to your Word, the Bible, we pray that the Holy Spirit will
illumine to us the printed page; that our hearts may be the very ones that
we seek to be, as we have said in our song; and that you will meet with us in these
moments. For we pray in Christ s name. Amen. Well, I think it would be a brave or a foolish
individual prepared to suggest that the answer that the answer to our religious, political,
moral, social predicament in the land of the free and the home of the brave that the answer to
all of that is to be found in a king. In a king. Because, after all, we fought a Revolutionary War in order to be rid of the king now, that king,
of course, being King George. And it would be no surprise it should be no surprise given
our preoccupation with the story of the kings of Israel, that on this particular
Sunday that we refer to as Palm Sunday, we would look at this passage of Scripture, which
introduces us to the true King, to the good King, to Jesus, who is the King. And although the
material will be, for many of us, familiar, we come to look at it with an investigative
and hopefully a submissive spirit. It is, I suggest to you, a curious incident.
It is a curious incident curious in the sense that it invites our attention. It invites our
investigation as an incident which in itself is strange; it s novel; it s actually in many ways
unexpected. The fact that we may be familiar with it does not alter any of that at all. And
so, what I want to do by way of a framework is work through this passage, first
of all considering the description, and then considering the explanation,
and then considering the reaction the reaction that took place then and the
reaction that needs to take place now. So, the description is there for us. Actually,
this is one description of four descriptions. Each of the Gospel writers (Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John) all cover this particular incident. Details vary from the correspondent to the
correspondent, as it were, in much the same way that an incident in time covered by four
or five different newspapers may disagree, as it were, in terms of the points of emphasis not
on the main emphasis, not on the central focus, but on little things. We won t get tied up on
that, but, for example, here in Matthew s Gospel, Matthew is the only one who mentions that there
is both a donkey and a colt. And you see that he has identified this; others have decided
that that is actually extraneous material, because it s not the central issue.
Now, we re told that the destination is Jerusalem. You can see that there. Jesus was
heading to Jerusalem, and en route to Jerusalem, he has drawn near to Bethphage, a tiny little
place, a kind of suburb of a suburb. Bethany was Jesus favorite place. He had no home of his own.
He went regularly to Bethany, as we hear in the Gospels, because there his friend Lazarus, Martha,
and Mary, had their home, and he spent time there. And this little Bethphage place no longer exists,
much like the hamlet in which my father was born in the extreme north of Scotland. I went looking
for it on one occasion and only found ruins and crumbles lying around. It was there it was
clearly there but it is no longer anything other than a shadow of itself. Nevertheless,
it was a tiny place, and a tiny place on the Mount of Olives, and it was near Bethany.
And it is to that little place that the clear instruction is given to the disciples. You
can see, it s very straightforward: Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will
find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. In other words, the instruction that is given here is
clearly deliberate. There is no sense in which it is a sort of spur-of-the-moment idea that
Jesus says, Hey, by the way, why don t you just go No, no. It s clearly very purposeful
on the part of Jesus, as we will see. Again, in terms of a little detail, Luke
in his Gospel points out that when Jesus sent for this transportation, it was a colt ,
on which no one ha[d] ever [previously] sat. In other words, they were not to get it out of
the used colt department. They were not to buy You can t call it used anymore; it s previously
owned. That s it. Yeah, pre-owned. They were not to go to the pre-owned department. They were to
go to the unridden department. Well, that seems rather interesting. In the Old Testament, you
discover that animals for religious purposes, that were to be set apart for particular use in that
way, were never to come from the pre-owned pool. They were always to be in this way. And
Luke, in his eye for detail, mentions that. Clear instruction followed by faithful execution.
The disciples, we re told in verse 6, went and did as Jesus had directed them. That s actually
a feature of what it means to be a disciple. Seven people this evening will be baptized. A
number of you have not been baptized. Apparently, you are a disciple who has decided that you don
t have to do what Jesus said. Perhaps you ll come this evening and give some serious thought
to it. The disciples did as they were told. That is what disciples do. Obedience is a mark of
our allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ . And if they were to encounter any pushback, says Jesus,
they should simply say, The Lord needs them. Now, every so often when I play with my children
now my grandchildren I say, Yes, but what is the password? And the password is often fish-n-chips.
This may well have been a password: All you need to say to them is The Lord needs them, and they ll
know: Oh. I gotcha. Now, some people want to make it a very miraculous thing, that Of course it is a
miraculous thing! Jesus knows everything. And so, whatever way you take it, it unfolds as per the
plan. They went and did as Jesus directed them. And they brought the donkey and the
colt and put on them their cloaks. It says here that Jesus sat on them. Every
so often you have a bright spark from Sunday school class who says, Oh, you mean
that he sat on both of them? No, all you need to do is read the English language and you
will discover that cloaks is the antecedent. And when it says that he sat on them, it means
he sat on the cloaks that he has just mentioned. The cloaks went on both of them, and he sat
on the colt, and on the colt was a cloak, and on top of the cloak he sat.
The action was unique. Was unique. Those of you who have read the Gospels know
that there is nowhere else in the entire Gospel record in which we read of Jesus riding on
anything at all. And once again, this points to the unique nature of what is taking place here.
This is not something that is haphazard. It is not something contrived in a moment. It is something
that is directly related to what the prophets have said and what Jesus now, in fulfillment
of those prophecies, is actually making clear. You will notice that Matthew goes on to tell us by
way of description that on the short distance and it was a short distance, about a mile or so down
the Mount of Olives the whole air was filled with the sights and the sounds of acclamation and of
joy and the way in which these cloaks and these branches were mingled with the enthusiasm of the
crowd. And we re told that they were praising God for all the mighty works that they had seen :
Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, cut branches from the trees spread them on
the road, and they praised God in this way. Now, the things that they had just seen
were multiple. But most recently, if your Bible is open, you can see that prior to this,
Matthew records the healing of two blind men. And as he had gone out of Jericho, a great
crowd had followed him there, and two men, blind, were sitting by the roadside, and they
cried out to Jesus, Lord, have mercy upon us! And he heard their cry, and he asked them, What do you
want me to do? They said, We would like to see. And he said, Then you shall see, and immediately
they recovered their sight, and they followed him. And they followed him. I ve got a sneaking
suspicion that they were in this crowd that they were part of the group, and now they
are part and parcel of this great acclamation. Well, you say, well, that makes perfect sense.
You know, after all, they had had a miracle. And the people had seen miracles. And some
of you are here this morning, you re saying, If I could see a miracle, then I would believe
as well. But I haven t seen any miracle at all. Well, I want you to know that even if you
saw a miracle, you wouldn t believe. And I ll tell you why I know: because many people saw
miracles, and it didn t compel them to believe. In fact, in John s Gospel, as he recalls these
scenes, as he tells of what has unfolded, he records how Jesus has raised Lazarus from the
dead, has declared to Martha and Mary, you know, that he is the resurrection and the life. Well,
that wasn t met by a great affirmation on the part of people. There were a lot of people who were
bemused by it, but those who didn t like Jesus, didn t want anything to do with Jesus, were
completely opposed to it. In fact, this is what John says: When the large crowd of the Jews
learned that Jesus was there, they came, not only on account of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he
had raised from the dead. Well, that makes sense. It was a phenomenon. So the chief priests
made plans to put Lazarus to death as well. So they not only want to kill Jesus, but they
want to kill the person who is evidence of the power of Jesus, because on account of him many of
the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus. Well, so the obvious reality of the power of
Jesus was not sufficient to compel belief. By nature, we do not seek God. By nature, we do
not long for God. By nature, we do not choose to believe in God, even though someone were to
perform a miracle before us. But you see, what was happening, again, was that God was fulfilling
his word. Isaiah the prophet had looked to a day in which the deaf will hear and, after a lifetime
of darkness, the blind will see. And the people in that day said, I wonder how this will be. And
now the people in this day, in Jesus day, are seeing the evidences of God coming and breaking
into time. If God were to break into time, you would expect him to do these amazing things
which is, of course, exactly what has happened. And so the description we can leave. It s filled
with pilgrim chants. It s the kind of thing that you read in the Psalms as the psalmist describes
going up to Jerusalem for the feasts. And in Psalm 118 they cried out, Save us, we pray . Blessed
[be] he who comes in the name of the LORD! Now, we can leave the description there, and
you can read the parallel passages on your own. Then in verses 4 and 5 and the
description surrounds verses 4 and 5 we are given this explanation. Matthew, in
providing this explanation, This took place to fulfill (in other words, Let me explain to you why
this has happened ) is confirming, if you like, the deliberate nature of the incident. It
took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet. And what was spoken by the prophet
Zechariah we have read already this morning; we needn t go back to it. In other words,
what took place was to fulfill God s plan. When we studied the Gospel of Mark, we reminded
ourselves of the way in which Mark begins his Gospel with this straightforward declaration.
And Jesus steps forward, and he says, The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand; [now]
repent and believe [the good news]. And here you see the evidence of this, all this time later.
Once again, the words of the psalmist, which we read, again, earlier in the service from Psalm 48
are coming to pass. Let me just reread them from Psalm 48: Great is the LORD and greatly to be
praised in the city of our God, Mount Zion, the joy of [the whole] earth. And so what is happening
is into the city of God, God himself comes. Into the city of God, the King comes Jesus, who in
his coming had entered the world in a veiled way. It would have been very, very difficult for
somebody to actually discover that what had taken place in Bethlehem was the invasion
in time of the Creator of time, God himself. After all, babies were born all over the place.
Surely it was a strange place to be born and so on. The circumstances varied from person to
person. But people would have been hard-pressed. Hard-pressed. On that occasion, his glory is
veiled. On this occasion, it is as though he removes the veil, and he enters Jerusalem
in an open declaration of his messiahship. Now, again, if you think about your
reading of the Gospel, you know that in the Gospels, time and time again, we re
told that Jesus removed himself from the crowd; that they came wishing to make him a king,
and he took himself away from all of that. And as you read that, you say, Well, I thought he
came to be the King. Why would he do that? Well, because their expectations were so skewed.
He recognized that he was moving according to the plan and purpose of God. There is a time for
everything. And in his time, he sets himself away in order that at the right time he may reveal
himself in this way. And so it is that as we read on through into the Easter story, you
find the very same thing unfolding. Before Pilate: Pilate says to him, So, are you a king?
And he says, You say that I m a king. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the result of this, of
course, is not immediate clarity. You would think, Well, people say, Well, okay,
I put all the pieces of the jigsaw together, and I understand it perfectly. But no. The
pieces of the jigsaw were coming together in the minds of those who encounter this in the
first instance. Many of them would have been brought up with an awareness of all the kings that
had preceded in the nation of Israel and so on. And we know, because we ve been
studying this (at least I hope we do), that the kings of Israel, even the best of them
whether it was Saul or David or Solomon even the best of them finally flunked out and left the
people saying, Well, you know, we had thought that a king would be the answer. They had a succession
of individuals that were put there by God s plan. And in the succession program, they went for
a little while, and it seemed to be good, and then they had to come up with somebody
else. They give the Democrats a shot at it, and then they give the Republicans a shot
at it, and then they gave them another one, and then went back to the Democrats, and then went
somewhere else. And eventually, when it was all said and done, no one was any further forward than
when they had started the whole program. And that s the end of the story of the book of Judges.
You say, I didn t know they had Democrats in Judges, or Republicans. No, they didn t. I
m just playing with that. You understand? But the end of it was everybody did
what was right in their own eyes, because they didn t have a king. So they say,
Well then, let s have a king. Maybe the king is the answer. And so they have these kings. And
the kings do fairly well. One falls morally. One falls religiously. One falls politically. And the
succession plan leaves them with nothing at the end of it, except to find themselves saying, There
must be something better than this or, actually, There must be someone better than this.
And so, through the period of darkness and silence in the intertestamental period, the picture is
growing and growing, and the people are waiting, waiting, and hoping for one who will come. And
when they put together what the Davidic kings have recorded alongside what the psalmists have to
say and alongside what the prophets have said, they realize that whoever this is, this is
somebody larger than life. The fulfillment of this has to be somebody who breaks the boundaries
of everything that has ever gone before. And, of course, that is exactly what we find.
And so it is that, you remember, when the seeking party come from China or wherever they were the
wise men when they came saying, We re looking for the king of the Jews; we ve seen his star
in the east, and we ve come to worship him and you remember the result of that
was that Herod was greatly troubled, because he was a king. And those of
us who are sitting on our own throne which is each of us by nature we
don t want to hear of any King that might actually come to displace
us and take our seat and reign over us. So he was troubled. He was troubled because
the expectation of the people was that they were waiting for the consolation of Israel.
They were waiting for the one who would come who would actually fulfill this expectation which
had run through all these lines and for so long. Herod was troubled; Simeon was completed.
You remember that amazing encounter when Mary and Joseph bring this
little King-boy into the temple? And Simeon, who had been waiting for
the consolation of Israel, takes the child in his arms, and he says something really
strange. He says, I can die now. What? I mean, of all the things you say when you get the chance
to hold somebody s newborn, I never heard anybody say that. But Simeon said it. And he explained
why: because my eyes have seen your salvation. What a curious thing to say! My eyes have
seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. I ve seen your salvation. I can die now.
Well, you say, that is amazing, isn t it? Well, Charles Wesley got it perfectly in his hymn
Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus when he writes: Born your people to deliver,
Born a child and yet a King, Born to reign in us forever,
Now your gracious kingdom bring. And he goes on to speak of Israel s strength
and consolation, hope of all the earth you are. Well, I leave you with that as well. We
will proceed further into Good Friday and to Easter Sunday, God willing, in terms
of explanation. But from the description, which I think is straightforward, the explanation
that is clear, we turn, then, to the reaction. Now, there is a twofold reaction, obviously.
There s the reaction of the people on the journey. But we re referring now to what
is taking place and described for us in verse 10, in terms of the reaction when he entered
Jerusalem. And as I said, I want to consider it in terms of then and also in terms of now.
Then, what did they make of it? What did they make of it? Well, we ve already noted that the
impact in Jerusalem on the occasion of Jesus birth was for the whole place to be troubled.
Remember it says, And then Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. If anybody had been in
Jerusalem at that time, the buzz would have been: There is something that has happened out there in
the hills of Bethlehem that is so revolutionary. We re not sure just what is involved, but there
have been people coming from all across the globe, it would seem, and the shepherds are
really agitated, and oh, it s amazing! And, of course, it led to Herod s attempt
to destroy the plan and purpose of God by the execution of boys under the age of
two. That s how much the Evil One hates the unfolding plan of redemption in the person
of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not simply some kind of marginal philosophical construct
that we may consider and ignore, but it is the very confrontation between life and death,
between freedom and bondage, ultimately between God and the devil and between heaven and hell.
And on this occasion the whole city [is] stirred up. Stirred up. In other words, they recognize
that there s more to this than meets the eye. There was something about the manner in which this
has all taken place. There had been nothing like it before, and there seemed to be meaning
in the manner in which Jesus had arrived. And at the very heart of it, of course,
is the question of his identity: [And] the whole city was stirred up,
saying, Who is this? Who is this? You remember I told you last week of my meeting
with my Jewish friend. And as we talked together last week, I said to them, This is the question.
Who is Jesus of Nazareth? Who is this person? Well, they said, he s the prophet come
from Nazareth. Some people were saying, I don t know who it is, and the crowd said, Well,
it s the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee. Well, you say, well, they got the answer, didn
t they? Well, they got part of the answer. They knew that he was a prophet.
They knew that he came from Nazareth. But it is very clear from the story as it unfolds
that the idea of his being a messianic King who would suffer and die was the last thing
they expected and the last thing they wanted. They were not looking for a Messiah who would
come under the subjugation of Rome. They were looking for a Messiah that would bring Rome
down and would set them on a trajectory of victory and of power and of influence. And
here he was: In lowly pomp ride on to die. And we should not imagine even for a moment
that the disciples, who are caught up in this experience, in this curious incident, are able to
say to one another, Well, at least we get it, even if they don t get it. Because, again, if you read
the parallel passages in John s record, John tells us, His disciples did not understand these things
at first. They didn t understand it! They were part of it, and they didn t get it! They re part
of the company that is heading into Jerusalem. But when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered
that these things had been written about him. In other words, in the resurrection, and
subsequently in the ascension of Jesus, and in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, then
they got it: Ah! Now we see! Now we see that this was the piece of the puzzle and it was being
unfolded and put in place. They got it afterwards. Incidentally, for those of you who are skeptics
about things: Why do you think we even have a Gospel? Why would this ever have been written
down? Why would this ever have been written down, apart from the resurrection? If there was no
resurrection, the whole thing was finished. They d have all died in a Palestinian tomb.
The fact that the very Gospels were written is testimony to the reality of Jesus being glorified.
And the fact that the disciples themselves are prepared to cast themselves in a poor
light is quite remarkable, isn t it? If you d been writing this, you would have
said, Of course, we understood this from the very beginning. I mean, we were the only people
who got it on that occasion. I remember Peter and I were talking to one another, and we said, It
s a shame these people don t get it. No, no, no: We didn t get it either! And neither will you,
and neither will I, and neither will your kids until God opens your blind eyes and softens your
hard hearts. There is no argument. There is no apologetic. There is no intellectual road to God.
Only when he chooses to reveal himself through his Word in the person of his Son by the power
of the Holy Spirit. When Jesus was glorified, then we understood. If I am lifted up, says Jesus,
I will draw people to me. He does the drawing. He is the one to whom we come.
Now, again, I say to you: we can consider this further, because Good Friday is coming. But
let me end by moving from the then to the now: the reaction not by observation, but the
reaction of participation, if you like. The reaction then was as recorded. What
is the reaction now? Or better still, what is your reaction now? What is your reaction?
Remember, Jesus was inquiring of his disciples earlier in Matthew it s recorded Who do the
people say that I am? And there were a variety of answers. And Jesus pressed them; he said, Yeah,
but the real question is, who do you say that I am? Who do you say that I am? Do you realize
that that s a question for you to answer yourself? Not for your husband to answer for you. Not
for your kids to take care of. Not for your great-grandpa who was a pastor. None of that.
You and me. Who do you say this good King riding on this colt is? That s the question.
Now, let s end in that way. Is it unfair to suggest that more than a few of us
are happy just to go with this answer? Well, he s a prophet from Nazareth in Galilee. Happy, if you
like, to have him as someone to whom we might look who can reinforce our hopes, but not prepared to
have him as a King who will rule in our hearts. People are very content today to have the idea of
some kind of spiritual entity, call it or anything as you may but in actual fact, it is in order
that it might be for the fulfillment of my agenda, my plan, my security, my hopes, my satisfaction.
And this King doesn t leave that as an option. It s not difficult for us to recognize that the
environment in which we live right now, towards the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first
century, is an environment in which, both by our personal nature and the reinforcement of the
culture, the idea is You can have fulfillment, you can have peace, without submission to any
authority. You can find it, but you don t need to pay any attention to any institution,
to any clergyman, to any mom, to any dad, to any policeman, to any parent, to any
authority at all. Fulfillment is to be found in the rejection of that. The highest
good of the individual is then to be found in individual freedom ( I do what I want ),
in individual happiness ( whatever makes me happy ), immediate gratification, self-expression,
self-definition. No wonder we created selfies! It is perfect. It is the perfect
metaphor for us at the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first
century. At least we re true to ourselves. Jonathan Sachs, who was the Chief Rabbi until he
died just in the last twelve months Chief Rabbi in Britain has a wonderful book entitled The Home
We Build Together. And one of the chapters in it is entitled The Defeat of Freedom in the Name
of Freedom. The Defeat of Freedom in the Name of Freedom. I want to be free, like the bluebird
flying high. No! Where is freedom to be found? You say, Well, it s a very contemporary
phenomenon. No, no. Look how old some of my quotes are from my files. Look at this
thing! That s a newspaper. I wrote on it, 1976. So, whatever age I was then I don t know. I was
twenty, twenty-one. When Marriage is Just a Cage. Marriage Is Just a Cage. I think the expectation
the expectation of heterosexual, monogamous, lifelong marriage I think the expectation,
writes Jill Tweedie, who was forty at the time, I think this expectation goes against our deepest
nature, stunting our growth, making demands upon us that require notice this that require
distorted lives to fulfill. In other words, in order to live as per God s design, in
order to live under the kingly rule of Christ in relationship to one example namely, marriage
itself she says, No, you gotta be messed up in order to deal with that. And her closing
line is Outside the bonds of Christian marriage we will, I hope, learn for the first time what
love is all about. As long as we can be done with the authority stuff. As long as we
can be sure that we are actually in charge. You see, when morality when morality
is simply a matter of individual choice (which is where we are), when there are
no shared standards, when there is no natural law, when there is no Lawgiver who
says, This is how it is, this is how it works, this is my King, submit to him,
when there are no shared standards, there then can be no conversation. And when
conversation ends, violence takes its place. There s no conversation in our country. There
s no dialogue. Dialogue is a thing of the past. You do not have people that are able to sit down
and have a conversation on the basis of a shared conviction. All you have are people from one side
or from another side, shouting to one another. Let me end where I began. It would be a brave
or a foolish man who was prepared to suggest what the Bible says namely, that the answer to
our political, moral, social, religious dilemma is to be found in a King. In a King. The good
King! Aslan, for the C. S. Lewis readers. Is he scary? Yes. But he s approachable. He s not way up somewhere you have to go find him.
He comes to you. He comes now riding on a colt, down there where children could see him, could touch his legs, could look and listen. This
is how God comes. He still comes in this way. The King, the Zechariah King, is the one
who grants peace. In fact, I just need to quote it to you as we close, because it s so
very, very important we understand it. And here in Zechariah 9, isn t it? Yeah. Rejoice ,
daughter of Zion, and so on. It goes on to say, And he shall speak peace to the nations;
[and] his rule shall be from sea to sea. Do you get the juxtaposition of that? Peace and
rule. The peace that may come to the nations is a peace that is found not in our autonomy, not
in our making our own rules and establishing our own plans and achieving our own ambitions
and taking to ourselves a religious guru, a god of our own making, that we can manipulate
in order that he can make it possible for us to believe what we want to believe and to live with
who we want to live with and do what we want to do. No, it doesn t work that way. There s no
peace that is found down that road. No peace! No, the peace that comes is in
submission to the righteous rule of God. To submit to the righteous rule of God.
You know, Nietzsche, who was, you know, very clever and very sad, in some
of his material he talks about how in one particular he talks about this person
jumps in and says to people, he says, you know, We have murdered God. He is no more. He
s done. We have dealt with him. There is no God. We can live with that. And
then he goes on in the writing to say, Is there without him any up or down? Do
we not feel the breath of empty space? Is there an up? Is there a down?
Is there a start? Is there an end? Nietzsche was proud in his atheism.
He wrote that book at the end of the nineteenth century. Within seven years
of writing that book, he went mad, and he lived the last eleven years of his life
in care. Because, you see, you cannot find peace except under the rule of God. How does he
rule over us? He rules over us by his love. He rules over us by his law. He rules over
us by his principles. He rules over us by his promises. He rules
over us by his Son, the King. At the end and this is the end at the end of world history, Isaiah pictures the
crisis that will unfold. And you can read this for yourself as your homework. But in Isaiah
24 and then in 26, he contrasts two cities. Two cities. And as I turn to this, just let
me say: Isn t this fascinating? Apparently We talk about cities being stirred.
We know about cities being stirred. We know about Portland. We know about Minneapolis.
We know about cities being stirred sadly, not stirred by the entry of King Jesus. To that
end, we want to pray that the city of Cleveland will be stirred because the righteous King,
having come to reign in the hearts of his people, is now revealed in the community of Cleveland
as the one who grants peace under his dominion. In chapter 24, he says, Behold, the LORD
will empty the earth and make it desolate. And he describes a city that is without meaning:
The wasted city is broken down; every house is shut up so that none can enter.
There is an outcry in the streets, and so on. That s 24. And then in chapter 26 he
describes another city, and this is a strong city, set up for
salvation as walls and bulwarks.
Open the gates, that the righteous nation
that keeps faith may enter . You [will] keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.
Oh, you say, is the answer then in a city? Is it in a place? No, it s
in a person. It s in the person of Jesus, the one true King, who invites us, bids
us, to lay our authority and our autonomy at his feet feet which bear the scars that are
his because he has taken all of our rebellion, all of our sin, all of our
selfishness upon himself. We sang of it this morning: In your kingdom broken
lives are made new. Jesus, the King on the colt, becomes the King on the cross, broken
in order that you and I might be fixed. How are we to be fixed? When we come to him, when
we bow before him, when we acknowledge that he grants forgiveness, that he sets free sets us
free to be all that he planned for us to be. And here s the deal: we will either serve
him, or we will ultimately serve ourselves. Well, I wonder if today is the day when some
of us, perhaps a young person who s got all their life in front of them, says, You know, I've
never really considered that Jesus is this King. I ve been wearing my own little tin crown.
Well, take your tin crown off, and lay it down, and ask him to come and crown you
as his follower and his friend. Well, may it be so.
Just a moment of silence before our closing hymn. Perhaps there s someone just
sitting there and saying, Well, I don t know what you do at this point.
Well, just talk to God from your heart, just from inside yourself. Perhaps you might
say to him something along these lines: Dear God, you know everything there is to know
about me. I m sorry for all that is wrong in me. Please forgive me. Thank you that Jesus
came into the world and died for me. Thank you that he is the risen King. May he become my Lord and Savior. And help me
to follow him for the rest of my life. Amen.
