[Grateful for Skip Heitzig at Calvary Church Albuquerque for this outline]
Good morning church! Please open your Bibles to John 12
Today is Palm Sunday, the start of what Christians all over the world call Holy week. It’s amazing when you look at the gospels how much attention was given to this one week. Look at it this way: there are a total of 89 chapters in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Only four chapters say anything at all about Jesus’ birth or childhood.
Nothing is said about Jesus’ life from age 12-30.
So 85 chapters that speak of the last 3 1/2 years of Jesus life,
and of those 85 chapters, 29 of them are about the final week of Jesus’ life!
So I would argue that in terms of how it has shaped world history, there’s no week more significant than Holy Week (except maybe the six days God created the world. That one was pretty great too!)
[Talk about devotional]
So let’s see how this week started. Read with me John 12:12-19.
[Read]
[Pray]
We’ve been in a series called “Greater Love.”
We shared about the Great Love God the Father has given to us that we should be called His children (1 John 3:1).
We celebrated and continue to celebrate Great Transformation as we’ve welcomed new Christians to the banquet Table.
We talked about how there is greater satisfaction to be found in a relationship with Jesus than with anything else in the world.
This Friday we will meet on the hill as a church family and reflect on “Good Friday.” I kind of wish it was called “Great Friday,” or at least “Greater Friday,” because this is the day we saw Jesus put into practice what He said to His disciples in John 15:13, where Jesus declared “Greater Love has no one than this: that He lay down His life for His friends.”
So for weeks now we’ve been thinking about superlatives— what’s great, what’s greater, what’s the greatest. Or what’s good, what’s better, what’s best.
When I was in elementary school, one of my teachers—- can’t remember which one— had a poster on her wall that said, “Good, better, best, and don’t ever rest, till your good becomes better and your better is best.”
So the first contrast we are going to make is that Jesus is better than religion.
Let me just set the context of Palm Sunday for you. This was all happening during Passover week.
This is an incredibly religious context. Jerusalem is considered the most religious city on earth. The Jews are among the most religious people on earth. And Passover is most important religious feast in Judaism. God’s law required that every able-bodied Jewish man and his family to come to Jerusalem for Passover. So while the normal population of Jerusalem was somewhere between 50,000 to 100,000 people on a normal day, on Passover, the city swelled to at as much as 10 times that.
The timeline of the gospel of John indicates that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the 10th day of the month of Nissan. I know the month of Nissan sounds like a sales event at a car dealership, but its not. Its actually a month on the Jewish calendar. On the 10th day of Nissan, Jewish families selected the lamb they would sacrifice in a few days on Passover. Remember how John the Baptist introduced Jesus way back in John 1:29?
29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
So on the 10th of Nissan, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world comes into the city of Jerusalem. We read in verse John 12:13 that “the crowd 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!”
You know, as big a deal as Passover was, I wonder if it ever became routine. And every year it was the same. Families would travel the same roads. They would travel with the same families. They would sing the same songs, practice the same rituals, and say the same prayers on those roads.
It’s sort of the same thing for us with Christmas. We have to constantly remind ourselves why we do it— Jesus is the reason for the season. Otherwise, it starts to feel like a rut.
And at this point in history the Jewish people were ready for a change. For thousands of years they anticipated a Messiah would come. And those Messianic expectations were at an all-time high at the time of Jesus. They wanted more than the rituals and rules and repetitive prayers of Judaism.
So now there’s a new character on the scene. This carpenter from Nazareth who healed the sick, calmed storms, cast out demons, raised the dead, turned water into wine, fed the multitudes. And who taught that there was more to this life than rituals and rule keeping. He taught that people could have a relationship with Him that would put them in right relationship with a God whose name they had been taught was too holy to speak out loud.
Imagine this people, who for centuries had sacrificed bulls and goats in order to please God.
And maybe they are thinking, Will the blood of another lamb really matter? I mean, I keep bringing a lamb every single year. So here it goes again, kill a lamb, shed its blood. Will the blood of another lamb really matter?
Only the blood of one particular lamb will really matter, and that's the one coming in on that donkey that day. The lamb of God, as John the Baptist saw him, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
So that's how people felt. They wanted more. They wanted reality, not religion. They wanted relationship, not ritual.
And so look at verse 12. When the great multitude heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, everything changed. They took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him and cried out hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel.
You know why all this is happening? Because they see Jesus as hope. He's a breath of fresh air in the stagnant air of religion.
Mark 12:37 says “the great throng heard him gladly.” The great throng were the normal, every folks. The were the ones who took palm branches and went out to meet them. palm branches. They go out to meet him. Verse 13. And they cry out, Hosanna. It means “save us now.” Save now, deliver now, do something now, bring salvation now, do for us what our religion has been unable to do all our lives.
And the religious leaders didn’t like it one bit. Go down to verse 19. The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, "you see that you are accomplishing nothing. Look the world has gone after him". They understood what was happening. The people were looking for a relationship, not a ritual. And Jesus are attracted to him, not to their religion.
So Jesus is better than religion. Second point of contrast:
Scripture is more reliable than opinion.
Look at John 12:16
16 His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.
When John refers to “the things that had been written about” Jesus, he wasn’t talking about the gospels, or the New Testament, because they hadn’t been written yet. No, he was talking about the Old Testament scriptures. And when it comes to our understanding of who Jesus is and what Jesus came to do, what Scripture says about Him is always going to be better than what people say about Him.
In the Gospel of John there are many different opinions about who this Jesus was. In John chapter 7, some were saying he was a good man, while others were saying he was leading the people astray (John 7:12) Others even thought he was demon posessed (John 7:20) . Some said He was the prophet— we talked about that a couple of weeks ago, others said he was the Christ, still others said he couldn’t be the Christ because the Christ couldn’t come from galilee, and on and on and on it went.
But on the opposite side of all those opinions, you have the truth. Twice here you'll notice that John is quoting Old Testament scripture. Notice in verse 13, they say "Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel." They are quoting Psalm 118:25-26
25 Save us, we pray, O Lord!
O Lord, we pray, give us success!
26 Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
We bless you from the house of the Lord.
The crowd believed Jesus was the fulfillment of that scripture.
John says in verse 14 that this whole scene is a fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9, which is on the front of your bulletin. Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey fulfilled Scripture.
What scripture declares Jesus to be is more reliable than what anybody else thinks Jesus to be.
God's truth is not subject to man's opinion. Your truth is not better than the truth. People always talk about, well, that's my truth. That's sort of the in thing to say. Well, you have your truth, and I have my truth. Well, you know what? There's the truth. There's the objective reality of what is true, not what you feel to be true or what you identify as being the truth. There is the truth, the truth. John 14:6
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Jesus has three basic credentials that set him apart from every other belief system. Number one, his impact on history.
And number two, fulfilled prophecy.
Most religious systems based their religious systems and their beliefs on the philosophies of their founders. Every major religion has a set of holy writings that followers of that religion claim are authoritative. But one thing is missing from those writings: fulfilled prophecy.
So far as I can tell, only the Bible contains prophecy of things to come. And not just things that haven’t happened yet.
Over 300 different predictions in the Old Testament about what the Messiah would are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. We could spend a year of Sundays talking about them, but I invite you to do the research. For now, let me just be C-3PO for a minute and tell you that the odds of one person fulfilling just eight of these prophecies are a hundred quintillion in one. That’s the number one, followed by 17 zeroes.
That number comes from a mathematician named Peter Stoner, a mathematician and astronomer.
A hundred quintillion silver dollars would conver the state of Texas to a depth of of two feet. Imagine marking one of them, and then having a blindfolded person pick the marked coin on their first try.
Now, one could argue that Jesus manipulated events in order to be the fulfillment of prophecy. Certainly He appears to do just that with the whole entering into Jerusalem on a donkey thing. And you could say that he flipped over the tables in the Temple because He knew the Scripture that said, “Zeal for my father’s house will consume me.” Or maybe even on the cross He cried out “My God, my God why have you forsaken me” because that would fulfill Psalm 22:1
But what about His birth? If He was manipulating events so that He would be seen as fulfilling prophecy, How did He pull that off the prophecy from Micah that said he would be born in Bethlehem?
What about the rest of Psalm 22? Do you think He was calling out instructions to His death? You think He told His executioners, hey, verse 16 says, “They have pierced my hands and feet,” so, don’t forget the nails. Or, maybe He told those in the crowd, “Guys, Psalm 22:7 says “All who see me mock me. Can some of you just wag your heads at me?” Maybe he tells the soldiers, “Hey, Psalm 22:18 says you guys are supposed to cast lots for my clothing. Who brought the dice?”
And even if He did all these things, what about His Resurrection from the dead? Back to John 12:16
16 His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.
He conquered death physically by resurrecting. And when someone is raised from the dead, never to die again, in accordance with prophecies that had been made a thousand years before, that pretty much settles it.
I want to hear what God says is the truth, because scripture is better than opinion. To this day, and I've been doing this a long time, I am amazed at the accuracy and reliability of the biblical text. I truly am. So scripture is more reliable than opinion. Well, here's my opinion about who Jesus is. Don't care. I'll care when your opinion is as accurate as this book is. When your opinion is that good and that accurate, then you got something. Until then, let's get back to the book. Let's get back to the truth.
So Jesus more better than religion. Scripture more reliable than opinion.
Third, following Jesus is better than being a fan of Jesus.
One of the greatest mysteries of Holy Week for me is how a crowd could go from shouting “Hosanna” on Sunday to “Crucify” on Friday.
And I think part of the reason is found in John 12:17-19
17 The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. 18 The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign. 19 So the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.”
When you look closely at our text, you’ll notice that there are actually four separate groups that John identifies in this large crowd that has gathered.
the disciples. They're mentioned in Verse 16: Then it says, his disciples did not understand. So that's the first group, disciples. Who are disciples? 12 dudes. 12 guys who followed him around for 3 1/2 years. They were with him when he spoke things, when he did things. They watched him. They were close to him. Those are his disciples. I'll get back to them in a minute.
Then there were those who had seen Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead. Look at verse 17. “Therefore the people, who were with Him when he called Lazarus out of his tomb and raised him from the dead, bore witness.”
The third group are people who heard about Lazarus resurrection from the second group. The text said the second group bore witness. Who did they bear witness to? Look at verse 18— the crowd heard that Jesus had done this sign, so they wanted to come see Jesus do another sign.
So you've got disciples. You've got people who were there when Lazarus said, I'm back. Third group, people who heard about Jesus doing that to Lazarus.
And the fourth subgroup are the Pharisees. They're mentioned in verse 19. The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, "you see that you are accomplishing nothing. Look, the world has gone after Him.” The Pharisees are realizing, hey, guys, we're losing control of this thing, we're losing control of the people in our religious system. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered a council and said, what shall we do? For this Man works many signs. If we let Him alone like this, everyone will believe in him.
So four groups: the disciples, the eyewitnesses, the crowd, and the Pharisees. people who saw Lazarus rise, people who heard about Lazarus rising, and the Pharisees: Followers, Fans, and observers. And the observers can be broken down into two different groups— those who are waiting for Jesus to do something awesome, and those who are watching for Jesus to do something terrible.
We have those same groups today: those who are watching for the church to mess up, for another leader to have a moral failure, for another prosperity gospel preacher to beg his church to buy him a new jet, and so forth. That way they can say, See, I told you— all this is nonsense. I told you Christianity was a joke.
Then you’ve got the casual observers. Those who are going where the biggest crowd is.
Then you have those who are bearing witness to what they have seen Jesus do. And finally, you have the disciples.
Being a critic is bad. Being an observer is good. Being a fan is better. Following Jesus is best. Good, better, best. The best is to be a disciple. What does that mean?
The word disciple means learner or student. In the Jewish world, a disciple was somebody who sought out a rabbi, a teacher. And when they found a teacher, they wanted to learn from, they followed him around, they watched what he did.
They were all in. Jesus said in Luke 9:23
23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
Disciples are people who have fired themselves. They step down from being the boss of their own lives and make Jesus their CEO, their CFO, their COO.
They quit living for themselves and you live for him. If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. That means walk the same road that I walk, literally.
So are you an observer? Do you just come to church and observe? You observe worship? You watch it? It goes interesting, interesting, very interesting. I come here a lot and I find it very interesting.
Are you an fan? That's better. You're on a different level. You find it pleasing. It's a positive atmosphere, positive experience. Cute girls. I might meet one next week. It's all good.
Are you bearing witness? That’s even better. You’ve seen how Jesus has made an impact on your life, and you want to tell other people about that. That’s great.
But to be a disciple is even greater than great. A follower is somebody who invites Jesus into their life, not once, but every single day.
The disciples had been following Jesus for 3 1/2 years. He will die. He will rise from the dead, and they will follow Him even when he ascends into heaven, to their death. Almost all of them will die a martyr's death. They will follow all the way through.
Listen: it’s good to be interested in Jesus. It’s good to check Him out, to see what all the fuss is about.
So some love to study about Jesus, read about him, everything short of actually following him. It's good to study about Him. It's good to admire Him. It’s better to bear witness about Him.
Good better best, and don’t ever rest, till your good becomes better and your better is best.
if a good thing keeps you from the best thing, it becomes a bad thing. A good thing becomes a bad thing if it keeps you from the best thing. If it keeps you from the best thing, if you are hiding behind I admire him, I'm mildly interested in him, but I want him over there, not ruling my life. That's not the best choice. The best choice is to become a disciple, a follower, to invite him, and to invite him to take control. And that is the message of Palm Sunday that I wanted to bring, good, better, best. Now let's pray together.
?
