Behold The King: The Cross Before the Crown
(Various Portions of the Gospels)
1. One blogger writes, “Today, I was waiting at the bus stop and noticed a girl that I played netball with. I ran across the road to meet her and she ran across the car park to meet me. We hugged and looked at each other — slowly backing away as we both realized that we didn't know each other.”
2. It was a case of mistaken identity; Same with the people of Israel.
4. The reason many bypassed Jesus was that the expected the Messiah to wear a regal crown, not a crown of thorns. They only embraced half the story, the glorious reign of the Messiah as a conquering King, not his humiliating death and the cross.
Main Idea: God’s desired will — with omissions and out of sequence — is no longer God’s will. The cross could not be bypassed. Jesus had to wear the crown of thorns before He could wear the crown of the Kingdom.
I. One of Satan’s Prime Attacks on Jesus Was to Tempt Him to BYPASS the Cross and Proceed Immediately to the Kingdom.
A. The temptation of Jesus in the WILDERNESS makes the point.
Matthew 4:8-11, Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”0 Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’” Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.
B. When Satan could not get to Jesus directly, he did it through Jesus’ leading DISCIPLE, Peter.
Matthew 16:21-23, From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” 23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
C. The crowd tried to ESTABLISH Jesus as their King
John 6:13-15, … So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!”
Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
D. Was Judas’ betrayal an attempt to demoralize Jesus and provoke Him to BYPASS the cross?
E. Satan may try to get us to bypass aspects of God’s will for us, or to do things out of SEQUENCE via impatience.
II. The Palm Sunday Crowd Hailed As King, but Jesus Foresaw the Judgment Awaiting His JEWISH Brethren (Luke 19:41-44)
A. The large crowd — but small percentage of the Jewish nation — rightly understood Jesus as the promised King, but did not understand the TIMES.
1. This is the group that had come from up north, in Galilee, and those who had come from Bethany where Jesus had recently resurrected Lazarus.
2. The Jews who later shouted “crucify Him” were from the south, Judea. Not the same group.
3. Hosanna from English into Greek and from Greek into Hebrew is actually a prayer, “Please save us.”
John 12:13, So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!”
B. But Judgment awaited the Jewish people who had REJECTED Jesus.
Luke 19:41-44, 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.”
C. What MIGHT had happened if there was such a thing as “alternative history,” which there is not.
No alternative history. You can never say what would have happened if all the Jewish people have received Jesus as Messiah.
Dr. Paul Benware from an OT perspective: If the Jews accepted Jesus, the Romans would have probably crucified Jesus, He would have risen, ascended to heaven, and the Tribulation would have begun. Then Christ would have returned to set up His kingdom. The revised version of this was offered in Acts 3:19-22.
D. Right from the beginning, Jesus true disciples were a MINORITY.
Application: We need to get used to be a minority. True believers always have been, but we are used to an environment where most people professed some level of Christianity — or showed respect to those who did. Now, in baby steps, we are transitioning from being respected to being held in contempt.
III. Jesus Was Crowned With Thorns, and His Kingship Mocked But His CLAIMS Recognized (John 18:33-38, 19:1-3, 19:19-22)
A. Jesus makes it clear that He had no plans to overthrow ROME (John 18:33-38)
1. Jesus states that His kingdom is not an EARTHLY entity.
2. He admits that Pilate rightly said He was a KING.
David Stern: My kingship (or: "kingdom") does not derive its authority from this world's order of things, literally, "is not of this world." This is not to say that the Messianic kingdom and Yeshua's rulership is only "spiritual," not to be expressed really and physically in this world, fulfilling the prophecy that Israel will become "the head and not the tail" (Deut. 28:13); but that the present aspect of his kingship is in believers' hearts and lives (see 16:27&N), not in international politics (which is the framework of Pilate's question). Thus Yeshua, without denying his office as the Messiah, the King, claims he has done nothing against Rome.
B. The soldiers cruelly pressed a crown of THORNS on his brow (John 19:1-3)
C. Pilate’s inscription told it like it was: King of the JEWS (John 19:19-22)
John 19:19-22, Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’2 Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.”
D. Even unbelievers and cynics cannot leave Jesus ALONE.
Some liberal theologians decided to fight the evangelical influence by presenting a liberal version of Jesus; Gospels undependable, no miracles, he did not claim to be the Messiah, just a misunderstood rabbi. Why bother?
E. He went through all this for US!
