Next for today is Luke 19, 28 through 44. Read it in your bulletin, you may want to read along. After he had said these things, he was going on ahead. Going up to Jerusalem. When he approached Bethlehem and Bethany near the Mount that is called all of that, he sent two of his disciples, saying, go into the village ahead of you. There, as you enter, you will find a cult tied on which no one yet has ever sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, why are you untying it, you shall say, the Lord has need of it. So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the cult, its owner said to them, why are you untying the cult? They said, the Lord has need of it. They brought it to Jesus and they threw their coats on the cult and put Jesus on it. As he was going, they were spreading their coats on the road. As soon as he was approaching near the descent of the Mount of Oles, the whole crowd of the disciples began to praise God jointly with the Lord voice for all the miracles which they had seen, shouting, blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, teacher, review your disciples. But Jesus answered, I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out. When he approached Jerusalem, he saw the city and wept over it saying, if you had known in this day even you the things which make for peace. But now they have been hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you and surround you and him you in on every side. And they will level you to the ground and your children within you. And they will not leave you, leave in you one stone upon another because you did not recognize the time of your visitation. The grass withers and the thawar fade, but the Lord others and forever. So by the now we come to you, come to you having this success that your words stand forever. And we are desperate to have you and your servants, this man and his wrath, this division, and establish this worship in our hearts. And Father, we know that unless you are the one to open our eyes, they will not do anything. And Father, we pray that you would unfold your words this morning and that you would give life as you wish. That your word would be the light and the light for a feast that we would know the way to walk. And we pray that most of all of you would shine light so that whether as believer or unbelievable, we might see Jesus Christ. And if he really is, not as our culture has repassaged him, not as we have inherited him from his fear of the years. He kept in pain in the corner of our imagination, but as he really is. And so, Father, we pray especially this morning for anyone who has not stayed here this morning, that this would be the day of great mercy today. And that Jesus Christ would become precious to him, because you will have opened your eyes and given them a higher flesh, and given the love and energy of substitute, and as they were, you are praying to Jesus Christ. Is that something I am doing? Look, I know what? It is something I am doing. And I just so apologize. I have no idea that that was down there. I apologize. Well, this has been a week of very arresting images, a lot of striking pictures and sounds. And I have just been struck all week by one image above all else. And in the province of God, we would be coming to Palm Sunday, which is the story of our Lord's triumphant entry. Well, triumphant, I am going to put little quotes on that. Triumphant to him. But it was a hollow triumphant to everyone else in just a few days. But our Lord's entry into a city to liberate the city. Now, a city didn't know it needed to be liberated. The world, for the most part, doesn't know that it needs to be liberated. But our king has come to liberate people and to set them free. And inside that city, I don't know if you have listened. I don't know if you have been. I don't know. Well, initially I was amused at this guy, and then I just began to be so increasingly sad and every time I would listen to him. Saeed al-Sahaf. That was the Iraqi information minister. Now, it's not my intent at all to politicize this sermon. In fact, my goal is that you will not know what I think about the war from any of my comments here. You don't need to know what I think about the war. It's happening. Okay? So if you came in here, please don't misunderstand me. But that information minister has just astounded me. Because it was one thing when the American troops were maybe down by Nasiria, or down by Umkasser at the beginning of the war. It's one thing to say then to the media and therefore to the Iraqi public over the airways that the American troops are nowhere near Baghdad. It's quite another thing to keep saying that when there are tanks writing right behind you. Now, initially, I thought that was comical. But then I realized that it just enslaved people and that propaganda is designed to obscure truth. It's designed to cloud what is really true and to present an alternative view of reality that you hope as the one issuing the propaganda will keep the people who hear it under control. Right? And the propaganda of the Iraqi information minister is a propaganda that enslaves people because it wasn't until he was gone. It wasn't until the airwaves were shut down and reclaimed by someone else that the people really knew that the tyrant was gone. See, the only hope is that someone else would come in and grab the airways and begin to broadcast truth. An invasion was required. Now, I find that a very helpful analogy for spiritual blindness, which people everywhere and there are probably many people in this room. Certainly, everybody who is in this room has experienced spiritual blindness and been under the thrall and the boot heel of it. Some of us in the mercy of God have been rescued from it and have had our sight restored to us which sin had plundered from us. But there are people here, many I'm sure, who are still suffering from spiritual blindness. Now, before conversion, the way this relates to Palm Sunday, by the way, is this Palm Sunday is a day when the glory of Jesus Christ is undisplayed and there are two things in this passage that I want us to look at. And then I want us to savor about Jesus Christ as we enter Holy Week, as mercy and his mastery of the situation. But first, before those things will be really electric for some of us, we need to remember where we were, which is the four conversion every human being lives on a diet. Some of it is force-fed and some of it is gladly embraced of anti-God propaganda. There's no one in this room who's born again, who's a Christian, who, when I ask them the following question, we'll say yes. Did you know how good he was before you were converted? Did you know he was of the light? No. Whatever you knew about him, he's stuffed and he kept down. Everybody is blinded to the true worth of God and noticed this, that just as Iraq as a society could run very efficiently. This is what's so striking. It could run very efficiently. There could be no looters. There would be order. There could be structure. There could be predictability. All of that could happen when at the heart of the society there is a lie. If that can happen at the level of a society, it can happen in an individual life. And so, if you're an unbeliever, I'm just trying to get your attention here long enough so that you will, you will say, maybe I need to think about this a little bit more. That God would use this message this morning, maybe what we've sung or prayed already, that he would use what you've already been witness to, to raise a question in your mind about whether or not you have been in the midst of a society or a worldview that has been more like the Iraqi information minister than you realize. Now, when Paul describes a lost person or what's true about somebody who is unbelieving, he does it in a very striking way in 2nd Corinthians. And I've given you the verses there. And I want you to think about this here, because he says, even if our gospel is veiled, that means even if people are not embracing the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is veiled to those who are perishing. So if you're an unbeliever, this is Paul's diagnosis of your condition. So why is the gospel veiled from you? Why are you not responding to Jesus Christ? Here's the answer. In whose case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving. That they might not see the light of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. You see what is true of every unbeliever according to Apostle Paul is that you are being blinded. I was blinded. I was blinded to the glory of Jesus Christ. And there is no such thing as a blind person who restores their own sight. So stick with the metaphor here. No blind person suddenly says, now I see, you have to have intervention outside of yourself. Just as the Iraqis had to have somebody from the outside come in to overthrow the tyrant, so you as an unbeliever, I, as a former unbeliever, needed to have some power come in and brought to bear on me that would lift my blindness. And our only hope is just exactly that. And Paul says it just two verses later in verse 6 of 2 Corinthians 4, he says, for God, now this is a picture of what it means to be converted. He says, for God, who said light shall shine out of darkness. He's thinking of Genesis 1 there, let there be light. Because the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God and the face of Christ. So you see what those three verses say is that God's mercy must act for you to see God's mercy. Now he will not do that in a way that is apart from his word ordinarily. He will show you Jesus Christ. One of the ways that he will lift people's blindness is to show them Jesus Christ. And so that's why I began this way this morning because Holy Week, and again, Palm Sunday today, good Friday, next Friday and Easter Sunday. Holy Week is about the glory of Jesus Christ. But I know just as is true of Jerusalem, did you notice what the Lord says? Is he's weeping over Jerusalem in verse 42. He says, if you had known in this day the things which make for peace. Why don't they know them? But now they have been hidden from their eyes. Did you notice that? Unless God shines the light in your hearts this morning, they'll remain hidden. And so I expect him to work as we look at Jesus Christ. The way I know that propaganda is false is to listen to the truth and then the counterfeit is exposed most dramatically. And so that's my goal. It's my prayer before the Lord this morning that as we look at the mastery of Jesus Christ and His great mercy that you will be won over by this mighty king. So let's look first at His mastery because His entrance into Jerusalem is really stunning for its authority. He's authoritative over every single step of it. It really is amazing. How many ways this gets emphasized in this passage? Well, actually before we look at that, let me just say this. The reason that's so important is so that you and I know that Jesus Christ did not enter Jerusalem as a reluctant victim who was surprised by what unfolded on Friday. He entered Jerusalem with his eyes wide open, knowing what he had to accomplish. And that's good news for you who are outside of Christ because it means that salvation is not some accident or freak in the universe. It is the settled purpose of God. That's good news. So the more authority we see Him exercising in His entrance here, the greater confidence we can have and the stability of God's purpose to save. So that's how this is relevant. Let's look at the details because it's true that He has authority over the little details and over the big picture. First, the whole exchange with His disciples about the cult. Do you notice how much time that took in this passage? Five verses are given to that. Jesus giving the instructions very in a very detailed way and verses 30 through 34. Well, He gives the instructions in a very detailed way and then do you notice how Luke records that everything unfolded exactly the way He said it would, down to the same questions that He predicted. Now, you might say, well, why is that? Why is Luke spending so much time on that? The answer is obvious. It's not as one of the commentators I read suggested. It's to demonstrate that Jesus has followers besides the disciples. I find that weak. The issue on Palm Sunday is, who's in charge here? Who's in charge? And is He in charge of the little details? If He's in charge of the little details, He's in charge of the big details. Jesus 32 says they found the cult just as He had told them. Jesus is in charge. And not only is that evident in the verses that explain what happened with the cult, but it also is true that Jesus' entrance fulfills His own predictions, longstanding predictions about His ministry and where His focus was. You who are familiar with the Gospels know that Jerusalem was always Jesus' intended destination. That is so important. It's so important to know that He was not swept there by the momentum of events, but that He, like it says in verse 51 of chapter 9 in Luke's Gospel, He set His face toward Jerusalem long before He would end up there. That was always His goal. He was no surprised victim. And then even most recently in chapter 18, if you look over verses 31 through 34, look at how Jesus, again, He repeats this over and over and over again for the disciples, and like the disciples, we don't get it either at a very deep level, but He was telling them long before He got to Jerusalem what was going to happen there. Look at verse 31 in chapter 18. He says, and He took the 12 aside and said to them, the whole. We are going up to Jerusalem and all things which are written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished, for He will be delivered to the Gentiles. And that's fulfilled, of course, when He's handed over to Pontius Pilate. And will be mocked and mistreated and spit upon. And after they have scourged Him, they will kill Him, and the third day He will rise again. You see, Jesus is trying to prepare His disciples for what is going to happen in Jerusalem. He said His face towards Jerusalem, chapter 9, verse 18, He's very specific about what's going to happen, and you notice that everything that He lists there is exactly what happens to Him. He is in charge. He is not surprised. He is the master in Jerusalem. He is the master on Calvary. All that's so important. That's so important to know. Not only that, but His entrance for Phil's messianic prophecy. Well, the people shout Psalm 118 or a portion of Psalm 118, which was the text we used for our call to worship this morning. But Jesus in selecting the cult is very deliberately doing something that He knows will visibly cause a reaction in the people. You see, because Jesus could, He'd already walked all the way to Jerusalem. He's just barely on the outskirts of Jerusalem. He's hardly got any distance to walk. He's there. So why does He need a cult? Is He tired? No, He's not tired. What He's deliberately doing is He is claiming for Himself the right to fulfill the prophecy in Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9, which reads, this way, rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you. He is just an endowed with salvation, humble and mounted on a donkey, even on a cult, the full of a donkey. Now, Jesus knows that when the people see Him seated on a donkey cult coming into the city, that He knows what's going to happen. He is deliberately throwing gas on the open flame of their messianic expectations. The people are just ready to pop with the expectation that the kingdom is coming immediately. And you know that from just earlier in the same chapter, verse 11 in chapter 19, where Jesus tells the parable about the menas, and Luke says that He told the parable because He was near Jerusalem, and they, meaning the people, suppose that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately. So Jesus knows that the people are just primed to look for the Messiah, and He deliberately picks this cult so that they will unmistakably see that He is claiming to be the fulfillment of Zechariah 9.9. He holds the timing of His messianic revelation totally under control. You know, you remember from the gospels how often Jesus would heal somebody in the early part of the gospel, and would say, now don't tell anyone that I did that. There are tons of stories like that. Now, the wrong conclusion about that would be to say that Jesus was afraid of getting caught. Absolutely not. What He was doing is waiting until His ministry ripened. The earlier He let go of restraints on the disclosure of His messianic identity, the earlier the people, the earlier the people would have been subject to misunderstanding, and His whole ministry would have been obscured. And so now He lets go of all the restraints and He now shows Himself to be the Messiah, because He is the Messiah. But notice as well, He's in authority here because He enters even in the face of opposition. Now the most obvious opposition is from the Pharisees who say, hey, teacher, review your disciples, right? Don't let them claim that you're the king. That's going to get you in trouble. That's pretty close to blasphemy. Don't let them do that. We see a great irony in this passage is that the Pharisees and the people who claim for Jesus who sing over Jesus the text of Psalm 18, those people I actually are united, the people who sound like they're praising Jesus, and the people who are overtly rebuking His disciples, those people there's a common thread that unites them. Which is that neither group wants a suffering Messiah. Neither group wants a king who will first have to die, to be a sinner. And as you stand here on Palm Sunday, and maybe some of you will be back with us during the week, and I hope you will, maybe you'll be worshiping somewhere else, going to a good Friday service Easter Sunday. I hope that you will hear me say this morning, and I hope that you will embrace the truth that what you do with the cross is the litmus test of whether or not you understand Jesus Christ. Unless you embrace the cross as an absolute necessity in the ministry of Jesus Christ, you do not know Jesus Christ. Because what the Pharisees have in common with the people who are praising Jesus in Psalm 18, is that neither one of them have really subjected their understandings of who Jesus is and what He must do to what the Bible portrays as His duty. See, it's possible to praise Jesus with words that sound right, but at your heart to reject the core of what He's really about. Now, how do I know that? Because the same people who on Sunday were praising Him with the text of Psalm 18 five days later were either deserting Him, or in the midst of the crowd yelling, crucify Him. See, as soon as the tide turns, and it looks like Jesus is actually not going to be enthroned in the triumphant way that the people want for Him, they flee. And that's true even of the disciples. And so you and I need to take it very, very, very seriously. What we do with the cross, it is absolutely the litmus test. And I also know this, because Paul tells us this, that the cross will always be a stumbling block. It will always be a stumbling block. To those who are outside of Christ, it will always seem as foolishness. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1, 8, for the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. How could you have such radically different views of the same event? You know what I'm saying? It's not like Paul is saying the world is divided into two groups of people. Those who think the cross is wonderful, and those who think it's kind of wonderful. The world has two groups of people. Those who look at the cross and say, in the death of Jesus on it as a substitute for sinners in apparent weakness, they say, that's foolishness. How could a king die like that? There's that group, and then the other group is, it's the power of God, it's the only hope. It's the only hope. What is it about the cross? Well, I think the answer is real obvious. If you want a king, like the people wanted a king, they wanted the Jewish Messiah to come in and kick the scumbags out. Right? Kick the Romans out. Kick the dogs out. Give us back our land. Make the foreigners go away. That's real obvious. That's what they wanted. Let's see what the cross says. The cross says that the greatest enemy you have is not outside, but it's inside. You're the main problem in America. Not your wife or your husband. I'm the main problem in this church, not you. I'm the main problem in my children's lives. I am in the problem because I am locked up in loving the anti-God sin and rich propaganda. And there's still enemy territory in me. And you know what? The people who really just want God to come into their lives, solve their problems and leave them be? That's pretty offensive. Because what the cross says is that it was absolutely necessary that Christ die as a substitute for sinners because sinners are alienated from God and not on their own right entitled to any favor from God. That's pretty offensive, but it's true. So that's why people don't want to suffer in the South. Now, the three good reasons why this is good news. And the first is I've already alluded to it. The stability of God's promise and purpose to save. And I know I've got a hurry up because the castle rolls are slowly drying out. Oh, now I really got a hurry up now that I said that's such a concrete image. No, but here's why this is so awesome. This is so awesome that Jesus would enter Jerusalem with authority knowing full well what was going to happen to him in the city because what it does is it gives us confirmation again of the stability of God's promise and purpose to save. That is really important for you and for me. And if you're an unbeliever here and you're wondering about Jesus Christ, you're going, who is he? Can I trust him? You can trust him. You know why? Because this has been God's purpose from before. Now can you say this? This is the language of Ephesians 1,4. From before the foundation of the world. God has been planning for Palm Sunday and Good Friday and Easter Sunday from before the foundation of the world. And there is not a thing that will get in Jesus Christ's way as he moves toward the cross and from the cross to the grave and from the grave to the sky. Not a single obstacle will stop him from achieving God's purpose. First Timothy 1,15. Why did Jesus Christ come into the world? It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That's why he came. The cross was not some improvised detour that happened when the uprising that everyone expected to happen didn't materialize. The cross was always the goal. And so that means that you and me and any who are here wondering if they can reach out to Christ this morning. There are roots for this living promise of Jesus Christ to save you right now, roots that go into eternity. And so no matter what happens in your life, no matter what trials come or wins blow, nothing can shake roots so deep. This is a living promise. Even this morning it lives and Christ holds himself out to you. Oh, that is awesome to know that this is not some frozen truth. God's purpose was, has been, and is settled. And then finally, I can't give you all three. I'll have to cut this short and then we'll go to his mercy. It really is a measure of his love, isn't it? Because think about it. He knew what was going to happen to him. Chapter 18 verse 31. He knows he's told the disciples he's going to be handed over to the Gentiles. He's going to be mocked. And you know, I don't like it when kids mock me. I mean, Gary and I were in here last year working on something and there was a kid in here who's probably not here so don't worry. There was a kid in here who's a little kid probably, you know, eight, 10 years old. And he was kind of mocking us as adults. And I just, you know, but I'm, he knew I was the pastor so I couldn't get away with it. Okay. So no, but you know, you think about it. I mean, who am I? I'm nothing. And I don't like to get mocked. Can you imagine being the king of glory, the incarnate son of God and these Roman soldier, the Jewish Messiah and these Roman soldiers are mocking you. Oh, he knew that was going to happen. He knew he'd be scourged. He knew he would be killed and mistreated. And he still went in. He still went and such great love. Let's look at his mercy. Because don't miss this. I know I've spoken of that as authority and I don't want you to ever separate these things. You know, you need both the Jesus who saves the Jesus who will, who will be a delight to you. The Jesus who will be your companion and trial and your steadfast rock and your refuge and your stronghold has to be one who is mighty and who is in control and who is in authority even over the circumstances of his own depth. That's why he says in John 10, I lay my life down by my own authority. No one takes it away from me. No one takes it away from me. I lay it down and I take it up again by my authority. If you want to have a refuge, you need somebody who's that strong, but you almost, you also must have someone who's merciful. If power, if just raw power is there, you will always have some deep fear and it will never be tempered by the recognition of the sweetness of that power than undergirding mercy and grace to you. And this passage gives us both. We've looked at his authority. Now look at how real his mercy is. That city that rejected him, that would scourge him, is a city over which he weeps in verse 41. Now don't try to rush over that. This is a strong word. He wept. This is not sighing. This is not the long exhale of disappointment. This is weeping. This is exactly the same word that's used to describe Peter weeping bitterly after the cock close the second time where virtually every translation says something like he wept bitterly. This is the son of God. Who's he weeping for? Now if I knew I was going to be crucified, I'd be weeping for me, but that's not who he's weeping for. Don't mess this. He's weeping over the people who will crucify him. He's weeping over the city, the Jews and the Gentiles in that city. He's weeping over them all. He's not weeping for himself. Why is he weeping then? Well he knows he knows what will unfold. He knows in verses 42 through 44 that there is a judgment that God has reserved for Jerusalem. And that's Jerusalem would be the microcosm, the small scale, but on the larger scale for all the world who reject Jesus Christ. Now it's true what the most immediate fulfillment of this prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem was fulfilled in 70 AD. And those of you who know this story will pardon me when I just tell you share it with the rest of you who don't know perhaps that in 70 AD they actually started in like 68 because Palestine had been such a troublesome province for so many years the Romans just finally said that's it we're taking out we are taking you out. So they surrounded the city they seized it and in 70 AD they literally tore it down the temple was destroyed there literally was not a stone unturned what you see at the wailing wall is what's left. And so that was fulfilled that it is a bad thing to be the enemy of the United States regardless of what you think about the war regardless of the national war you could be pro war anti war here's one thing that you can't miss it's really bad to be the enemy of the United States because if you're the enemy of the United States think of the forces away against you think about the ability to I mean to send bombers from Missouri to Baghdad. And to just do that it will it's a really bad thing to be an enemy of our country it is an even worse thing to have the force of God already against you. To have the wrath of God fall upon you and yet that is exactly why the son of God entered Jerusalem so that he could allow the wrath of God to fall upon him so that sinners the people who were actually responsible for that wrath could give free the full storm of God's wrath blew upon the son of God as he hung on the cross and Palm Sunday is his entry into the city so that that would take place. That is a lot and that is an authority that should compel submission in the hearts of all who seek him. So what I encourage you to do is to think about it this way when I say the wrath of God I know that that is an abstraction for some of you. You say well where is the wrath of God things seem to be going fairly well you ever heard of a black hole black hole is this massively strong object in space I know Gary's going to correct me on this but gravity so strong an object with such high mass that it's gravitational field is so strong that it actually holds in the light that would reflect off of it so we can know it's there you can't actually see a black hole. That's a strong gravitational field is right okay I got it I got 50% so that's okay basically but what you can see what you can see are the effects of the black hole and that's how you know it's there. Like if I were to say today I'll go off the black hole illustration if I asked you right now is it windy outside you don't know right but if I took you to a window and you looked at the window and Gary was standing outside the parking lot and his coat was going behind him even though you didn't feel the wind you would say very confident yes it's windy outside. Well as you look at Jesus on the verge of entering Jerusalem Jesus is standing in the wind of God's wrath and so you and I should be very wise people and have eyes to see what we wouldn't ordinarily see. The one who knows the full weight of the wrath of God he trembles and he weeps for those who are not his people yet and so the wise response to that knowledge would be to flee to him. Trust Jesus Christ, trust his response, trust his reaction and respond as he does to the wrath of God and you will not go wrong. So it's a great mercy and it is a great mercy because he is so much in charge on Palm Sunday. So as we head towards Good Friday as we head towards Easter Sunday remember that the one we worship and serve is a king in every detail. He is king on the cross. No many do not see it. And those of you who are Christians now you look at the cross and you say that is where my king completed his conquest. I used to look at the cross and mock it. I do not mock it anymore because I know because God has shown the light of the glory of Jesus Christ and his conquest on the cross. He's shown it in my heart and I pray that it will be good for you as well. Let's pray. Well Father in heaven now we just we desire to see clearly. We desire to have the fog removed. We desire to have the blindness lifted. Oh Lord, show us your glory in Jesus Christ so that we will prosper before you and we thank you for giving one so mighty and so merciful to stand in our place. And may this be a week. May this be a week of trembling celebration and trembling gratitude. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.