Respond to you, as we ought, with faith, understanding, and obedience, and we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. A reading from Psalms. Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His love endures forever. Let Israel say, His love endures forever. Open the gates of righteousness. I will enter and give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord through which the righteous may enter. I will give you thanks for you answered me. You have become my salvation. The stone, the builder's rejected, has become the kept stone. The Lord has done this and it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. O Lord, save us. O Lord, grant us success. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. From the house of the Lord we bless you. The Lord is God and He has made His life shine upon us. Those in hand join in the festival procession up to the horns of the altar. You are my God and I will give you thanks. You are my God and I will exalt you. Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His love endures forever, and from the gospel of blue. After Jesus had said this, He went on ahead going up to Jerusalem. As He approached Beth's page in Bethany in the hill called the Mount of Olives, He sent two of His disciples, saying to them, Go to the village ahead of you and as you enter it, You will find a cult tied there which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, why are you untieing it, tell them the Lord needs it. Those who were sent ahead went and bounded just as He had told them. As they were untying the cult, its owners asked them, Why are you untying the cult? They replied, the Lord needs it. They brought it to Jesus through their cloaks on the cult and put Jesus on it. And as He went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. 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. Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, Teacher, review your disciples. I tell you you replied, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out to the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. For the last several weeks of the length and season I've been talking to you on the topic of what it means to be a person who discerns God's will. Someone who comes to understand what God's ways are. But there's not only just a purpose to life and a purpose to the universe, but that God has purposes for us personally and individually. What's involved in becoming a person who knows how to test and knows what those ways are. It's really getting at some of the most important issues of what spiritual growth is. Growing as someone who has wisdom, who has God's wisdom, wisdom of God's ways as we read last week in Romans 12, someone who knows what it is to step out and test a proof, discern, know what God's will is in life. It's an image of life that grows. By the way, what kind of life is it that doesn't grow in some sense? I'm a parent. I have a four little, I'm size little, boys. They are adorable. I love them. They're photographs, hang in the living room. They are the delight of my life. One of my sons went away with the grandparents for spring break, and I was miserable with worry and couldn't wait to see him when he got back. I delighted my children, but I submit to you that if children did not grow, if knowledge of a child meant that something was coming to your life that would basically hit the age of two-and-a-half and then stay there, this would be your life companion. This would be the person who communicated with you, who clung to you, who cried hour after hour after hour, who asked those questions over and over and over again, and it never stopped. You know what? That would be monstrous. You would say to someone, oh, we have a child and there we go, I'm so sorry. Why? Why is that? Well, because the delight you take in the terrible twos, what is it? It's that you know you're correcting this child, guiding this child so that they become someone who discerns what is good. It's that they grow up, so they become wise. That's the delight you're taking. That's why you write the things in the little book, because you think someday this kid is not going to believe he thought this way. I've got to write it down because he won't believe it. He actually did this. And yet when you correct children, and by the way, those of you who are not, let me just say that you will find yourself making sentences when you were a parent you never dreamed of. Don't put gravy on your brother's toes. You don't even think of that. Don't lick that wall. But as you give these corrections and these instructions to children, the goal in mind, is not ultimately to say, you know what, I want to be the person saying no to you forever. Trust me, that is not what you want. What you want is for this child to learn, to test and approve what's good, and what's right. To get it on their own, to echo one of the readings we had several weeks ago, to move beyond the early stages, like Israel in the wilderness, where man, I just drops out of heaven. There it is, there's my food, to move into the new land and learn how to grow your own crops. That is the biblical picture of wisdom. That is the biblical picture of life with God, not a fortune cookie God who takes all the growing out of your life, who takes all the thinking out of you as someone created in his image. No, not someone who just shoots you and zaps you messages so that you never grow. Someone who gives you wisdom so that you learn to grow to be like Christ, someone who is discerning, who knows God's ways, and who can meet life with faith and hope and courage as you grow in his wisdom. Now, today's story, this is the story of Palm Sunday, is I think a very appropriate one to bring a conclusion to this series because you have a striking parallel, I think. You've got a group of people who, like many people here today, it can honestly be said your people who have rather fired up about Jesus Christ. And many people here could be described that way. They're fired up, they're very excited about Jesus. And yet, they're a group of people, this would only apply to some, they're people who lack wisdom. They're excited about Jesus. But the fact is, as crowds go, as communities go, this is a group of people who lack wisdom. Now, they've been caught up in a flurry. You see, if you read the Gospel account, you begin to piece this story together. Jesus was in Bethany earlier before Palm Sunday, and there he performed the miracle that was really the crem de la crem of the miracles, honestly. It was where he came there after his friend Lazarus had died and he raised Lazarus from the dead. This creative, what you would call buzz, as you would expect. And what Jesus does is very shortly thereafter returns to Bethany, the scene of this unbelievable, publicly witnessed miracle. A man who's beginning to decay, people know it, is raised. And this gets a lot of attention. Jesus returns and people sense that something profound, the deliverance. This is an oppressed group of people under Roman domination, feeling they've lost their freedom. They've lost their spiritual integrity. They're looking for the deliverer. And here comes Jesus and he begins at Bethany, which everybody's heard about. And then he takes the symbols of Israel's story and he makes them his own. He rides over the Mount of Olives. He goes down the Kedron Valley, prophecies are just, you know, for people who are informed who know the Old Testament, you know, they're just prophecies, they're just ricocheting aloud. He goes over Olives, down the Kedron Valley, up to the Temple Mounts. And asserts his reign, if you will, by cleansing the Temple, as the culminating act of his Palm Sunday entrance, as all these people are shouting. Now it's very exciting. These are people who are excited about Christ and yet they lack wisdom. They don't understand what it is he's going to Jerusalem to do. I think this unfolds for us, frankly, where we are. Even though we can shout, my king is coming to me as they did. We fundamentally often misunderstand the ways of God. We don't have his wisdom. We don't understand the wisdom of the ways of Christ. And therefore there's a lot of excitement that there's not a lot of wisdom. Now, what does Palm Sunday show us? I just want to make two points. First of all, it does show you that you need to get a heart of wisdom if you're going to know Christ. If you're really going to know him, you have to have a heart for wisdom and a heart of wisdom. But not only that, you have to have a mind for wisdom. And I want to unpack that for just a moment. You have to have a heart for wisdom. You have to have a mind for wisdom. Now, I want to read you a classic text about wisdom. What I've described as wisdom. Wisdom is skilled for godly living. Wisdom is the ability to know the Word of God in such a way, and the ways of God in such a way that you can discern God's will and situations, and in persons. That's wisdom. Listen to what James, the brother of Jesus, says about wisdom in his letter, chapter 1. We're beginning in verse 5. He says this. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault. And it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt. Because he who did doubt, such as this like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind, that man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable, and all that he does. Now, what he says there is that wisdom is primarily, I may just summarize it, a lack of wisdom is primarily a problem of the heart, not of the mind. It is not primarily a problem of information. And by the way, when you talk about God's will, that is what people flurry about. How can I get the right information? How can I get the magic information that will give me a successful life? James says it's not primarily about information. It's about your orientation. It's not information. It's orientation. It's your heart. For you see, there's this double image. He says that a person who lacks wisdom, a person who says, God, I want your wisdom, I want your direction, but doesn't really seek it. He says there's a double-minded man, a double-minded person. The literal Greek phrase there is a double-slow person. Meaning the very center of your being, the core of who you are, is fundamentally divided. And that division is this way. On the one hand, you get excited about Jesus. You become a person who says, I want to know God's will. I want God's direction in my life. And yet, there's instability in your life. And that instability is because when you say God, what you really mean are a whole list of things that are your own personal agenda for God. This is what the Bible calls idolatry. Your idea for God. A God who gives you a life that works. A God who gives you the life you want. And the agenda you want. The agenda you have for people. The agenda you have for yourself, for your career, all these things. You bring to the table and he says, you're double-sold. Not your feet, you're soul. That's how you will. You're double-sold. And he said, you're like a person out there. You know, if you've ever been out on the way, when you can't see that there wasn't anymore. And you're hugging the barrel. He says, that's what your life is like. You're just tossed one way and another. Because you say you're excited about knowing the Kingdom of God and knowing God, but your teeth are sunk into your agendas. And, you know, like the proverbial snapping turtle waiting on the thunder, you're not going to let go of it. And what that produces for ends is disorientation. You know, you get in your car, it doesn't matter what the model is. You know, it can be the finest makeup car in the world. But if you put your foot on the gas and the brake simultaneously, it will be disoriented. Go try it. Or maybe you remember learning to drive when you were fifth thing. You know that feeling. He says, that's what your life is like. God will give wisdom, but when your heart is divided between your agenda and God's, you won't experience wisdom. You'll experience frustration. And a lot of you know exactly what I'm talking about, because that's where you're living right now. It's not a matter of information about what's right or what's wrong, or frankly even what's best, given what God's word teaches you. It's a matter of agenda and what you want, what you seek. And that's where the disorientation is coming from, frankly. Do you know what he says in chapter four, verse eight of the book of James? When he comes to this double-mindedness problem, he doesn't say, get more information. He says, purify your hearts, you double-minded. So when it comes to becoming people of wisdom, people who know God's ways, you've got to start with the problem is the heart. Purify your hearts. To begin to say, my greatest desire is to know the purpose and plan of God, the mind of God, the ways of God, regardless of the cost, regardless of where that takes me, Lord, give me heart that desires your ways, that desires your kingdom. But secondly, I think this text also shows us that you need a mind for wisdom. And over these last several weeks, we've gone to text after text that talks about the importance of listening to God's word, of making the truths of the Scriptures your food. We've also seen that learning to make God's ways your ways is a process, not just of you and your Bible, but of you and your Bible in a community of faith. So that within the context of the church, you begin to grow in the wisdom and ways of God so that it's both the heart but it's also the mind. It's the whole person fully engaged. I would give you an image of something like a bonfire. I was just somebody the other day from College Station, Texas. You remember, you know, they build that big bonfire there in Texas. Have you ever seen that? Had a tragic accident a couple of years ago, but you know, before the Aggie UT game, they build this enormous fire. And if you ever have people who've been there, say, you just have to see this thing to believe it. Well, that's what happens when you put a bunch of locks together. And wisdom is that way. We're called to live to come into a community, which is what a church is supposed to be. A community of people who've said we orient our hearts to Christ. We want to know His ways. We want to discern His ways, but we do that together so that seeking the advice of others when it comes to a decision is a critical spiritual exercise. Not just our you praying and studying the Scriptures, but you're seeking to be caught up in the fire of all that God has been showing other people. You know, if you take a log out of a blazing fire and sit it over there by itself, have you seen this happen before? The fire either goes out or it just turns into a little, you know, no where kind of flame. And that's where some of you need yourself. You've got one of the most important decisions in your life before you, and you've just got a bare flicker going. And one of the things you need is to come into the fire. You need to come into a richer community where the Word of God is the air people breathe. It's the way people think, and therefore you begin to become part of that. Now, you have to have a heart, you have to have a mind. You have to be in a place where the Word of God is alive for you. Now, this is the tragedy of the Palm Sunday story. Is that not only is it possible for an individual to see their flame go low? So that is the flame of knowing God's will, knowing God's ways, being treasuring His wisdom and being at one with His purposes. Not always a possible for an individual to fall away from that. It's very possible for a community to grow cold as well. And the Palm Sunday story, and I think this is the scariest part of it, is the story of a community that no longer is seeking God's wisdom, or wanting to know God's ways. This is Israel in the first century. And I think that ought to concern us to say and ask the question, not only am I a person who is cultivating a heart for God's ways, and not only am I a person who is learning God's heart, but also a mind for God's ways, but am I living out a life in community, whereas a community we are coming to grow to know what God's purposes are for us, and there's a fire there because of it. You see, in this community, this first century community around Jerusalem was caught up in a fire. It just wasn't the fire of God's glory. It wasn't the fire of what Jesus had come to do. And that becomes played out very quickly in Holy Week. You find out where their hearts are. They all turn away from them. And even the disciples were caught up in the wrong flame. Now, the flame for them was a wonderful historical memory. And by the way, there are enough southerners in the room. You know what it is to have a story about 100 to 200 years old that still burns deep in your heart. And there are a few Yankees here. I'm sure, you know, on both sides, there are plenty of people who still have a Gettysburg thing going on. You know, I don't know how many of you actually own clothing and go to battlefields and camp out and that sort of thing, but hopefully not too many of you, but maybe there are a few of you who do that sort of thing. We see that all the time. Well, that's exactly what was happening on this Palm Sunday. There was a historical memory, roughly 200 years old, of something that had happened in their history. You have to understand that story to even understand what's going on on this Palm Sunday. Jerusalem had been conquered by the Syrians in 167 AD. B.C. 167. And the leader of the Syrians, Antiochus Epiphanes, took over the Jewish temple. When he took it over, he outlawed Judaism. He made it a capital crime to follow the Torah and any of the rights if you circumcised children. The book of Macabees that tells the story. It's one of the apocryphal books written between the old and New Testament times. If you read that book, it says that he would kill the mothers and kill the circumcised baby and hang them around the mother's neck. It was a capital crime to be a Jew. He took the altar of God in the temple. And he brought in a herd of pigs. And he sacrificed swine on the altar of God. It was a Greek way of defiling the Jews in the most vicious way he could think of. But go get the pork. So they'd bring in the pigs and they'd take the altar of God and they'd change it. And they'd turn it into an altar disease. The prophet Daniel, who looks forward to this and calls it the abomination of desolation. Well, there was a priest, an old priest named Matatias. He saw babies and mothers and families being killed for circumcising their children. He saw this abomination. And so he begins a revolt. He and his family, he and his boys. And eventually his son, Judas, who was called Judas Maccabillas. That was his nickname, which meant Judas the hammer. The hammer. Basically, it's hammer time. And what happens is Judas Maccabillas successfully leads a guerrilla war that throws the Syrians out of the temple and they reclaim the temple for Yahweh. It's a great moment. And even though Judas and another one of his brothers are killed in the fighting, it takes 20 long years. But after 20 years his son Simon successfully ends a war and negotiates a treaty where not only is the temple reclaimed, but Judea itself, the land of Palestine, is theirs. And for a century, they hold it as their land. By the way, the festival Hanukkah is tied to something that happened in the midst of that battle. Now we read in the book of Maccabillas. I have to read you this because this really helps explain Palm Sunday. You read what happens on the day. The peace treaty was signed. They had a procession to the temple. And as they went, the book of Maccabillas says, the Jews entered Jerusalem with praise and palm branches with harps and stringed instruments and with hymns and songs because of great enemy had been crushed and removed from Israel. You see the palm branches, a palm is, you know, what do you think of when you think a palm beat? You know, palms are with a good like this. You know, you want to have it good, you can afford to live with their palms. And that's exactly what it meant then. It was a symbol of fertility, of life flourishing, of things being right. It was the stuff that happens at all the end of the Star Wars movies, you know, at the end of the Star War movie. You know, everybody's happy. The king's on his throne. That's exactly what was happening. They're waving the palms, going to the temple saying, yes, we're back in charge. Things are good for us. The market's booming. They couldn't be happier. And that is exactly what is happening on Palm Sunday. People who are oppressed again, who lost their freedom are waving their palms at Jesus. And could you imagine the incredible elation is they seem head for the temple that Herod now runs. He's headed to the temple and all they can think is yes, we're throwing off the yoke and we'll be in charge again. And it's understandable. And you know what? You're a genders are understandable too and so are mine. We all have a genders that we can make a strong case for that God needs to do this. God wants this. And we throw ourselves into it and the tragedy is you miss God's ways, just as they missed what God was doing. Now it wasn't because they didn't have the right information all along. Jesus explained why he had come, read the Gospels, the disciples over and over again. He tells them that I have come to die. I am going to Jerusalem and there I'm going to die. And on the third day, I will be raised again and glorified. And when I am lifted up, please don't think this is about you. This is about you people and your little tribe. If I am raised up, if I am lifted up, I will draw all men to me, all people, all the songs of the prophets about what God with the world, about what God will do to sin. And it's power to separate you from God and the ways of God and the purposes of God. I have come to solve that problem for the world. He said it over and over and over again. It wasn't a problem of information. It was a problem of orientation. Nobody wanted to hear it. They didn't want to hear what he had to say. Even on this day, when people were expecting war, Jesus couldn't have been clearer. He says no, go and get me a donkey because the donkey was the animal of peace. Jesus is looking at the cross. He's just come out of Gethsemane, meeting and wrestling with God. And as he knows he's going to die, the donkey is what you ride after you win. You know, it's the end of the Star Wars movie. Jesus is on his way to the cross. And he's already celebrating the end of the movie. He's already saying what I'm going to do in the place of sinners on Calvary, what I'm going to do on Easter morning. Oh, you're so dumb, you don't get it yet. This is true peace. This is something no Syrian, no Roman, no oppressor, no situation in your life can ever rob you up. I am beginning to reign. The great reversal is beginning. And that's what we celebrate on Palm Sunday. You see, if you want to have the wisdom of God in your life, you've got to be a person who fixes your heart, you give your heart to God's Spirit, you give your mind to God's Word, you give your life to Christ's Lordship because you believe, you believe what we're celebrating this week, you believe he's begun to reign. That no matter what it costs you, no matter what it happens, you see his glory. And that's how it is. I relinquish my agenda. Now, let me close this way. I want to challenge you this way. And I want to use the palm. You'll notice that today we have palms available. A lot of churches do that on Palm Sunday. I love to take a palm during this week as my family and I trace through the story of Christ and his suffering, his death, his resurrection. Because the palm is a wonderful symbol that just kind of says it all, I think. Because the palm in the one hand, and as you go through the readings, just have it around as a little symbol. Palm is a symbol that says, not your palm pilot, but I'm talking about a front, a palm front. The palm front reminds you that we're still this way. We're still just like those people following Jesus into Jerusalem. We still stand at the gates with our agendas waving like crazy. This is what I need. This is what I want, and we wave it madly and fiercely. There's a sense in which the palm says yes. That is who I am. And yet, do you know that you read in the book of Revelation? That Sunday, there will be gathered a great multitude of every tribe, tongue, and nation. A multitude so large, it cannot be numbered, and they're shouting and they're singing. Praise. Salvation belongs to our God. Blessing, honor, power, and dominion belong to He who reigns. We read about that. And Revelation 7, and we're told that the crowd is waving the palm front. And you see the palm represents exactly where we need to go. We're told in John chapter 11 that the disciples did not understand what Jesus was doing on Palm Sunday. Because Jesus had not yet been glorified. But as He's glorified in your life, you begin to see. That's the point of wisdom, Jesus. Do you see what the palm says? Yes, I have my agenda. I have my inability to see the ways of God. But what knowing Jesus means, tasting and seeing His glory, the glory of His ways in my life in this community, what it means is that as I test and approve His will, as I follow Him, I see Him glorified. And I'm able to see. And someday I'll wave the palm and I'll see it all. Let's pray. Father, help us. Help us to move from the excitement without knowledge. From the hearts that are divided, to being people who have hearts for your glory, hearts for your kingdom, that are informed by your ways and your purposes, that are under girded by the strength and the beauty that is the Lordship of Christ. Help us to move from shouting and ignorance to shouting in the glory of knowing who you are and what you've called us to. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.