Dare to Worship Again – “Up From The Grave” Lent 2003
John 12:12-19 April 13, 2003
Intro:
On the way home from church one day, a family was complaining about the service they had just attended: “The music was sure awful today,” said the mom. “Yes, and I thought that young half-bald preacher would NEVER stop talking,” replied the dad. After a brief pause, they heard the voice of their daughter from the back seat: “ya, but you must admit, it was a pretty good show for a dollar…”
Almost to Easter – Where is Your Focus?
That little joke highlights for me much of why we don’t experience the power and presence of God as much as we might like – in both our lives and our worship experience. It is because our focus is often in the wrong place, it is because we get caught up in what we like or dislike or think should happen, instead of simply seeking God. Instead of living daily in step with Him and listening to hear His voice in all the areas of our lives.
Today is Palm Sunday, as we experienced earlier through the leadership of our children. It is the beginning of the most significant week of our faith – the week where we walk once again through Jesus’ death and resurrection. This is not a normal week! It is an important week!! The most important week of our faith. Where is your focus this week?
The whole point of my sermon today is to invite you to worship God fully, today and over the next seven days – to allow Him to refocus you and your family on the thing which is of primary importance: your relationship with God. To encourage you to make this week a time of celebration of the death and resurrection of our Lord.
I want to challenge you to take the first part of this next week, today through Wednesday, to concentrate time personally with Jesus – however you like to do that, just you and God spending time together. If you’d like a bit of guidance, start in John 12 (which we are going to look at in a moment) and read a bit each day to the end of John. And then to take the second half of the week, Thursday through next Sunday, to participate in corporate worship experiences: there is one in your bulletin every day beginning with next Thursday. That might sound like a lot, but it isn’t really much compared to what Christ has done for us – and I know that God will speak to you and allow you to experience Him.
Not Just About The Future:
But I don’t only want to talk about the coming week, but also about right now. Let’s invite God to speak to us through His Word this morning. pray
John 12:12-19
It is a scene of exuberance, a scene of worship, a true New Testament picture of a festival in all of its facets. John records it for us: (read)
The annual festival of Passover was underway and as a result, pilgrims had come to Jerusalem from all over the country. This was the biggest festival of the year, more significant than the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup Finals, and so Jerusalem was packed. But there was something a little different going on this year – some news about the prophet named Jesus. John begins the story with the crowd in Jerusalem, who (vs 12) “had come for the Feast [and] heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem.” When they hear that Jesus is coming, they get excited and run out to meet Him. We discover the reason for their excitement in the previous chapter: Jn 11:55-57 – “When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, many went up from the country to Jerusalem for their ceremonial cleansing before the Passover. They kept looking for Jesus, and as they stood in the temple area they asked one another, "What do you think? Isn’t he coming to the Feast at all?" But the chief priests and Pharisees had given orders that if anyone found out where Jesus was, he should report it so that they might arrest him.” This brings me to point #1:
1. They were expecting Jesus
Do you hear the sense of expectation in the people? They couldn’t wait to meet Jesus, His possible arrival was what everyone was talking about. Why such a big deal?? Because He made a difference. His presence changed things – people were healed, people were encouraged, people were taught and challenged, people had hope. Because Jesus was there.
If we bring that into today, we find the exact same thing. When we meet Jesus, we are healed, we are encouraged, we are taught and challenged, we have hope. Do you expect that? As you sit down to pray, do you expect to meet Jesus? As you come to church each week, do you expect to meet Jesus? He expects to meet with us.
When they heard He was coming, when they knew their expectations were about to be met, John tells us they grabbed palm branches and ran out to meet Him, shouting as they did. That brings me to my second point:
2. Meeting Jesus is exciting!
If you have met Jesus personally, you know what I’m talking about here. It is exciting – life-changing – thrilling. I know it is the best thing that has happened to me.
This “great crowd” that comes out of Jerusalem is excited – and they demonstrate that excitement in their shouts and in with the Palm branches. Palm branches were used in celebration of victory – they were a way of welcoming victorious kings back to Jerusalem – and so by grabbing these and waiving them in front of Jesus they are proclaiming Him as King. And that brings me to point #3:
3. Meeting Jesus leads us to worship Him as King:
This entire scene is one of worship. Yes, it is outside of the temple. Yes it is spontaneous, loud, jubilant, somewhat chaotic. And no, they aren’t worshipping Jesus as we understand Him to be the Son of God, and they aren’t worshipping Him in the same way they worship God the Father. But it is still a deep expression of worship. The shouts of the people demonstrate that, the palm branches demonstrate that, laying the cloaks down in front of Jesus (not mentioned by John, but in all the other accounts) demonstrate that. The people are worshipping Jesus. They are welcoming their King.
I think it is difficult for us to truly understand how significant this worship was. It is hard for us to understand the longing of the Jewish people for their Messiah to come, and to set them free from all the oppression they had experienced and continued to experience. This crowd likely included people from the areas around Galilee, where Jesus had spent much of His time ministering to people. They had seen Him, heard Him, tried to make Him King once before without success. But now the time seems right… now, maybe…
John ties this into the raising of Lazarus from the dead. He deliberately links that event to this triumphal entry event, demonstrating how the word had gotten around that Jesus had done this miracle, and how that heightened the expectation and excitement about Jesus attending the Passover festival. The power He had demonstrated was the spark that brought many out of the city of Jerusalem to meet Jesus, and led them to the conclusion that He was the Messiah. That is clear in vs. 18.
We get a glimpse of how threatening this was in the reaction of the Pharisees in vs. 19: “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!” This worship was a big deal. It threatened the established order. It shook things up.
Looking back now, in light of the cross and the empty tomb, we see that the crowd was mistaken. The political, liberating King they sought was not to be found in Jesus. John brings this out for us – notice that the very last phrase of vs. 13, where the crowd proclaims Jesus as King, is followed immediately by the account of the donkey – a mighty warrior/liberator king would ride in on a strong horse, not a meek, common donkey. John tells us that even the disciples didn’t figure that part out until after the resurrection, so we’ll have to forgive the crowds if they missed the point. But I hope we don’t miss it, and here it is:
4. We worship Jesus, gentle King of Peace:
John quotes part of Zech 9:9 to explain the donkey. The whole passage says,
Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion!
Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and having salvation,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
I will take away the chariots from Ephraim
and the war-horses from Jerusalem,
and the battle bow will be broken.
He will proclaim peace to the nations.
His rule will extend from sea to sea
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
The image is of the King of peace, a righteous King bringing salvation in an incredibly gentle manner. And that is who we worship. And aren’t you glad? We don’t deserve the gentleness of God – we don’t deserve His grace and His mercy and His incredible deep love. We deserve to have the mighty, Holy Warrior come with His sword raised high and with terrifying fire in His eyes. But that isn’t how Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, and it isn’t how He arrives in our lives. He comes gently, He comes kindly. Yes, we certainly deal with important, critical issues when we meet Jesus and when we truly worship Him, but I’m talking about how He deals with those issues with us. He does so gently. Especially when they hurt!
And the result is peace. That is the immediate image that follows in Zech 9 – an image of peace for all the nations. We know that Jesus had to walk through death in order to bring that peace, and that is what we are going to walk through this Easter week. But through it all, we know the result on the other side. We know our gentle King of peace.
We Need To Worship:
We need to worship – not because it is “good for us” like All-Bran or having wisdom teeth pulled. We need to worship because that is most often where we meet our King, where we experience Him enter into our life alongside us and gently walk with us each day. We need to worship because in doing so we experience our eyes lifted off of ourselves and on to God, we see what is important and what is not so important. We need to worship because in doing so we are set free from the lie we tell ourselves that we need to be in control of everything, which only results in stress and disappointment and helplessness and despair when we discover we are not in control. We need to worship so that this gentle King can ride up on a donkey and come alongside us and change us by His presence.
And that is worship. It is meeting with Jesus. Singing religious songs isn’t worship, listening to a sermon isn’t worship, even just reading Scripture with your mind only is not worship. Worship is encounter. It is coming into the presence of God and experiencing Him. All those things I just mentioned are vehicles to worship – they facilitate encounter – which is the main point. Meeting God, and experiencing Him together.
Will you expect to meet Jesus? When you do, will you express the excitement and share it with others? There is a really subtle truth in this passage that I want to point out: vs. 12, the great crowd “heard” Jesus was coming. vs 17, the crowd that had come from Bethany that had witnessed the miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead “continued to spread the word.” vs. 18, “many people, because they had heard…” Do you see what was happening? People were talking, they were sharing the incredible things they had seen and experienced Jesus do, with everyone they could find. It created expectancy, it generated enthusiasm, I’m sure it created curiosity. Our world needs to hear this! We need to share it!! And we need to do so with the desire first to just create interest and curiosity, and then point people to Jesus to find that out for themselves. That to me is a beautiful model of evangelism. But I digress…
Will you know Him as your gentle King? Will you invite Him now, as we worship, to come fully into your life. I want to challenge you to spend the last part of this service in worship, seeking to know the gentle King. And to spend this entire week in worship as well, as we walk through the pain of the cross through to the incredible celebration next Sunday of life and victory.
