How Happy His People Must Be! - Mark 11:1-10 Series

Mark 11:1 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, 2 saying to them, "Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it here. 3 If anyone asks you, `Why are you doing this?' tell him, `The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.'" 4 They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, 5 some people standing there asked, "What are you doing, untying that colt?" 6 They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. 7 When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. 8 Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. 9 Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted, "Hosanna!" "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" 10 "Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!" "Hosanna in the highest!"

Introduction

The Ideal Ruler

Last week the Seattle Chief of Police sent a letter to business owners letting them know that if the rioters come to destroy your business and beat you or kill you, you’re on your own. Minneapolis PD is telling the public to just give up their money and cell phones to muggers, so there isn’t violence. The Supreme Court ruled that Nevada can prohibit churches from meeting, while casinos are allowed to pack people in by the thousands. In Chicago, a group of police officers defending a Christopher Columbus statue were surrounded by rioters who threw bricks, frozen bottles, and explosives at the police from all sides. The police had guns but weren’t allowed to use them. All they could do was stand there and try to dodge the barrage the best they could. You can watch the video and see them just standing there helpless until finally one of the explosives goes off right in the sergeant’s face, and he ended up with eye damage. What kind of society would do that to any group of people, let alone police officers? We don’t treat animals that way. If you put a group of stray dogs in a pen and pelted them with rocks, you’d go to jail—and rightly so. That kind of cruelty to animals would be a sign of a twisted, perverted soul. So what kind of a society will take innocent men and women—men and women who put their lives at risk to protect others—and subject them to that?

The government’s primary job is justice. It’s great when they build roads and bridges and public utilities and all the rest, but their primary job is to protect people from suffering injustice at the hands of criminals and foreign invaders, and to punish evildoers. If you look at how God judges secular governments in the Bible, when they get into trouble with God, it’s usually because of allowing injustice.

In our country, we get to pick much of our own government. The question of how to vote as a Christian is a very easy one for me—I just vote for whichever party I believe will do the best job at punishing criminals and protecting innocent people from criminals and crooks, violent people, and hostile countries. In other words—justice. If you can find a place to live where the government does just that—even if they did nothing else—that would still be a wonderful place to live. No more human trafficking, not more gangs, no more scams ripping people off, no more assaults, murders, no need to lock your doors anymore. If we elected someone who could pull all that off, we’d all be dancing in the streets on election day, right?

Now, if you can get leaders who are not only just, but who are also really wise and can figure out how to solve societal problems, that’s even better. If we had leaders who could have figured out how to protect people from COVID without putting 40 million people out of work, that would have been nice. Economics, unemployment, infrastructure, healthcare, prosperity. For all those things to go well, you need more than just someone who is just and wise—he would also have to be powerful. He might have all kinds of great ideas, but if he isn’t an inspiring enough leader to mobilize people to go along with those ideas, they’ll never happen. So you need someone with enough power and influence to make all these things happen.

If you can manage to elect someone like that—that’s a great day. But even better—what if you had a guy who could do all that and was also righteous and holy and honored God?