Luke 19:28-44 – Sorry I Missed Your Visit
Today we are looking at a familiar story from The Life of Jesus. It’s what we call the Triumphal Entry. It tells when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday, 5 days before His death on what we call Good Friday, and one week before Jesus rose from the dead, the day we celebrate as Easter. We’ll be looking at Good Friday and Easter Sunday from now till Easter on April 16, but today we’re looking at the Triumphal Entry. It’s found in all 4 Gospels, but we’ll be reading from Luke 19:28-44.
I don’t know if you’ve been following the Winter Olympics, but it has been interesting for Canada. This year we won 24 medals, which is really quite good. Cindy Klassen, who is a committed and outspoken Christian, won 5 medals, more than any other Canadian has won in a single Olympics. The men’s curling won gold, and the women’s hockey won gold. But some people can’t get over the fact that the Canadian men got nowhere’s near any medal. As they used to say, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
Well, the Triumphal Entry was a similar thing for Jesus. The crowds praised Him as He entered the city of Jerusalem. It was one last applaud from the Father, meant to spur Jesus on for the days to come. It was the thrill of victory.
But Jesus also knew what was coming. He knew that He would be betrayed. He knew that His disciples would desert Him. He knew that the crowds shouting His praise on Sunday would be shouting for His death on Friday. Even though Good Friday brought us salvation and was the fulfillment of Jesus’ obedience, still, the Triumphal Entry was also the agony of defeat.
You can see the sadness in Jesus’ words as He approached the city. He was actually in tears, v41 says. And you can get a glimpse into Jesus’ thoughts that day: "If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace…” If you had only known. What sad words. Words filled with regret and remorse. Wishing you could change the past to make a better present, and a more hopeful future.
Then Jesus says, “But now it is hidden from your eyes.” The people just could not see what it would take to have peace. They scrambled around trying to own the religion, deciding who was in and who was out. They scrambled around trying to get the Romans out of their land. They missed the point of what God wanted to do. He wanted to change their hearts more than change their circumstances. God said they could have peace even when war was raging. But they missed the point.
Jesus then described what would happen to the city: “The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another…” These events would happen within a generation. Jerusalem would be ransacked by the Romans. Many would die, many would flee, never to return. It was a sad story for the Jews, forced from their homeland and their city.
Then Jesus gave the reason: “because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you." This is an interesting phrase. The KJV says, “Thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.” The NLT says, “You have rejected the opportunity God offered you.” The Phillips translation says, “You did not know when God Himself was visiting you.” The NEB says, “You did not recognize God’s moment when it came.” And I like The Message paraphrase: “You didn’t recognize and welcome God’s personal visit.”
The phrase itself is hard to translate and interpret. The Greek word is “episkopos”. It’s where the US version of the Anglican Church gets its name: the Episcopal Church. It means to oversee. But more than just watching, it’s about care-taking. Jesus was saying that people did not notice God’s arrival on earth, His intention being to look after them and take care of them. Jesus, who was God in the flesh, and was proof that God had arrived on earth in a personal visit, came to provide salvation, to be a guide, to take care of those who receive Him.
This visit was intended to look after His people. But people rejected it. Even though His statements were meant to give life and health and strength and hope, people felt they were to limiting. They felt these statements, those hard truths that Jesus preached, were either too stifling and binding or too liberal and gracious. Either Jesus was making heaven too hard to reach or too easy to reach.
It’s the same today. The commands that Jesus gives usually come across as too hard and stifling and limiting to many, and too liberal to us church-folk. Like in those days, we reject the messenger when we reject His care for us. When we do not like what He says, we throw it or change it or try to make it easier to swallow. But so much of the Bible is plain and clear. Some commands are very black and white. But it’s not now, nor ever has been, about laying a heavy hand on us. It’s not about God not wanting us to have fun. It’s about doing what is best for us.
You know, the world will scoff at all this. The world will say, “Do whatever you want – you don’t have to listen to anybody else.” But they are wrong. It’s not a matter of being good so that God will love you more. It’s about trusting Him to know what’s best for you.
From God’s lofty commands about having a forgiving spirit to telling the truth, His rules are for our well-being. I use as an example sexual purity. As much as teens, or anyone for that matter, hate being told that the best plan is to wait until marriage, it’s still true. Anything can be forgiven, but too much intimacy with too little a commitment leads to pain and anger and distrust and resentment and comparisons. God’s standards are high – that is, it is God’s best for you to wait until marriage. But they are best. That is salvation. That is not working towards heaven. It’s about trusting God’s plans enough to believe that He wants the best for you.
So what causes a person to miss God’s visit? What leads a person to overlook God’s plans? How does a person miss when God’s voice is speaking to them? Sometimes a picture a person like the Pharisees at the end of Stephen’s sermon to them: “At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him.” What a picture. People covering their ears because they didn’t want to hear what was being said, and attacking the messenger instead.
We often do not recognize when God is speaking. So what causes us to miss God’s presence? What causes us to overlook God’s words of care and concern for us?
Well, the 1st bunch of people Jesus was talking about missed God’s visitation because they had pre-conceived ideas about how things should be. They had already figured out in their heads what the Savior ought to be. They pictured a social revolutionary, perhaps leading an underground movement to get rid of the Roman presence in their land. They pictured a strong and mighty hero, an OT judge. And whatever else he was, the Savior would certainly be on their side.
They were wrong. When the Savior really came, He proposed a heart revolution, a changing of the inside, which would eventually change the world. He was certainly strong, though He didn’t show it very often. And the most heroic thing He ever did was die. But Jesus didn’t really take sides. Maybe you can argue that He did, but more importantly, He asked who was on the Lord’s side. He said, “It’s not about whom God is going to act on behalf of; it’s about who’s going to act on behalf of Him.”
So, since Jesus was nothing like what most people had figured He’d be, they missed Him. Today people miss Him because they figure He should take all their pain away, but He doesn’t. People miss Him because they think His followers should all be just like Him, which we aren’t. People miss Him because they think that a dying Savior is weak, but in reality brokenness leads to being filled with his strength.
So, people miss God’s visitation because they have pre-conceived ideas about how things should be. Well, people also miss God’s visitation because they are proud and stubborn. I mean, who likes to change? Who enjoys being told they are wrong? The crowds Jesus talked to didn’t, and neither do we. We love coming to church to hear about how wrong others are, but when the messages get personal, that’s different. But when we reject the message because it’s unpleasant, we miss out on God’s coming to us and taking care of us and helping us rise above our problems. Listen: agreeing with God about our sins and flaws and problems is the only way to beat them.
I think a lot of people miss God’s visitation, not because of sin, but because they are too busy. Running here and there, hither and yon, willy nilly, leads to a complicated life. I understand we are busy people with busy lives, and a lot of what we do is beyond our abilities to fix. However, if we never squeeze some moments in the run of our day to spend with God somehow – prayer, or the Bible, or just plain listening – we will dry up and get cold and not be able to hear what He wants to say to us. Pastor Rick Warren says that it’s a good idea to divert daily, withdraw weekly, and abandon annually. Sounds good to me, too.
Going along with this, our lives are just plain noisy. I think that sometimes God would have to shout to get through to us. The constant noise we feel ourselves with deafens us to God’s visitation, too. So sometimes, turn off the music. Turn off the computer. Turn off the phone. Turn off the radio. Not all the time, but sometimes. Just enjoy some silence every once in a while. God may just want to speak to you, and He’d rather not shout.
You know, I’ve often wondered how a person could go from shouting commendation to shouting condemnation in a week. From love to hate in 5 days. But I wonder how often I miss the point. How much do I listen? Or how much do I fight against His words to me? Do I walk my spiritual life with an agenda, a list of things I want accomplished? Or do I walk humbly, wanting to do God’s will? Would I have been among the crowd of wishy-washy followers, or would I have stayed true through thick and thin? I don’t know.
But I want to be faithful. I want to be filled with praise, even if I’m all alone in it. I don’t want to miss when God speaks to my heart, words of rebuke or encouragement. I don’t want to miss when God visits my world. You too: keep your eyes open, keep your ears attentive, and listen for His words.
