Jesus‘ journey to jerusalem is our journey

Message by Cindy Bridges, Congregational Life PastorSunday Sermon for April 1, 2012Scripture Passage Luke 19:28-40Vancouver Chinese Baptist Church Vancouver, Canada

image source: http://stlukesls.files.wordpress.com

Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King 

28 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 30 “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’”  

32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”  

34 They replied, “The Lord needs it.”  

35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it.36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.  

37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:  

38 “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”   

“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”  

39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”    

40 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

Jesus’ Journey to Jerusalem in our Journey

Luke 19:28-40

Palm Sunday: Today and To Come

Luke describes the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem at the beginning of that last week of his earthly life:  

(Luke 19:37, 38): When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

As they watch Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, there is no doubt what was in the disciples' minds. They knew this was the fulfillment of Zechariah's prophecy given centuries earlier (Zechariah 9:9, 10). 

Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!  See, your king comes to you,     righteous and having salvation,  lowly and riding on a donkey,  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.

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Let’s take in this scene. As mentioned in Zechariah, the people were expecting the coming of long-awaited Messiah, the king of Israel, and not just of Israel but of all the earth. Jerusalem would be his capital city. From here he would rule the world in peace and righteousness. What a day this was! They thought the time had come.  How their hearts must have pounded in their chests! The tension of the moment must have been tremendous!

The Pharisees on the other hand wanted this kind of welcome silenced. Jesus was a threat to their authority, they envied his popularity (Mark 15:10) and, they feared a Roman backlash to all this seditious talk of another king (John 11:48). This is why they say to Jesus, "'Teacher, rebuke your disciples.' But he answered, 'I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out!"' (Luke 19:39, 40).

Jesus will not rebuke His disciples for this.  The hour has come. He will not silence the truth any longer. To be sure the disciples' understanding of Jesus' kingship at this point is flawed, as we will explain further. But the coming events will correct that soon enough. In essence they are correct. Jesus is the king of Israel, and the kingdom he is inaugurating will bring peace to all the nations and spread from sea to sea. The book of Revelation pictures the final fulfillment of Palm Sunday in the age to come like this:

(Revelation 7:9, 10) After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:  “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” 

The entry into Jerusalem with waving palms (John 12:13) was a short-lived preview of the eternal Palm Sunday to come.

John Piper describes it beautifully like this:

I like to think of all our worship in this age as rehearsal for the age to come. One day we, who by God's grace have been faithful to the Lord, are going to stand with innumerable millions of believers from Bangladesh, Poland, Egypt, Australia, Iceland, Cameroon, Ecuador, Burma, Borneo, Japan, and thousands of tribes and peoples and languages purified by Christ, with palms of praise in our hand. And when we raise them in salute to Christ, he will see an almost endless field of green, shimmering with life and pulsating with praise. And then like the sound of a thousand Russian choruses, we will sing our song of salvation, while the mighty Christ, with heartfelt love, looks out over those whom he bought with his own blood.

If Jesus had taken his throne on that first day of palms, none of us would ever be robed in white or waving palms of praise in the age to come. There had to be the cross, and that is what the disciples had not yet understood. Back in Luke 9, as Jesus prepared to set out for Jerusalem from Galilee, he tried to explain this to his disciples. In verse 22 he said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

And in verses 44-45 he told them, “Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you: The Son of Man is going to be delivered over to human hands.” "But they did not understand what this meant. It was hidden from them, so that they did not grasp it, and they were afraid to ask him about it."

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Their understanding of Jesus' last journey to Jerusalem was flawed. They saw him as a king moving in to take control. And he was. But they could not grasp that the victory Jesus would win in Jerusalem over sin and Satan and death and all the enemies of righteousness and joy—that this victory would be won through his own horrible suffering and death; and that the kingdom which they thought would be established immediately (Luke 19:11) would, in fact, be thousands of years in coming. And their misunderstanding of Jesus' journey to Jerusalem results in a misunderstanding of the meaning of discipleship. This is why this is important for us to see, unless we make the same mistake.

Jesus' Resolution to Die

In Luke 9:51–56 we learn how not to understand Palm Sunday. “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” To resolutely set out for Jerusalem meant something very different for Jesus than it did for the disciples. The disciples envisioned a very different idea of greatness.

Jesus had another vision in mind.  Jerusalem meant one thing for Jesus: certain death. Nor was he under any illusions of a quick and heroic death. Luke 13:31-33 says, “Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, ‘We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be delivered over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him and spit on him; they will flog him and kill him.’” When Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem, he set out to die.

When you think of Jesus' resolution to die, remember that he had a nature like ours. He shrunk back from pain like we do. He would have enjoyed relationships and a long life and esteem in the community. He had a mother and brothers and sisters. He had special places in the mountains. To turn his back on all this and set his face towards vicious whipping and beating and spitting and mocking and crucifixion was not easy. It was hard. I don't know of any other way for us to begin to know how much he loved us. "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends." (John 15:13).

Jesus' Journey Is Our Journey

Jesus sets out for Jerusalem, and it says in Luke 9:52-53 that "he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem." Jesus is already being rejected, and then the focus shifts to the disciples' response, specifically the response of James and John.

James and John ask Jesus in verse 54, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them.” I think I probably would have said what John did here: "Jesus, we are on the way to victory. Nothing can stop us now. Let the fire fall! Let the judgment begin! O, how Jerusalem will tremble when they see us coming!" But Jesus turns, the text says, and rebuked them (verse 55). And they simply went to another town.

Now what does this mean? It means, first of all, that a mistaken view of Jesus' journey to Jerusalem can lead to a mistaken view of what it means to follow Jesus. If Jesus had come to execute judgment and take up an earthly rule, then it would make sense for James and John to begin the judgment when the final siege of the

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Holy City starts. But if Jesus had come not to judge but to save, then a radically different form of discipleship is in order. Here is a question put to every believer by this text: does following Jesus mean deploying God's missiles against the enemy in righteous indignation? Or does it mean following him on the Calvary road which leads to suffering and death? The answer of the whole New Testament is this: the surprise about Jesus the Messiah is that he came to live a life of sacrificial, dying service before he comes a second time to reign in glory. And the surprise about discipleship is that it demands a life of sacrificial, dying service, before we can reign with Christ in glory.

What James and John had to learn—what we all must learn—is that Jesus' journey to Jerusalem is our journey, and if he set his face to go there and die, we must set our face to die with him. One might be tempted to reason in just the opposite way: that since Jesus suffered so much and died in our place; therefore, we are free to go straight to the head of the class, as it were, and skip all the exams. He suffered so we could have comfort. He died so we could live. He bore abuse so we could be esteemed. He gave up the treasures of heaven so we could lay up treasures on earth. He brought the kingdom and paid for our entrance and now we live in it with all its earthly privileges.

But all this is not biblical reasoning. It goes against the plain teaching in this very context. Luke 9:23 & 24 reads: “Then he said to them all: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.’” When Jesus set his face to walk the Calvary road, he was not merely taking our place; he was setting our pattern. He is substitute and pacesetter. If we seek to secure our life through returning evil for evil or surrounding ourselves with luxury in the face of human need, we will lose our life. We can save our life only if we follow Christ on the Calvary road.

(By David Platt from The Radical Question, pp.10-12)

Do we really believe that Jesus is worthy of sacrifice in our life?  Our immediate thought would be, Yes. Sure. Of course.

But listen to how we describe what it means to follow him.

❖ Ask Jesus to come into your heart.

❖ Invite Jesus to come into your life.

❖ Pray this prayer, sign this card, or walk down this aisle and accept Jesus as your personal Savior.

You will not find one of these casual, contemporary phrases in Scripture. Instead, in Jesus’ mouth you will find words that are foreign to us today.  You will find phrases that show us he is worthy of far more than a polite invitation.  He is worthy of supreme devotion.  Let me give you a few examples.

At the end of Luke 9, we find the stories of three men who approach Jesus, eager to follow him.  Surprisingly, in each case Jesus seems to try to talk them out of doing so!

The first guy says, “I will follow you wherever you go.”  Jesus responds, “Foxes have holes and the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” In other words, Jesus tells this man that he can expect homelessness on the journey ahead. Even when the basic need of shelter is not guaranteed, Jesus is worthy of all our trust.

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The second man tells Jesus that his father has just died.  The man wants to go back, bury his father, and then follow Jesus.

Jesus replies, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:60)

What could he mean by that? 

I remember distinctly the moment I learned that my own dad had died of a heart attack. In the days that followed, my heart was filled with an immense heaviness and a deep desire to honor my dad at his funeral.  I cannot imagine hearing at that point these words from Jesus:  “Don’t even go to your dad’s funeral. There are more important things to do.” Yet that’s the essence of what Jesus tells the second man who comes up to him.  Jesus is worthy of total allegiance and immediate obedience. 

A third man approaches Jesus and tells him that he wants to follow him, but before he does, he needs to say good-bye to his family.

Makes sense.  But Jesus tells the man, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62) Plainly put, a relationship with Jesus requires absolute, undivided, exclusive affection.

❖ Trust me, even if it means becoming homeless.

❖ Follow me, even if it means letting someone else bury your dad.

❖ Love me, even if it means not saying good-bye to your family.

Jesus is worthy of radical devotion. He expects disciples to be like him, and he wants them to know it is costly; the Calvary road is not the road of material prosperity.

The International Mission Board of the SBC estimates that there are 3,501 Unreached People Groups who are not engaged and are still waiting to hear the Gospel, and millions of children starving through no fault of their own, and many people in our own country hard-put because of joblessness and emptiness, it is unconscionable that disciples of Jesus Christ can go right on indulging ourselves in the dream that says if we believe in ourselves, trust in ourselves, promote ourselves, we can work to gain it all:  a comfortable life, a good career, a decent family and an easy retirement.  Sure we tack church attendance onto the end of everything but at the core our lives are consumed with the dream of success, safety, security and satisfaction in all this world has to offer.

I know some of you have an alternative dream—a dream of breaking loose from the shackles of this self-serving, consumer culture in which we live—a dream of doing something radical. Something radically loving with your house, something radically loving with your savings and your income, something radically loving with your free time, something radically loving with your job. Some of you are discovering such wonderful freedom from the love of things. And hand in hand with that comes an amazing freedom from vengeance. The more secure you are in God rather than things, the less inclined you are to return evil for evil and the more open you are to nitty-gritty involvement with those who are least lovely and most needy. The more this happens, the more striking and fruitful will be the witness of this faith community to Jesus.

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I’ve had the privilege of seeing this radical shift in the life of Christy Lew.  I’d like to invite her to come forward now to share about how God has re-oriented her life recently through her involvement of living in a Christian Community in the Downtown Eastside here in Vancouver. 

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