Eyewitness to the Messiah
Worship—as It Was Meant to Be
Matthew 21:1-11
In this fallen world, we all experience some good news, and then some bad news. Sometimes they good news and the bad news comes at the same time. Here are a few examples of what can happen for pastors.
Good News: The Women’s Group voted to send you a get-well card. Bad News: The vote passed by 11-10.
Good News: The Elder Board accepted your job description the way you wrote it. Bad News: They were so inspired by it, they also formed a search committee to find somebody capable of filling the position.
Good News: Mrs. Jones is wild about your sermons. Bad News: Mrs. Jones is also wild about the "Beavis and Butthead" and the "Texas Chain Saw Massacre."
Good News: Church attendance rose dramatically the last three weeks. Bad News: You were on vacation.
Good News: Your deacons want to send you to the Holy Land. Bad News: They are waiting until the next war.
Brothers and sisters, these good news/bad news situation don’t just happen to preachers, they happen to everybody! No one is immune from both good and bad in life. And the same was true for our Lord Jesus Christ. This morning, we begin the review of the final week of His life, with some very good news, and a very good day, just before he would experience some very bad news and some very bad days.
It is Palm Sunday, March 30th, 33 A.D. in the holy city, Jerusalem. It's the beginning of the Passover Festival in Jerusalem. It was one of the three feasts in Jerusalem each year which every Jewish male over 20 years of age was required to attend. Pilgrims were jamming the city—it's estimated that between 2 and 2.5 million Jewish pilgrims had travelled to Jerusalem to commemorate the great deliverance of Israel from Egypt, when the Passover Lambs were sacrificed as a ransom to save the first-born of Israel from the fate of the first-born of Egypt. It was the final plague among the 10 that broke Pharaoh and Egypt and allowed the Son of Israel to exit Egypt for the Promised Land. On this Passover about 200,000 to 250,000 lambs would be sacrificed in commemoration of that first Passover, but there was one Lamb, the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world, who was on His way to Jerusalem to participate in His own sacrifice, a sacrifice that would change the world, and eternity, and has changed many of our lives this morning.
Of course, I'm speaking of Jesus of Nazareth, Israel's Messiah, the Son of David, the only begotten Son of God. And Palm Sunday was a good day, a great day in His ministry, because it was perhaps the only day in His entire earthly ministry that He received the wide-spread public acclaim and worship that He was so worthy of—He was worshiped as the long-awaited Messiah, the Son of David, God in the flesh. And so I've entitled this message this morning as Worship—as it was meant to be. "Worship—as it was Meant to be." I want you to imagine this morning, what our church would be like, what any church would be like, if we really worshiped Jesus in the way we were meant to worship Him. In the way that would please Him, in Spirit and in Truth, in every respect. What kind of difference would it make in our lives? What kind of difference would it make in our fellowship, our church? What kind of difference would it make in our community, our world?
What would it look like—well it would be revolutionary. It would be like what happened on that Palm Sunday—we would worship Jesus by obeying Him completely, loving others impartially and praising Jesus whole-heartedly. And people would want to know who Jesus is as a result. What's so special about Him?
You see, on this day, Jesus was honored in a way which was fit for a king. He was worshiped in a way that was fit for God, our Savior and Deliverer. Let me tell you how.
Jesus and His entourage had been approaching Jerusalem from the east, from Jericho. And they had come to a small village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, Bethpage, which means house of unripe figs, and is located about two miles away, on the eastern flank of the Mount of Olives. If you'll remember, the Mount of Olives figures very prominently in the history and the future of Israel. It's a ridge that is about 200 feet higher than Mount Zion, the hill upon which Jerusalem sits. It's located just to the east of Mount Zion, and as you can see from this photo, affords the best view you can have of the Holy Mountain, and where the temple should be, and the city of Jerusalem. It's the place from which Jesus ascended to heaven after His resurrection, and according to Zechariah 14:1-4, it's the place to which He will return from Heaven when He comes again. We're told there that His very feet will set upon the Mount of Olives. And it is also from the Mount of Olives where He begins His Triumphal Procession into Jerusalem. It's an incredibly significant moment. It is the fulfillment of the hopes and fears of all the years with regard to the long-awaited Messiah of Israel, whose coming had been prophesied for 1500 years, and it is occurring very possibly on the precise day predicted by the Prophet Daniel's famous prophecy of the 70 weeks, or 70 sevens of years from Daniel 9:26-27—exactly 173,880 days after the decree went forth from Artaxerxes, King of Persia to rebuild and restore the walls of Jerusalem in 445 B.C. Only the true Messiah of Israel could have presented Himself to Israel as its Messiah on this day. And that is exactly what Jesus is doing. It's so important that it's an event that is recorded in all four of the Gospels. Up until this time Jesus was known as a prophet, perhaps the prophet prophesied by Moses, but He has not publicly presented Himself as the Son of David, the Messiah, for his hour had not yet come. But on this day, after three years of the most incredibly supernatural ministry the world has ever seen, He comes to Jerusalem, the capitol city of Israel, where the King should rule and reign over Israel and the world, to present Himself openly and publicly as the Messiah, the Son of David. Israel's fate, the world's fate, hung in the balance—depended upon Israel's reception or rejection of Jesus as its Messiah. Actually, the fact is, Israel and the world's fate had already been determined by the eternal counsels of God Almighty, that in keeping with her rebellious nature, Israel as a nation, would reject and even crucify its own long-awaited Messiah and deliverer.
But on this day, it would appear differently. On this day, as strange as it would seem, almost everything went well. Jesus was received and treated like a king; He was worshiped like a God, the God that He was. He was praised for the Savior and Deliverer that He would become, not just for Israel, but for the entire world. What went right on this special day, and what can each of us learn from it.
The day began on a rather ordinary note. Jesus had a job for a couple of his disciples as we learn from Matthew 21:1-3. He told them to go into the village opposite them, which may have been Bethpage itself, and that there they would find a donkey tied up with her colt next to her. They were to untie them and bring them to Him. And he told them that if anyone asked them about what they were doing, they were to tell them that the Lord had need of them. And that's precisely what happened. In fact, the account in Luke 19 tells us that the owner asked them what they were doing, and they answered exactly as Jesus had told them, and they were allowed to take the donkey, and her colt, a colt upon which no one had ever sat, according to the Gospel of John.
Now this was a significant loan. Donkeys were means of transportation in Israel, and a luxury at that. It would be like someone asking to borrow your car. And here the disciples borrow this donkey and her colt from a complete stranger, and it all goes exactly as the Lord had predicted.
It's the first thing that went right that day. It is an example of our proper worship, our proper or reasonable service of worship unto the Lord. These disciples had learned to trust Jesus implicitly and completely through their 3 ½ years with him. They had learned that He was completely faithful and reliable, totally true with respect to whatever He said and did. What He intended to do, every kind of healing, any kind of miracle, up to and including the resurrection of the dead, He did. There was never ever so reliable a man in all of history. And so He gave them instructions, they completely trusted Him. And because they trusted Him implicitly, they obeyed completely and exactly. And it resulted in great blessing on that great day.
That's our first lesson about the appropriate worship of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we worship Him appropriate, as He deserves, we will trust Him implicitly and obey Him completely.
These disciples walked by faith, not by sight. What they could not see, they could believe, because they trusted Jesus. And so when He told them to do something, though they could not see the future, they did it, because they knew Jesus was reliable and they would be blessed.
In the same way, we walk by faith. We do not walk by sight. We do not walk by feelings. We don't by our heart, or our wisdom, but we rely on, and obey completely and exactly the words of Jesus and the Word of God.
The last couple months I have experienced that truth with regard to an invisible reality—one reality that was hard for me to believe at one time, but has proven to be exactly as the Word of God has explained it. It's again happened in counseling, with respect to that invisible spiritual conspiracy called spiritual warfare, the reality that invisible entities, fallen angels, oppose the work of Christ, deceive and intimidate and attempt to destroy human beings. I've heard that they have tried to convince people that they themselves are Jesus that they should try to develop a following, giving those people the exact words of sermons they should preach to gain a following. How when they have decided to follow the true Jesus, Jesus has been mocked, they have been cursed, and viciously attacked in every horrendous sort of way, and that the only relief that those so inflicted has come when the lies of the enemy and the sins of the flesh have been confessed and renounced and the demons have been resisted in the name of Jesus. And what has been even more alarming, is that one of these people was being prepared to be a wolf, wolf in sheep's clothing, one who would eliminate those who resisted the deceptions of the New Age Movement and the Coming of the Antichrist, which makes me wonder how close the end of the age may be!
In times like this, it is all the more important that we worship God even as Romans 12:1-2 tells us to, even as these two disciples did—as living sacrifices, who trust Jesus implicitly and thus obey Jesus completely to experience His blessing and protection.
And so the donkey was brought. And Matthew, as He recollects the event, and is intent on proving that Jesus was indeed this long promised Messiah, in verse 4, now quotes the Old Testament prophecy which was about to be fulfilled. No doubt Jesus knew that this was the passage He was fulfilling, but in John's account, in John 12:16, John makes it clear that the disciples did not understand what was happening at the time, they did not recognize that this event was a precise fulfillment of prophecy, that it was only after Jesus was glorified, that is when He had ascended into Heaven, did they realize that they were participating in a glorious fulfillment of a prophecy given some 550 years earlier.
And in verses four and five, Matthew quotes parts of Zechariah's great prophecy: "This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet, 'Say to the daughter of Zion, Behold Your King is coming to you. Gentle, and mounted on a Donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden."
Zion, is Mt. Zion, one of the hills upon which Jerusalem is built. The daughter of Zion is the city of Jerusalem itself, as though it spawned or produced the city for which it was the foundation. Jerusalem, in 550 B.C. was being prepared for the coming of its King, King Messiah, and the Son of David. And this is the sign that would prove that He had come. He would come riding into town with an attitude of gentleness and humility. He would be mounted not on a great white prancing warhorse, like most kings, but he would come mounted on a mere donkey, a humble beast of burdens, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
Now what you need to know is how distinctive this King's introduction would be. You see, great kings at least among the Gentiles didn't come riding into town gently and humbly on a poor little beast of burden, a gentle donkey. No, if you're familiar with Alexander the Great, as one of the great kings of antiquity, you are probably also familiar with perhaps the most famous horse in all of his story, His noble stallion, Bucephalus. Conquering Kings, when they rode in town, rode into town on prancing, powerful, white stallions, warhorses, the best their nations could offer, and they were followed by their armies, and their defeated and captured foes, in all their power and splendor and glory. It's like Mayday in the Soviet Union. They bring out all their military might for their glory and as a warning against their enemies.
But no Israel's greatest King would come in a completely different way, in a completely different manner, with a completely different attitude. Not proud, and boastful, and arrogant, with a display of His might power, though He would be Almighty God. No Israel's King, though Almighty God, would come humbly and gently. He would be on a mission of peace, seeking reconciliation with His own people and with the world. Instead of being a King who would require His subject, His soldiers to die for Him to maintain His own sovereignty, He would be the one to die for His own subjects so that they might live, and might live on in His kingdom forever and ever.
And it didn't matter that His people were at odds with Him, which many of them were. It didn't matter that they were sinners, which all of them were. It didn't matter that they would be the very ones who would reject and crucify Him for that's what they would do. He came humbly and gently, loving others impartially, regardless of how rebellious and difficult they were. And He serves here as the perfect example of how those who follow Him must relate to others and to the world. If we worship the King as he would want us to, we also will humbly and gently love others impartially. If we would reconcile unbelievers to Christ, we must approach them with the same humble and gently reconciling love of Jesus we see in this picture. WE must conquer them not with weapons of war, but kindness. As Romans 2:4 tells us "the kindness of God leads us to repentance."
You see, God's economy, mercy always precedes justice. He always gives someone a chance to repent through His kindness, before He manifests His justice upon then unrepentant sinners who show themselves to be thoroughly deserving of His wrath. His first coming He came humbly and gently on a colt the foal of a donkey. But in His second coming He will come to mete out justice against all the nations who come against Jerusalem, and He will indeed come on a white warhorse from heaven followed by the armies of Heaven and will land on this very Mount of Olives to establish His kingdom according to Revelation 19:11 and Zechariah 14:1-4.
And so our second point this morning. Worship as it was meant to be follows Jesus in love. It humbly and gently loves others impartially—regardless of differences, regardless of sin, regardless of even rejection and violence.
This is one key to revival. The first is complete and immediate obedience. The second is love, love that is blind to differences, that is impartial, that boldly loves the unlovable. In the only revival I've ever been a part of, the Jesus Revolution in Southern California in the early 70s, this was the distinctive that set real Christians apart from everyone and everything else. Long-hairs and short-hears, hippies and conservatives, former druggies and straight kids all loved one another, no matter the cultural and physical differences. And the love was genuine, it was the love of Jesus that conquered all. The kindness of Jesus shown through and conquered so many hearts and changed lives!
Dave Giannotti mentioned something last week that needed mentioning. Every two or three years in our small church we become all too comfortable with those we are comfortable with. People like us. People we already know. The cliques become exclusive cliques. We stop looking out for those who are new, are those who are left out, are those who are different, are those who in some way don't measure up to our standards. Love becomes something only for those whom we already love. We're not willing to step out of our comfort to spread Jesus' love around!
On Christmas Eve we had about six guests to our Christmas Eve service. It was in the cozy environs of Jack and Pat Wold's clubhouse at Sun Villa estates. I expected everyone would experience the love. But do you know what. They didn't. Do you know who didn't? I have now heard through their children the experiences of their two mothers. Without knowing it, they had one report for their children who are part of our church family—in the exact same five words—"No one talked to me!" Yes. Two people had precisely the same experience in our Christmas Eve service. They didn't talk about how great the Christmas music was, our how great the pastor's message was, or how cozy our meeting place was. The one thing that impressed them, depressed them above, or below all else, is that no one talked to them! Not one, they claimed.
Now I was there, and I'm guilty in at least one case. But I did make a point of talking to one of the moms, and I told that to her child. And you know what He told me. "You don't count!"
"You're the pastor. You don't count." In other words, I was just doing what pastor's do. They have ulterior motives, you know. They just want their visitors to come to their church. So I don't count. You know who does—you do! And when you're not humbly and gently initiating in love with those who need it the most—the people who are always left out, or those who are guest for the first time—they notice. And I'm embarrassed. I want to apologize, and I do. But it's too late.
Remember the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. Jesus tells the sheep and the goats what they have done for him and what they haven't. And I wonder if He would say to us, I visited your church, and you ignored me? I stood out in your lobby, and you pretended I wasn't there. I was looking for love and encouragement, and I felt more lonely in your church than if I'd stayed home!
Love is not something you always feel. But it is always something you do, intentionally, even as Jesus intentionally rode into Jerusalem in humility and gentleness, determined to love us to the point of giving his life for our sins. If you can't give somebody five minutes of your attention, five minutes to love them or pray for them, or care about them, then you aren't following. You aren't worshiping Jesus, because you're not seeking to be like Him. Let's straighten up. Let's do what Jesus and be what Jesus would do—love the stranger, and care, and hear a better conclusion to their experience than, "No one talked to me."
And then noticed what happened spontaneously. This had to be the Holy Spirit. Everyone on this day would roll out the red carpet, at least as best they could, for the great King who was entering into His royal city—Jerusalem. Verses 6 and 7 tell us that the disciples went and found everything as Jesus had told them, then brought donkey and the colt back, and put their own coats, their own outer garments on the donkey and the colt, and as predicted, Jesus got on the colt, on the garments laid out for Him in accord with the royal treatment He so richly deserved. And most of the crowd was overcome by this incredibly special moment when they recognized that this was the King they had longed for. They were people who had followed Him from Galilee and who had seen Him resurrect Lazarus of Bethany only days before. And they quickly began ripping off their coats and spread it before the great King and His humble steed. A. T. Robertson notes that the Greek tense here indicates that they were moving rapidly—that they were taking the garments that Jesus had rode over, and grabbing them and replacing them again in front of Him so that He would have the red carpet treatment all the way into Jerusalem—a welcome fits for King who would serve His own subjects unto His death in the days to come! Wow!
And those who didn't have garments to spread were cutting down branches, some palm fronds from which we get Palm Sunday, and spreading them in the road before the Great King. All part of the red carpet treatment.
And then the crowds going before Him and coming after Him we're overcome at the excitement of the moment. They were shouting, did you see that, they were shouting, Hosanna to the Son of David, Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the Highest. They were recognized that this Jesus was the Messiah, they were proclaiming it at the top of their voices—this large crowd and this procession thus entered the city. And they were quoting a Messianic Psalm, Psalm 118:25-26, an indication that at least for the moment they were receiving and welcoming their Messiah, saying, "Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord."
Now Hosanna means, Save now. Save now. And is they put it in the context of Save Now, in the Highest, they were acknowledging that they were appealing to God in the Flesh for the very salvation and deliverance that only the Messiah/Savior/Deliverer would bring. Now some may have been thinking it would be deliverance from Rome; it turned out to be something much greater, deliverance from sin and its great consequence of death. But the praise was fitting. It was all out. It was whole-hearted. It was in short, honor fitting for a great king; worship fitting for our Savior and God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Third evidence of appropriate worship this morning—actively exult in praising Jesus wholeheartedly. Did you notice that? Actively exult in praising Jesus whole-heartedly.
Worship is not a spectator sport. It's something you actively participate in. And if you do it according to Jesus' pleasure, His design, you do it in spirit and truth. That means you do it with mind and heart and body engaged, and according to the truth, the grand and majestic truth of who He is, your Savior, Your King, Your Lord and Your God who served you when He died on the cross for your sins, and proved it when He was gloriously raised from the dead. He now sits at the right hand of on High, and your life, and everything you have depends on Him. You shout praises with all your heart, at the top of your voice, if you actively exult in praising appropriately.
Now let me ask you? What would someone think about what you were doing if He walked in during one of our worship services and focused on you? You know, I've been to some other churches. I've been there when they were worshipping. And everyone was standing on their feet, and their hands were lifted to heaven and they were worshipping and singing for all their worth.
But you know what I've noticed. I know for some of you there are health reasons why you can't stand. But half of our congregation is sitting and many of them not even singing while our worship team does their best to lead us into worship. Some of us sit like bumps on a log. What kind of love for the Savior is that? The first command is to love God with all our heart, all our mind and all of our soul. And if we're sitting on our hands, not even singing, like a bump on a log during worship, why are we even here! Are we not excited and enthused about our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. Where's the love! Where's the excitement.
I want to know, what's your excuse? I know many of you like music, and you'll sing other songs with gusto. Why not worship on Sunday morning when our worship team works so hard to lead us into it.
Do you know that what you do or don't do on Sunday morning in worship is contagious? You affect the whole feel of this place by your participation of your lack of participation in worship. And yet some of you come in like a rebellious child to his classroom who slumps so deeply when he sits down as his desk he's nearly laying down. What's that say about his level of interest, his attitude? What are we saying about our love for the savior? And what are we encouraging or discouraging our brothers and sisters from doing?
When Scriptures says, Let everyone who has breath praise the Lord, that's exactly what it means. And when people begin worshiping like they mean it, guess what, people begin to take notice. People begin to wonder what's going on. That's exactly what happened in the Jesus Revolution of the 70s—groups like Love Song began to worship from the heart, and people got it. People figured out there's something to this worship thing. And that's what began on that day in Jerusalem. There was such a commotion, such a spirit of Holy-Spirit inspired worship that the city fairly quaked.
That's what the Greek actually says. Verse 10: And when He had entered Jerusalem, all the city was stirred, saying, "Who is this!" The Greek word for stirred is seio. It's the word from which we get seismic and seismograph. That is the city quaked, trembled in fear, was agitated, it was shaking from the commotion. And the result was that people began to ask, "Who in the world is this who has come into our city?" And the crowds were prepared—this is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth, in Galilee, the Son of David, the Son of Almighty God . . .
And see, this is the fourth and final result of authentic worship. The world notices, and quakes. Authentic worship stirs interest in Jesus among others. Everyone wanted to know who this Jesus was. And they were about to find out, for good or for ill, in the greatest revival that would ever take place—beginning on the Day of Pentecost.
You know what will happen when we begin to worship sincerely and authentically. Yes, we will obey completely and we love others impartially and we will praise him wholeheartedly. But one other thing will happen. The word will be stirred with the question, who is this Jesus. The question of whom Jesus of Nazareth really is, His claims about Himself and His claims on our lives will become central in the community in which we live. And they will initiate with us, they will ask, who is this Jesus whom you so enthusiastically, whom you love with all your heart mind soul and strength with result that you actually love your neighbors, impartially as yourself.
And guess, God begins to move!
