John: Salvation Is Here

Pastor Fletcher preaches on Palm Sunday about Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem in John 12:12-26. Discussion points: The crowd is welcoming Jesus to Jerusalem as their new political and military king, our mental image of Jesus may be built on an imaginary Jesus which does not match up to the real Savior, Jesus isn’t satisfied with just being a consultant for our lives.

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  Scripture reader: [John 12:12-26] The next day, the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out. Hosanna blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord? Even the king of Israel and Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it just as it is written, fear, not daughter of Zion. Behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt. His disciples did not understand these things at first. But when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign.

  So the Pharisees said to one another, you see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him. Now, among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip who was from Bea in Galilee and asked him, sir, we wish to see Jesus. Philip went and told Andrew, Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus and Jesus answered them. The hour has come for the son of man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me and where I am, there will be my servant. Also. If anyone serves me, the father will honor him.

  This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

  Preacher: Only 10% of evangelicals who grew up in churches as millennials. 10% of millennials who grew up in evangelical churches are still practicing Christianity in any significant kind of way. I say that statistic, it should sound shocking. But for any of us who know millennials or maybe you grew up as I did as a millennial in a church. It's not shocking because when I think about my youth group as a kid, yeah, about 10% were there for the right reasons or 10% are still practicing from what I can tell. Why is it that all the demographic studies tell us that the number one growing religious demographic year over year in the United States is the nuns those who have no religious affiliation, deconstruction has hit the mainstream. You can't really avoid it.

  If you're in Christian circles, you hear about Christians who are, have deconstructed or are in the process somewhere along the way of deconstructing the other day. I was cruising along Instagram and I came across a post by an acquaintance of mine, someone who was a pastor in Memphis. He planted a, a church and my best friend served with him there and he was talking about his own journey with deconstruction. Since then, there was a lot of controversy. He's no longer the pastor of that church. I don't think he's serving in ministry anymore. But he was articulating with, you know, the last bit of influence that he has, I suppose the reasons why he thinks that many people are deconstructing these days.

  And as he gave more and more reasons, I couldn't help but think in my opinion that he's replacing the Jesus that we know in the Bible with the Jesus of his own imagination, who he would like Jesus to be instead of who Jesus tells us. He actually is. Now today is Palm Sunday. And we're covering the triumphal entry. The reason why we're covering triumphal entry, we're going through the book of John. It makes sense to cover the triumphal entry on Palm Sunday. But if you notice we skipped like an entire chapter of John, but I didn't want to continue the series in John and then be covering the triumphal entry like two weeks after Palm Sunday. That didn't really make sense. So I was like, let's just skip, do the Palm Sunday pass on Palm Sunday. Then we'll go back and we got Lazarus being risen from the grave on Easter Day. And all right, it works for us. OK?

  So next week we're gonna go back and keep going through our book of John. And we're gonna be talking about Lazarus being risen from the grave, which is a great passage for Easter Sunday because I, you know who else might be risen from the grave, Jesus. Yeah. that, that, that goes with Easter really well. So we skipped forward to cover Palm Sunday on the Palm Sunday, Sunday. And with the triumphal entry, we see Jesus entering Jerusalem. I don't know what that word was. Jerusalem with a king's welcome. He's being welcomed in with the palm branches. Everyone's crying, Hosanna and they're ready to crown him as king. But a mere five days later, the same people, many in this crowd are shouting, crucify.

  It was a rapid deconstruction where they went from shouting praises to Jesus. You are the new king. We're ready to crown you to saying crucify him. When your expectations for Jesus don't meet up with the realities of Jesus. You're often left discouraged and disillusioned. And when you have enough of those discouragements, compile on top of one another. Deconstruction is Eminem. Let's look at this passage and see what took these people from Hosanna to crucify in a mere five days. If there's any hints of what might be the reason for their turning on who Jesus is for them. They're changing their minds about who Jesus is and see what we can learn from that.

  Verse 12. The next day, the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. All right, the the next day, what's it talking about here? Because you know, we skipped the previous chapter. So we didn't cover this yet. We're going kind of verse by verse through the book of John right now. The next day is the day after Mary had anointed Jesus's feet. So that was about a week after Jesus had risen Lazarus from the grave.

  So Jesus has this group of people that are following him. He's got a crowd that's gathered. They saw him raise Lazarus from the grave and they're following him in wherever he's going because they see that he did a miracle. So the next day, Jesus is going into, along with the large crowd, he has a crowd coming with him that saw him raise Lazarus. There's also people in Jerusalem that have heard about what Jesus has done. And so they're all kind of coming together and they're ready to crown him king. There's a crowd following him that he has, he has got his posse there. So verse 13, they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him crying out. Hosanna blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord? Even the king of Israel. Now, this is how you would welcome a, a king into a city. This is the way that they would do it.

  It's very evident that they're trying to recognize Jesus as king. The people are coming out, they're lining the streets ready to have like a parade for his entry in. They're waving the palm branches and they're shouting the word Hosanna. Now, Hosanna is an interesting word. It's not one that we use often in English and the translators oftentimes this is what would happen. when an English translator doesn't quite know how to translate a word from Greek. The New Testament is written in Greek. They do what we call transliterating it. So instead of giving it a translation, they just try to take the Greek word and they, and they put it in English. So in Greek, the original word for Hosanna was or is Hosanna? Now, the Greek authors, similarly, when they would come to a Hebrew word that wouldn't translate very well into Greek, they would do the same thing. And so Hosanna is just a transliteration of the Greek word Hosanna, which is just a transliteration of the Hebrew word, which is like Hosanna.

  So it's very similar and it only appears one time in the entire Old Testament. It's not a common word in the Old Testament only appears one time. And that is in Psalm 118, we read it earlier where and it meant this idea of save me, please save me, please. But over time, it kind of changed the meaning. Instead of being a, a cry for, for help, it became a cry of deliverance. And so instead of saying, save me, please, it would be like the hero has appeared. And now you're saying salvation is here. It's a cry of salvation, it's here. And so that is what they're crying as Jesus walks in. They're saying Hosanna blessed is he, they're shouting his praises, they're calling him the king of Israel in the book of Matthew, they recognize him as the son of David.

  Make no bones about it. The people of Israel are welcoming Jesus in as king and they fully expect Jesus to go in there to take the throne and to kick the Romans out. They expect him to take a political reign to be the new president, the new king of Israel and to reign and rule to re-establish what they saw with David. You know when David was king, it says that he had peace from all of his enemies, all around him. Do you know what that means that he had peace from all of his enemies? It means everybody was scared of him no one's messing with him. He's the biggest man around. All right. That's what I'm saying is that the people of Israel at that time were the, the most dominant, politically, the most dominant, dominant military around. And so we had peace from his enemies because no one wanted to pick a fight with him.

  And that's what they expected Jesus to be like him to come in and to be a dominant political and may maybe even military leader who would lead them to the promised land of reestablished themselves as the dominant force on earth. But there's clues that that's not what Jesus has in mind.

  Verse 14 and Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it just as just as it is written, fear, not daughter of Zion. Behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt. Now, this quote is from Zechariah chapter nine verse nine. And Jesus is very intentionally fulfilling this prophecy that was spoken by the prophet nearly five or about 500 years earlier. It's a direct quote from that, but it also tells us something about who Jesus is as king because if you see a king coming in, you're welcoming in him in with, with palm branches and shouting Hosanna that king you would normally think would be riding in on a war horse ready to fight. But Jesus doesn't ride in on a war horse. He rides in on a young donkey, humble and meek is he the king of Israel.

  Verse 16, his disciples did not understand these things at first. But when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. So the disciples might not have understood what was happening. But here's something that I never really got until I was studying this week is that the disciples might not have known what was happening, but Jesus absolutely knew what was happening. Like, I've always seen the triumphal entry as Jesus coming in and, and just kind of like being like a little rosy cheeked like, oh guys, you shouldn't have shucks. You know, why are you? I don't know about this king because that's what you see Jesus doing all the time. Jesus is always like ninja moving his way out of the spotlight. They're like, who healed you. And they're like, I don't know, it was Jesus and then it's like, where is he? No one has any idea where he went, he went oh up to a mountain to be by himself somewhere or something like that. That's what we see Jesus doing over and over and over again throughout the gospel.

  But here Jesus very strategically and intentionally is being recognized as king. He's not trying to hide anymore. He sent his disciples ahead to go find the donkey to bring it back so that he could ride in and fulfill the prophecy so that he can be recognized as king. And here's one of the things that we can miss out very quickly on that up until this point, Jesus has been saying, my hour has not come. My hour has not come. My hour has not come.

  But all of a sudden now Jesus says, my hour has come, the time has come. My hour has come verse 23 and Jesus answered them, the hour has come for the son of man to be glorified. When his mother asked him or told his disciples to, to ask him and to turn the water into wine. He says, my hour has not come. You see it appear over a couple of other times throughout the gospel where Jesus say, my hour has not come. But now there's a significant shift for Jesus where he's saying, the hour has come. When you look at the book of John that we've been going through since like September or August. The 1st 11 chapters are on the first three years of jesus' ministry and the last 10 chapters, there's only 21 chapters.

  The last 10 chapters are on the last week of his life. And so the hour has come, we're going to zoom in and slow down greatly. Now as we study God's word on these last days of his life. And Jesus says now is the time for my glorification. Verse 23 the hours come for the son of man to be glorified the crowd. When they think about the glorification of Jesus, they might think about the ascent to the throne that he's coming in to be glorified in that way. But Jesus had a different type of glorification in mind. It was the ascent to the cross instead of to the throne. Verse 24 Jesus kind of explains more about his glorification.

  And in verse 24 he says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Now, this always confused me. I remember in a philosophy of religion class in college, my undergrad, so I, I did not study religion in undergrad. I studied math and psychology and I just took a religion, philosophy of religion class as an elective for fun there. OK, just for funsies. And then I went on to, to do other degrees for in theology and whatnot. But the, I remember reading a passage about this and even Paul using a similar analogy in first Corinthians about the seed dying and just being kind of stuck on it and saying, well, seeds don't really die when they're being planted into the ground. But to in, in Jesus hear minds this made more sense because the seed ceases to exist as a seed, it dies as a seed and it comes up as a plant and what he's saying is if you take a seed, it, unless it goes into the ground and dies as a seed, it can't come and bear this good fruit.

  Jesus knows that he's heading to the cross and that he's going to die. But through the cross, all nations will be blessed. Verse 25 Jesus explains this and even more depth. He says, whoever loves his life loses it and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Now, these love hate semantics, these are really confusing. Are they not we, we come across these a few times in the New Testament where Jesus says, whoever love, whoever follows me will hate his family. You see something like that. If you, if you wanna love me, you'll hate your family. But what was helpful for me is that I read a commentator talk about this love hate semantics and he explained it like this, that the love hate semantics were a common Semitic idiom of the time which articulated a fundamental preference, not hate on an absolute scale. So while we might think about hate being this absolute thing, instead, he's saying in relation to how much you love this other thing, you hate this thing in relation to not on this grand scale f this this absolute scale.

  And so it's not that we're to hate our life and to force ourselves to be miserable and say, oh, I just hate living instead of saying I live and long for the kingdom of Heaven more. And what this verse really gets at is the difference between being a fan of Jesus or a follower of Jesus. You see the crowd is celebrating the arrival of Jesus, but you can celebrate the arrival of Jesus and even call him your king without actually being a follower of Jesus. It can change rather quickly. The crowd, their, their agenda for Jesus is very different than jesus' own agenda. They want Jesus to establish a political rule where he can, where they can follow him to prosperity.

  But Jesus is not concerned about that. He says that his followers must hate their lives in this world so that they can keep it into eternity. I am convinced friends that many of the people who have deconstructed have done so because their expectations of Jesus did not line up with the realities of Jesus because the image of who Jesus should be in their own mind is built off really an imaginary Jesus instead of the Jesus that we have in scripture. It's not completely their fault though it's not completely their fault.

  The modern day church has distilled Christianity and to the serum that is meant to be easily taken. And so the modern day church has said that the gospel is this, that you need to accept these truth, claims for yourself that you are a sinner that you need a Savior. God loves you. And he sent Jesus to die for you all true facts. But the modern church has said now take those facts. And if you want to go to heaven and not go to hell, raise your hand and pray a prayer with me and now you're going to heaven and it's distilled following Jesus into raising a hand or praying a prayer.

  Look, the word Christian only appears three times in the entire New Testament. It's not a common way that the followers of Jesus are described instead, people who follow Jesus are described as followers of Jesus. Now you can raise your hand and accept those facts without actually becoming a follower of Jesus. What does it mean to follow Jesus? But to live your life in the way that he lived it in the way that he told us to live our lives. Jesus says, if anyone serves me, he must follow me verse 26 and where I am there, my servant be also, if anyone serves me, the father will honor him. Christianity is, is you do have to accept those things, but it's more than that, it's following. It's serving.

  I love the way that Dallas Willard puts this. He says, the greatest issue facing the world today with all of its heartbreaking needs is whether those who are identified as Christians will become disciples, students, apprentices, practitioners of Jesus Christ steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the heavens into every corner of human existence. Jesus invites his followers to give up on their lives here now and to live for eternity. That is what it means to be a follower that you die to self and live for eternity. Paul describes it well, in Galatians, he says, he describes his own life as a Christian. This is what it means to be a follower of Christ to be a Christian. He says, I have been crucified with Christ. It's not just raising your hand. It's not just simple assent into belief that Jesus is who he says he is.

  It is saying that when he went to the cross, my my faith in him, put me on the cross with him. I have been crucified with Christ is no longer I who lived but Christ who lives in me. And now the life that I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. That is what it means to follow Christ. It means the old you has been crucified, your sin and your shame have been placed on Jesus. And now the life that you live in Him, you follow after Him. You live by faith. I can't think of any better description of this than CS Lewis and Mere Christianity. When he says this, he says, give up yourself and you will find your real self, give up yourself and you will find your real self, lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, the death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day.

  Let me just read that one again for us. So OK, it's an ambitious crowd here with us, submit to death, the death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and the death of your whole body in the end, submit with every fiber of your being and you will find eternal life. Keep nothing back. Nothing that you will that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will be raised from the dead. Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him and with him. Everything else thrown in.

  Friends, are we dying to self? Is that what our image of Christ looks like? Is that what our image of what it means to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus looks like that every day. We're dying to self and living to him that we're giving up in giving to him following Jesus is hard, but there's nothing better. Amen. In five days, the Jerusalem crowd goes from shouting Hosanna to crying, crucify why their expectations of who Jesus was did. Ma did not match up with the reality of who Jesus actually is. I've been dealing with this in my own life. I think that many of us can talk about different ways that we need to search our own heart and find how Jesus is different than the reality of Jesus, how my Jesus is different than the real Jesus.

  And for me, what I've been looking for is, is where is their discouragement? It's easy to feel discouraged, in life and my Christian faith and this is just a small one. I'll, I'll share with you that is a place that I've experienced discouragement. But as a, as a kid growing up in the early two thousands, and come to faith in the early two thousands, I believe I became a Christian like in the year 2000. And I was taught very early in my Christian faith about what we used to call. I'm not sure if the kids still call it this but a quiet time. Is that something that, that anybody's been been taught? Or, you know, your quiet time is a time where you take your bible and you go and you read a chapter or more and you pray and you talk with God and the quiet time was sold to me as a time where you are actually talking with God like prayer.

  I talk to God, it assumes God talks back. I hear from Him. I spend time with Him. It's your devotional time. And that's how I've started almost every single day for the past 20 years is with this quiet time. This devotional time, I'm not bashing on it. I think it's great, but it was sold to me at the time when God would really come in power, when I would get to experience them. I wish I could tell you all the amazing times that I've heard from God during these quiet times. But what I can actually tell you is that my spiritual life, even as a spiritual guide for you all, ok. My spiritual life can be stubbornly slow and dry.

  Can I read my Bible? It's like I've spent so much time doing this. I'm disciplined. I, I read, I've probably read the Bible, you know, over 10 times at this point. But I rarely get that powerful sense of the presence of God. Don't get me wrong. There is a real sweetness in my personal spiritual life. There's times where he's constantly answering prayers and he's quietly transforming my heart during those moments alone in prayer and in his word, it's not something I would trade, but it's just not what I necessarily expect. And so sometimes, sometimes I get frustrated, maybe a little disillusioned.

  It's like God, I thought if I did this thing, it'd be like acts two, you know, holy spirit coming down my heart, beating the spirit of God filling me. I can just fill your presence all the time. But instead, it's been very different. I've had a few of those times, I, I'll tell you the truth. I have had a few of those times where I've really, since God's presence while reading his word and in my quiet time, but it's the exception and not the rule. My expectations for Jesus have not been the same as the reality with Jesus. And I think it would be easy for us. Those of you who maybe you've been, you've learned the same thing to become discouraged with our spiritual life.

  But the reality is that maybe it's in the dry patient persistence, that God is actually achieving what he wants in your heart. You see my expectations of Jesus need to shift not to what I imagine him to be, but who he actually is. Because when I was thinking about this, I've realized that even if you look at my, my life over the past couple of years change and spiritual growth often stubbornly slow.

  But I believe I'm a more patient person than I was three years ago. I believe I have more love. That's not just love for myself. It turns out that Jesus doesn't zap character traits, he doesn't zap character into you. But it's only done through frustratingly slow shaping, through chiseling away at the rocks of our own hearts, the virtues of patience, trust, gentleness, love, self control. They rarely come through the moments of power, but through the years of persistence.

  And that's how Jesus changes us. Isn't that frustrating? But also glorious to know when our expectations of Jesus don't match the realities of Jesus. We're left disillusioned and discouraged. And my goal is to change my expectations to match the real Jesus and not the one of my imagination. And so let me ask you this church this morning. Do you have the right Jesus? Do you have the right Jesus? When you approach Jesus, how do you approach him? Many of us approach Jesus as if he might be a consultant for us? Ok. This is why you hire a consultant. If you're working in a company and you, you want a consultant, you want someone that's fairly easily expendable that you don't necessarily need to keep around forever. So you're not gonna offer them a salary. You're an hourly employee, you come in, but you're an expert in your field. So you're gonna push me along a little bit and you're gonna help me get to where I need to be and then you know, goodbye consultant. I'll call you if I ever need you again.

  And so we look at Jesus and we want Jesus to be a consultant in our life. So we go to him only when things feel rather difficult for us and say, hey, Jesus, you're the expert, come and consult in my life, push me forward and that's when we pursue him. But Jesus will not be a consultant. Look at him as he's coming in. He's like, look, no, I'm not your consultant. I'm not here to push along your agenda. I have my own agenda and so you can hire me but its CEO or nothing. I'll come in but I'm the boss now and you're gonna do what I tell you. You see, Jesus will not be a consultant. It's CEO or nothing. It's crown him or crucify him. No, in between crown and you know what Jesus would wear a crown but would not be the one that they would expect because Jesus would find himself a mere five days later as they're crying crucify, crowned with a crown of thorns in the place of his glorification, risen to power but not the kind of power that they were thinking a power of self sacrifice and service to his people.

  It means we have to sac we have to surrender our lives to Jesus the king. That's a word for us this morning. Surrender, surrender our lives to Jesus, the king. Instead of deconstructing our faith. We need to deconstruct our own lives. Many of us need to deconstruct the culture that we live in, especially a Christian culture that we were brought up in. But where are expectations for Jesus failing to match the realities of Jesus.

  Now, deconstruction, deconstruction is a complicated issue. OK? I I am talking about it a lot this morning. So I just want to say a few things. I don't wanna oversimplify the church at large has caused an immense amount of hurt and pain for people. The church at large has perpetrated abuse and just so much. And as followers of Jesus, we have to lament these failures that we've been complicit in oftentimes and many people who deconstruct have difficult questions about God that church leaders fail to address and friends. We need to walk alongside these friends who are deconstructing, who are questioning what they grew up in, to persevere with them relationally and in prayer to work to answer their questions far too often.

  And this is something that maybe I've been guilty of, but hopefully not, not much but far too often pastors and church leaders underestimate the intelligence of their congregations and they won't actually give real answers to real questions. And that's something that we want to do here. If you have questions, bring those questions, we're here to walk through those with you. Hard questions deserve nuanced answers. And if you have people who have deconstructed in your life, here's your word. Ok? I think that many times we, we, we end up leaving them to be shunned essentially. But the word of Jesus is to love them. That's the way of Jesus is to love those who have walked away. They are not your enemy. And even if they were, Jesus tells us to love our enemy, we love them because Jesus loves the deconstructions.

  Just look at him on the cross as they cry, crucify those who once cried, who's even now crying crucify, he's on his cross. And what does Jesus say? But father forgive them for, they know not what they're doing. Jesus has a heart for those who are lost. He has a heart for those who's got it wrong all the way to the point where they're ready to kill him and he still is praying for their forgiveness. Let's realign our expectations of Jesus this Easter season to match the real Jesus. And let's realign our understanding of being a follower of Jesus to what he described.

  In just a moment, we're going to have an opportunity to respond to God's word. And we, we're going to open a communion meal. We do this every week. We take the communion meal to remind ourselves of what Christ has done for us, that his body was broken, for us, that his blood was shed for us on the cross. And as we participate in this meal, we're saying that I am with Jesus, I am following him. That his death is my death. I am crucified with him on the cross and it's no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, we're declaring the death of Christ is where our faith is.

  And so, the invitation is to evaluate your own life. Jesus tells us to, to evaluate our lives and repent of any areas that need repentance in our life to come back to him over and over again. So church would you stand as we prepare our hearts to receive this meal and to really evaluate what Jesus wants for us.

  Father, as we come to the sacred meal, we pray that you would give us a truly divine sense of who you are that we might know you better. The real, you, not the one of our imagination, but the real Jesus humble and mounted on a donkey that we might understand your kingdom and w and its work in our own heart. Father, we pray that our expectations of you would be higher than what we have currently, but that they would not be our own. God, would you give us expectations that you would do a great work? You say that you've done that you will do even greater things through us. And God, we pray that you will, but we pray that they won't be our things. We pray for your things.

  God, we pray through this whole week as we consider your death and resurrection, that you would do a great work in us, but not the one we expect. The one that you want Jesus. We give you our lives, we surrender to your way and your will today. And God, we pray for anyone here trying to figure out what you would want for them, how they can follow you. Father, would you give them that direction and guidance. In Christ's name we pray, amen.