Title: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”
Text: Exodus 5:1-4
FCF: Acceptance of our Deliverer requires trust that God is a better God than we are.
When the tomato was first brought to the United States, people didn’t trust it much. They thought it was pretty, but they certainly wouldn’t eat it. It looked like nightshade after all! The Puritans thought it was too sexual at best, and poisonous at worst. But by the 1820s, Europeans knew better. Thomas Jefferson imported seeds for cultivation in Virginia, and gave all sorts of speeches on their behalf. But according to legend, it was Col. Robert Giddon Johnson who, on September 26, 1820, made history by eating an entire bushel on the town green in Salem, New Jersey. The idea was hard for people to accept, but they could trust the man.
In the early 1500s, Nicholas Copernicus worked out a solar system that contravened nearly two thousand years of pagan Greek thought. Aristotle had taught that the sun went around the earth, and people respected Aristotle, so that’s what everyone believed. It took brilliant and brave scientists like Galileo to convince people otherwise. Ultimately, the idea may have been hard for people to accept, but eventually people learned to trust the man.
In 1928, a Westinghouse engineer named Vladmir Zworkin gained the trust of David Sarnoff, then president of the radio powerhouse RCA. Zworkin told Sarnoff that with just two years and $100,000, he could invent television. It actually took him eight years and nearly $50 million, and included using the patents of one Philo T. Farnsworth to actually get it going, but Sarnoff never lost confidence in Zworkin. The idea was backed by a man he could trust.
Ideas and beliefs transform us, but they never do it alone. The power to change how we think rarely comes to us as pure revelation alone. Ideas are brought to us by men and women, and our ability to judge them is usually less an act of intellect than it is of trust. For every story I could tell you of men and women who changed the world with their ideas, there are hundreds more of great ideas that were rejected, because people wouldn’t accept the source.
Nobody in Europe listened to Churchill warning about Hitler until it was too late. Nobody on the Titanic listened to the warnings of icebergs straight ahead. Nobody in Troy listened to Cassandra. They just thought, what a nice present, this giant wooden horse those nasty Greeks gave us.
For the last several weeks, we have been following the story of Moses, and seeing how God chose Moses to accomplish his purpose. The title has been “My Deliverer is Coming.” Today, the Deliverer is here. But make no mistake, Moses may have been the leader, but he wasn’t the deliverer. Moses was a great man to be sure, but the only thing he delivered was a message. Deliverance only comes from God.
And therein lies the problem.
What we know of Moses is far less important than what we learn of God in the process, because in the end, Moses’ greatness lies only in his faithfulness to communicating who God is. For every 10 commandments statue out there, there is someone who wants to call Moses the great “lawgiver.”
The truth, however, is that he is nothing more than a messenger boy. What we do with Moses is irrelevant. But what we do with the God who sent him makes all the difference.
What we accept or reject is not some guy who died four thousand or two thousand years ago, but the God who stands behind him then and now.
In our text this morning, I want to show you this. Let me highlight the first exchange Moses had with Pharaoh, in Exodus 5:1-2
Exodus 5:1-2 (NRSV)
5 Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, so that they may celebrate a festival to me in the wilderness.’ ”
2 But Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD that I should heed him and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and I will not let Israel go.”
Did you catch that? I don’t know your Lord. Why should I do what he says?
Moses has come back to Egypt, and he is going to deliver the message of God’s deliverance. We know Pharaoh’s response, of course, but I want you to pay attention to his reasoning – it’s not as far removed from us as you might think.
You know what happens next. Moses & Aaron do their thing with the snake. And then God sends Egypt 10 plagues. Throughout it all, Pharaoh’s heart is hard. He won’t budge. In spite of clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, Pharaoh still wants to believe that this God of the Hebrews is no match for him.
After each and every miracle that Pharaoh sees, Pharaoh can longer really justify himself by saying, “I don’t know your God.” Frankly, he figured out pretty quick that this God of the Hebrews wasn’t one to be trifled with.
No, there was something deeper – Once this Pharaoh found out who this God was, he made up his mind he didn’t like him. You see, Pharaoh himself thought he was a god. He thought he was pretty powerful, important stuff. Nobody told Pharaoh what to do. Nobody told Pharaoh what was right and what was wrong. Pharaoh told himself whatever he wanted himself to hear.
So it is to this Pharaoh that Moses brings the word of God. Let my people go, he claims. It’s just three days. What’s the harm in that?
The harm, as Pharaoh sees it is that Pharaoh’s authority – Pharaoh’s right to dictate everything, is under attack. I’m not listening to you, Moses, because I’m not listening to that God of yours. You see, he’s saying, only one of us can be God. And I want it to be me.
If this God of the Hebrews could tell him to do anything, he’d have to admit, he wasn’t in charge, and that’s not something he really wanted to hear. Add to this the simple fact that he probably didn’t care much for Moses anyway, and you can understand why Pharaoh wouldn’t budge. He didn’t like the message; he didn’t like the man. What else would you expect?
But a good God, like a good idea, has this habit of not going away. Oh, you can try to ignore Him, or you can actively resist him, but one way or another, He will break through. He will make himself known.
Palm Sunday
Nearly 1500 years later, Jesus himself saw this first hand. At the beginning of the week, he was hailed as a hero. People shouted ‘Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ By the end of the week they were shouting again. ‘Crucify him, Crucify him!’
Given a choice between Jesus and Barabas, they chose a thief over the one who had fed them, healed them, and raised them from the dead.
Why such a dramatic turnaround? I’d like to suggest to you for a minute a possibility. Maybe they finally heard what he said. Oh, everybody knows Jesus. He was that guy they saw on the flannel board even back then! He could do all sorts of good things for them. And he was the Son of God. He was a good guy to know.
But Jesus also had this nasty habit of telling people who God was, what he requires. Jesus could honestly say, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest. My yoke is easy, my burden is light.”
But that same Jesus would also remind us, “Nobody comes to the Father, but by me.” Anyone who would accept that burden, has to come to realize that other things don’t fit. Pride, self-reliance, all sorts of emotional baggage doesn’t sit well with that package. Either he is God or I am. You can’t have both.
And so, the people had no choice. One of them had to go, and they made their choice, just as Pharaoh made his choice, and we make our choice today.
I know usually we leave it to Shirley McLaine and people like that to think of themselves as gods. But if we think that we can be good enough and smart enough to get into heaven on our own, how different are we? We who are saved are not saved through ourselves. Salvation is a free gift of God, lest any man should boast. That gift comes with only one price tag – that we recognize which one of us is God, and which one of us is not.
It’s an idea that is only hard to accept if you won’t trust the man. And that’s something I can’t teach you. I can only tell you this: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Not, blessed is he one who just thinks he’s God, but the one who really is. Blessed is he who really is the Lord – Jesus Christ, our Deliverer.
Would you pray with me?
Long Branch Baptist Church
Halfway, Virginia; est. 1786
Palm Sunday, April 09, 2006
Enter to Worship
Prelude David Witt
Invocation Michael Hollinger
Welcome & Announcements
Morning Prayer
*Responsive Reading [See Right]
*Offertory Hymn #2
“Come Thou Almighty King”
Offertory Mr. Witt
*Doxology
Scripture Exodus 5:1-3
Sermon
“Who Comes?”
Invitation Hymn #52
“Crown Him with Many Crowns”
Benediction
Congregational Response
May the grace of Christ of Savior / And the Father’s boundless love
With the Holy Spirit’s favor / Rest upon us from above. Amen.
* Congregation, please stand.
Depart To Serve
RESPONSIVE READING
The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees; they went out to meet him, shouting,
Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—
Then Jesus cried aloud: “Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me.
I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness.
I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them,
for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.
The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge;
on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge, for I have not spoken on my own,
but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak.
And I know that his commandment is eternal life.
What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me.”
Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me,
and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you for my name’s sake.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord
-John 12:12-13; 44-50; Luke10:16; Matt 5:11-12; John 12:13
