4-5-20 Palm Sunday

Bible Text: Matthew 21:1-9 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Holy Week 2020 | What’s striking about Jesus is his unwavering certainty. The people didn’t just marvel at his miracles, they marveled that He taught like no one else, He spoke with complete conviction. This is what we hear at the end of Jesus’ sermon on the Mount, that “the crowds were astonished at His teaching, because he taught as one with authority, and not as the scribes.” Jesus doesn’t teach with maybes. He doesn’t tell you to search your own heart and find your own truth. He refuses to deal in uncertainties. He speaks with complete confidence because He knows what He says is God’s own truth.

Now this has always offended people who don’t like what Jesus says – humanly speaking that’s why He got crucified, right, because people didn’t like what He said, but it’s always been the joy of us Christians, this confidence of our Lord Jesus. Because His certainty gives us certainty. It’s in everything He does, everything He says. Even in the seemingly mundane. He tells His disciples to go get a donkey, a totally trivial thing, but it’s not trivial when Jesus does it, because He tells them with confidence where to find it and He rides confidently into Jerusalem exactly as He said He would, with the certainty that what the prophet Zechariah prophesied must happen. He asserts that he will be betrayed into the hands of the leaders of His people, that He will be tortured and mocked and spit on and killed and then rise again the third day. He asserts it over and over again, with complete certainty. And now He rides into Jerusalem confident that this is exactly what will happen. And it does.

This is why when Jesus says your sins are forgiven, you can be certain that it’s true. It’s why when He says He will be with you always even to the end of the age, you should believe Him without any doubt. He doesn’t offer you religious dreams. He offers you certainty, guaranteed by the certainty of His riding into Jerusalem, earned by the certainty of his suffering and death five days later, and declared to be the truth with power by His resurrection on the third day.

I can’t stress how important it is for us to hold on to this certainty now. We are living in a time of uncertainty, unlike anything we’ve ever seen. It’s what has us all on edge. How long will this virus last? How many people will it kill in our United States? The so-called experts can’t tell us. They give us numbers between 100,000 and 240,000 and then tell us it could be significantly higher or significantly lower. That’s uncertainty. They don’t know. And it breeds uncertainty in us. How long before we reopen the economy, send people back to their jobs, kids back to school? Can we afford to stay locked down for two more weeks, two more months? Will the economic devastation, the social devastation, the suicides, the depression, the delayed cancer treatments, the poverty and pain and unrest caused by the shutdown outweigh the death toll of this virus? Everyone has his own answer, everyone becomes his own expert. We wallow in our own uncertainty.

But ironically this virus teaches us exactly what lies ahead, instills in us a very uncomfortable certainty, one that drives all the government interference, all the lockdowns, all the hoarding, the loss of jobs, the economic crash. That certainty is death. That’s what everyone’s trying to avoid, everyone’s trying to stop and minimize. It’s a certainty, and we know it. It’ll come. It’ll come to our loved ones. It’ll come to each of us. We can take the most drastic measures, we can shut down the economy, force millions out of work, pass stimulus plans, and maybe we’ll stop the virus from killing more than it would have, God help us, but we won’t stop death, we won’t stop misery or pain, we might just make things worse, bring more misery and death, and in the end all we’re even attempting to do is to put death off for a bit. So amid all the uncertainty, this certainty stands – you may not have to pay taxes, but you do have to deal with death.

And this is the certainty Jesus confronts. It’s the certainty He preaches with so much conviction, why He isn’t like the other teachers. He doesn’t avoid the painful and the depressing. He’s the great physician of the soul. Physicians who ignore the cause of disease don’t cure their patients. So Jesus saves no one without making us know our problem. He points to death and gives the reason for it. And Jesus’ diagnosis is far more important and far more certain than the constantly changing expert opinions we’ve heard the last weeks and days from our media and our leaders. We heard this last week in the Gospel lesson. Jesus just up and says it to those questioning Him, “You will die in your sins.” That’s Jesus. No uncertainty there. Death comes to all because all sin. The wages of sin is death. Pain and misery and disease infect this world because it’s fallen and corrupt, and every single one of us has been part of the corruption, as the psalmist says, “We have sinned with our fathers.” The small picture, believe it, the small picture is this plague we’re suffering through, it’s what St. Paul calls “our momentary affliction.” The big picture is what Jesus says it is. The death and hell sin brings. The psalmist says it well, “Surely man at his best is but vapor. Certainly he busies himself in vain. He heaps up riches but does not know who will enjoy them.”

That’s why times of national distress have always been a call to repentance. Not because we did something specifically to deserve this virus in the United States, though God knows our national sins, Lord, have mercy on us, but because all pain, all death, whether it’s from Covid19 or from abortion, and all disease, whether others’ or our own, should remind us of our own sin and our own death, that we need a Savior, that without Him nothing is certain in life except eventual sickness and death and separation from God. But with Him is total certainty about everything that really matters.

And this is where Jesus’ certainty is so beautiful and so comforting to us. He knows what He has to do. He knows what lies before Him. Open-eyed and willingly He rides into Jerusalem, humble, knowing that He’s riding to His death. This is God Himself bearing our sin and our disease and our pain, God Himself in our flesh and blood dying our death, because what has been certain from eternity is that our God would not leave us to die, would not allow His creation to be separated from Him, but the Father would send His Son to become our Brother, that He would suffer all, would empty Himself, would become obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, to conquer our death and open the way to everlasting life and draw us to Himself and give us the certainty of being children of God. This is Jesus’ certainty, that far above the certainty of death is the certainty that our God has conquered it, far above the certainty of our sin and this fallen world, is that our God has bled for our forgiveness and prepared a place for us with Him forever.

These are uncertain times, I know. But the certainty of your Baptism is enough, that your Father has sworn by His Son’s blood that you are His child. The certainty of Jesus’ body and blood put into your mouth to bind you to Christ in righteousness and innocence, this is enough. The certainty that Jesus is now highly exalted and teaches us without any doubt that He who has suffered for us knows our weakness and our fear and will strengthen us to endure to the end. And be certain too of what you should be doing in these times. This is the beauty of being a Christian. We do know what to do. Jesus tells us. Listen to God’s Word, hear it, read it, the Lord is your Shepherd, listen to His voice. Pray to Him constantly, be certain that He loves to hear your prayers and will answer you in His goodness; pray for your city, your state, your country, your government, your church, your pastors; love one another, forgive one another as Christ has forgiven you, drop all grudges, encourage one another, and finally don’t panic, throw your fears on Jesus, slow down and believe what you confess, that Jesus is the one thing needful; lay all your anxieties and cares on Him, with the certainty that He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, will freely give us all things. Amen.

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