Community Covenant Church - Sermons

April 1, 2007

Blind Consequences

Luke 19:28-44

28After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 30"Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' tell him, 'The Lord needs it.' "

32Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?"

34They replied, "The Lord needs it."

35They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. 36As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.

37When 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:
38"Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!"
"Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!"

39Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples!"

40"I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."

41As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42and said, "If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you."

This past week, a pastor-friend asked a great question of a few of us pastors gathered on Wednesday for prayer and fellowship. He asked “How do you know that Jesus is God?”

We each took turns sharing our answers; one spoke of Jesus’ miraculous powers, another spoke of the fulfilled prophesies concerning His life; still another pointed to Jesus’ resurrection as an affirmation that what Jesus had taught and had said about himself was the truth.

But then the questioner offered another answer which I found also to be true, while also profoundly simple. He said, “I believe Jesus is God because everything Jesus did, God is doing. Everything Jesus did on earth, God has been doing all along.”

Eventually our discussion led to how people know that Jesus is in us and in our churches. How do people know that the Spirit of God is alive and active in our personal lives, and even more powerfully present in our corporate life as Community Covenant Church? They know when they see us doing the things of God.

That is an important truth I want you to take home today.... but it is an aside to my primary message from Luke 18:28-44. This hour I want us to consider the work of God seen in Jesus’ life because there is blessing for those who see God in Jesus, but also consequences for those who are willfully blind to it.

Jesus once said to his disciples:

John 14:7-11 7If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him." 8Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us." 9Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? 10Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.

When we are able to see and accept who Jesus is, we see the living God. But today, we learn this lessen by observing the opposite. What happens when people are willfully blind to who Jesus is? And, according to Jesus, if salvation is the gift for those who see and accept Him for who He is, what are the consequences for those who are blind?

1. First of all, let us consider those who see Jesus for who He is.

In our Palm Sunday passage from Luke, we are told that it was;

the whole crowd of (Jesus) disciples (who) began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
38"Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!"
"Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!"

Jesus’ disciples had been watching Jesus and listening to Him for months, even years. They had seen Him feed thousands with food sufficient for only a dozen. They had seen Him cast out demons and raise the dead. And as they listened and watched, they began to see Jesus for who He really is.

Let me remind our 21^st century ears that the proclamation we hear them declaring, as Jesus descends from the Mount of Olives.. the very place that generations of Jews had been told would announce Messiah’s appearance, (that what they were proclaiming) was a reference to Psalm 118... a song of thanksgiving sung in ancient Israel when the King returned to the Jerusalem temple after having been victorious in battle against an enemy.

The people would shout “Hosanna! (“save us!”), and the priests of the temple would pronounce the blessing upon the King: “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”.

Now, by the time Jesus came along, the Jews had been celebrating special holidays in Jerusalem for centuries, and that regal proclamation; “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”, had become a standard greeting for pilgrims entering Jerusalem for the festivals.

And yet, the Disciples’ words and their actions hint at something more. Jesus was no ordinary pilgrim arriving for the festival of the Passover, for the crowd does not proclaim “Blessed is the one who comes”... but rather, Luke records that the crowd proclaimed:

38 “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Also, in addition to their words, their actions were likewise proclaiming Jesus as their King, as they “spread their cloaks on the road”. This was a symbolic reenactment of the inauguration of King Jehu, a redeemer-King from Israel’s past (2 Kings 9) who had been anointed by Elisha to be the new King in Israel.

By word and action Jesus’ crowd of disciples is proclaiming that they see God at work in Jesus; Jesus the King, Jesus the anointed Messiah of God, Jesus who has come to earth with power.

Luke is very careful in his Gospel to let us know that the praises of the people that first Palm Sunday were based upon the power they had seen in Jesus’ life. They had seen His powers manifested through healings, through miracles, and through a unique ability to teach. Their eyes had been opened to see God working in Jesus. And while they were correct about what they saw, their expectation of what God was going to do in Jesus, was wrong.

Yes, God was working in Jesus.

Yes, they were right to proclaim him the King and God’s Messiah.

Yes Jesus came with power;

- showing a God of revelation through his teachings,

- a God of healing as He raised people from the dead, cured diseases and reversed birth defects, and

- a God of mercy who associated with and forgave sinful people, and even healed on the Sabbath despite religious opposition.

Yes, Jesus came with power, but God’s work would not be accomplished by exercising political power, a wish of the people. God’s work of salvation would be accomplished on a much grander scale through the power of God’s Spirit to transform sinful people into righteous people; people who freely choose to do what is right in God’s eyes.

A simple way to understand the scope God’s work through Christ’s death on the cross, is to remember that our God is a God of healing, and while He manifests Himself whenever an illness is cured, how much more would God be glorified if He eliminates all disease!

In Jesus, God is at work at the very source of our disease; our sin. Like Adam & Eve we all still have a free will, but what if God does something which changes our hearts so that we would always freely choose to live righteous lives?

What if, by God’s grace, all our sins can be forgiven, and the more we grasp God’s love for us in Christ, the fewer sins we commit tomorrow, and fewer still the following day? What would happen in a sinful world where the reality of God’s love becomes known to men and women, boys and girls, so that each one freely allows God to rule in their heart? Friends, that is called the Kingdom of God, and that is exactly what Jesus initiated in His coming, and perfectly modeled in His life.

Jesus came with power, enough power to easily overthrow the Roman oppressors so that God’s children could be politically free again, but He chose rather to lay down His power, to be nailed to a cross, and so offer salvation to all humanity.

For a little while, those disciples who saw who Jesus was; who declared His identity as He rode into Jerusalem.. for a while they would be disillusioned because their expectations would be shattered by the cross. But later, when they listened even more intently to the risen Christ, they would understand God’s work even more clearly, and more clearly see God in Christ.

Sometimes, like the crowd of disciples, we get some things rights about Jesus while some things we get wrong. But that’s okay.. God is God, and we’re human... we will not get it 100% correct this side of heaven. But like the early disciples, if we can see God in Christ Jesus, we will grow in our understanding of Him in this world, and we will begin to experience a salvation that will carry us into heaven.

Salvation is the gift for those who see and accept Him for who He is. But what are the consequences for those who are willfully blind, for

2. Those who fail to see Jesus for who He is.

It is in sharp contrast to the crowd of Jesus’ disciples who see Jesus for who He is that we encounter some of the Pharisees on this Palm Sunday.

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples!"

Rebuke? Why should Jesus rebuke them? Well, according to these Pharisees, this crowd was declaring something false; that Jesus was King, that Jesus was Messiah.

Pharisees, like Jesus’ disciples, had had their eyes on Jesus for some time now. But rather than seeking to know Jesus, Pharisees were often described in the gospel stories as seeking to trap Jesus. For some of the Pharisees Jesus was a threat to who they were. So, in order to protect themselves... to secure their identities as religious leaders, they needed to deny what they were seeing in Jesus.

Today we see the same dynamic in play whenever people try to protect their lifestyles, their identities by denying Jesus’ identity as Lord and Savior of all. For if he is, this means they would have to change.

Sometimes we deny the very truth of what we see with our own eyes, because we don’t want to change who we are and what we are doing. We don’t want to give up power, we don’t want to follow someone else’s lead.

I love what one commentator on the Gospel of Luke says about Jesus’ identity. Darrell Bock writes:

For the most part, he (Jesus) did not go around declaring who he was. He let others proclaim it and preferred to let his actions reveal his identity. Citation: Bock, Darrell L., Luke: The NIV Application Commentary, Zondervan, 1996, p. 497.

So why didn’t Jesus rebuke his crowd of disciples? Because, they were telling the truth about Him.

Jesus rebuked Peter earlier on, when Peter declared that Jesus would not suffer and die, because Peter was telling a lie. But there is no rebuke here despite what the Pharisees wanted to hear. Jesus is the long-awaited King and Messiah. Jesus allows his disciples to truthfully declare his identity.

In fact, such a declaration was so true that if Jesus’ disciples had not spoken up, the very stone walls of the temple would declare this truth.

40"I tell you," Jesus replied (to the Pharisees), "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."

I don’t know if anyone has ever told you that stones are more knowledgeable/truthful than you are, but that is what Jesus said to these Pharisees. Created things know who Jesus is; He is their Creator. But the free will of God’s greatest created beings blinded the Pharisees to Jesus’ identity, and that willful blindness had consequences.

When people fail to see God at work; when they fail to have faith in the One who was totally about God’s work, they will suffer consequences for their blindness.

In Isaiah 50, a powerful word describing the suffering Messiah, this prophetic word ends by offering us a choice:

Isaiah 50:10-11

10 Who among you fears the LORD
       and obeys the word of his servant?
       Let him who walks in the dark,
       who has no light,
       trust in the name of the LORD
       and rely on his God.

11 But now, all you who light fires
       and provide yourselves with flaming torches,
       go, walk in the light of your fires
       and of the torches you have set ablaze.
       This is what you shall receive from my hand:
       You will lie down in torment.

Whenever we fail to trust in the work of God, trusting rather in our own ways, there are consequences. Jesus declares:

The Old Testament spoke of God’s “visiting” or “coming to” his people in acts of deliverance or judgment. Here, the term refers to God’s work in Jesus, to bring us salvation. But in rejecting Jesus and the salvation and peace He offers, the people of Jerusalem are bringing judgment upon themselves. As surely as a drowning person will indeed drown if they fail to yield themselves to the saving grasp of a lifeguard, if we fail to allow Jesus to save us, we are choosing our destruction!

For Jerusalem and its people, this destruction occurred in 70 AD when Titus of Rome overran the city. The final act was a great siege described accurately by Jesus some 35 years beforehand: embankments, people encircled...hemmed in, slaughtered, total destruction... even the temple fell.

There are severe consequences for us when we fail to recognize the time of God coming to us. There are severe consequences for you, when you fail to recognize the time of God coming to you.

I am wondering if there are people here today who have been visited by God. Perhaps he has come to you through the loving Spirit of a follower of Christ. Perhaps God’s Word has touched your heart and your mind, and suddenly you see Jesus for who He is, the very salvation of God.

If so, today can be the day of your salvation if you will allow yourself to see who Jesus is, and declare Him Your King, our Messiah, your Savior. Will you?

In our passage from Luke 19, we are touched when we read that Jesus’ wept over Jerusalem, because He knew the consequence for failing to see the God who comes with peace and salvation.

Jesus is weeping for the very people who are about to kill Him; to follow the lead of their religious and political leaders who with eyes deliberately closed to the truth will torture and crucify Him.

Do you see in Jesus’ tears the very presence of God; a God of love, and mercy and forgiveness... a God who wishes to save you from the destruction of your sin?

How do you know that Jesus is God? Because everything Jesus did on earth, God has been doing all along; honoring our free will, but willing to do whatever is necessary to offer us salvation.

Will you accept it today and join your voice with Jesus’ disciples:

Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!"

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (r).