Bible Text: Matthew 21:1-9 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Holy Week 2021 | It’s the great privilege of us Christians to think on the Passion of our Lord Jesus. We don’t deserve it. And we need to know this. Oftentimes it seems that the pastor’s job or the Christian’s job is to convince people to give God the favor of thinking about him. Nonsense. It is our honor to think on the Lord Jesus. We should be prize it above riches and honor and fame, above every pleasure we have on this earth, this highest of all glory, to behold the God-Man crucified for us. In fact, in some churches – I think over at Trinity actually – they put a veil over the crucifixes to signify how unworthy we are to view God suffering for us. Who are we that the Son of God would not only join our human race, would not only suffer for us and die for us, but would then would have it written down for us in all its gory detail, to picture before us our Maker spit on and beaten and mocked and stripped naked and nailed to a tree. That we should get to see what is so terribly intimate, that the Father abandons His Son and the Son cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?” What does this mean that God allows us to see this and hear it! It means that it’s for us, every gasping breath, all the pain, every drop of blood, every cry of agony. Here our God bares his holy heart, as the Son is stripped and his naked flesh is bared to the eyes of all. Here the Father’s heart is revealed to us, that He would forsake His Son and the Son would be forsaken, so that we can live by their Spirit. And to contemplate this today, on Thursday, on Good Friday, here at this church, and always in our lives, this is a privilege the Christian would change the world for, with all its gold and all its honor and pleasure, because all of it can’t compare to a drop of the blood of God shed for us and put into our mouths here.
So we celebrate Palm Sunday today. It is a Sunday of Preparation. And we need it. To make sure we understand what a privilege it is to celebrate Holy Week, to peer into the mystery of the suffering of God for us, so that we never take it for granted.
The history of Jesus riding in to Jerusalem on a donkey five days before He was slaughtered for our salvation teaches us exactly this. And so today we’re going to go through the characters in this history one by one, to answer that beautiful question, “O Lord, how shall I meet Thee, How welcome Thee aright?”
First, Jesus. He comes humbly on a donkey. He doesn’t force His way in, He doesn’t come with violence, He doesn’t come to punish sinners. He comes humbly. And He comes determined. He knows exactly what is ahead of Him. We sing today and again on Maundy Thursday the words of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?” When He rode into Jerusalem that day, Jesus knew those words, they were on His mind, He knew He would utter them five days later on the cross, He knew He was riding not only to His death, but to suffering no man has known, abandonment by God, this awful mystery that God forsakes God for us sinners. And Jesus comes in love that surpasses our understanding, with pity for each and every one of us, willing to suffer the unthinkable, to dirty Himself not only with spit and mockery of others, but with our sins, as He bears their punishment in His holy body and guiltless soul. So see here your Savior’s determination. See him riding boldly to His death. See him do it because He loves you. And know that this determination and this boldness and this love has not stopped, it hasn’t decreased; no, He comes now with the same boldness and the same insistence, that since He has died for you and reconciled you to God, He will have you as His own, to live by His Spirit, to confess your sin to Him, to throw your cares and your anxieties and your most intimate secrets at His feet, so that He can forgive you and comfort you and unite you to your God by feeding on His most precious body and blood.
Second, we have Jesus’ disciples. He sends two to grab a donkey. They are His pastors. They do what He says. They do and say exactly as He commands, you notice that. They don’t question Him. They don’t tell Him no that’s too risky, going and taking a donkey that doesn’t belong to us. They just do it. And this is what pastors are to do. We don’t get to preach whatever comes out of our sinful hearts or what we think people’s itching ears want to hear. Jesus says it. It’s His Word, the Bible, and as He Himself says, the Scripture cannot be broken, then we preach it. Period. Because Jesus knows what’s best for us; He laid down His life for us; He rescues us from sin and death; He made us for eternity with Him and when we soiled ourselves and separated ourselves from His love, He didn’t abandon us or cast us out of His presence, but joined our race and shed His blood and gave His Spirit so that we would live eternal life with Him. So we listen to Him. And His pastors preach what He commands. Not the current expert, who will just be replaced by the next supposed expert. Not the government, not the media, not the prevailing winds of popular culture. None of them has died for me, none of them has made me, given me everything I have, none has given me my reason and my senses, none but my Lord Jesus. So anything that doesn’t agree with the Lord Jesus I can only see as utter nonsense and silliness and vanity. You don’t get to contradict Jesus! He rose from the dead!
The disciples brought Jesus to the people on a very easily despisable donkey. Pastors bring Jesus to people through a Word that people like to despise. But as that donkey brought eternal happiness to Christ’s Church, so now the Word of God brings us everlasting perfection. And so far from being ashamed of it, we make our boast in it. A donkey once spoke and put to shame the wisdom of Balaam. The Word of our Lord speaks and puts to shame the wisdom of this world.
Third, we have the people who met Jesus with songs of Hosanna. Hosanna means, “Save!” And it is this that marks our constant preparation for receiving Jesus. He is our Savior. And we know we need this Savior. Because we know the pride of our hearts, the desire to make ourselves look good and gossip and judge our neighbor, the obsession with this life, our laziness and our putting earthly pleasures over heavenly riches. But more than this, we know the pain and corruption all around us, in our own families, in our own bodies. The Lord Jesus says on Palm Sunday that if we didn’t cry out the rocks would have to, because creation itself groans for release. And our cry of groaning of release is Hosanna! Save, to the Son of David, our dear God and Brother who came to make us a new creation released from all sin and pain and death and corruption forever. He has said it. He’s done it. He will surely bring it to completion.
And so the people not only say, “Save,” they not only speak, but they show with their actions, that Jesus is their everything. We call it Palm Sunday, but in fact most of them throw their clothes on the road for Jesus to trample. And this is the confession we Christians all make. Everything I have Jesus gave me. Everything. If I think I’ve earned it, I’m fooling myself. The strength of my arm comes from Him. The desire to do any good comes from Him. My children. My house. My job. My wife. My health. Every godly pleasure I enjoy, every sip of wine, every laugh, every pleasant walk, every point of knowledge I gain, every good conversation I experience, all of it He has given me and all of it He has redeemed me to use for His glory. And so the confession we make today in view of our Lord giving us the blood He shed for us is that we gladly commit everything to Him, and we would gladly lose everything, the whole world, than lose the God who created this world and redeemed it with His blood. He has lived and died for us. So we live and die with him and give Him not only our stuff, our money, our clothes and our palms, but our children, our hearts, and our lives.
There is one character left in the history of Palm Sunday. The donkey. Very early on the mockers of Christianity called Christians donkeys. People still insult people by calling them donkeys, but they use another word, which I’m not supposed to say from the pulpit. The church father Tertullian talks about how the pagans would mock Christians and draw pictures of Jesus on the cross with donkey ears. And so the Christians pointed to our reading for today to show why they didn’t mind being called donkeys. First, Jesus is on a donkey. And we are happy to bear our Lord Jesus. We bear His name. We wear His righteousness. And as He Himself says, we bear His yoke upon us. When we stray from walking the narrow way, he pulls on the reigns and tugs us back. When we fall, he lifts us up again. When we do wrong, he uses the whip and shows us the painful consequence of sin, so that we don’t do it again. And the donkey is the lowly and humble creature, and so we Christians remain. Our glory is not in ourselves. The donkey’s glory is only in his rider. Our glory is only in Christ. And beautifully, He gives it to us. We share in it all. We suffer with Him. We live with Him. We become sons of our Father because we belong to Him, the eternal Son of the Father. The angels who serve Him serve us for His sake. The Father who loves Him loves us for His sake. The Spirit who lives from Him gives us His life.
Holy Week is here. We are given the greatest privilege imaginable this week, to spend our days meditating on the death of our God for us, so that we can celebrate with everlasting joy His glorious resurrection. God grant it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.