Luke 19:28-40
And when he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ you shall say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.’” So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” And they said, “The Lord has need of it.” And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
Grace, mercy and peace to you, from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen, we are in the beginning of the Church year during the season of Advent, Advent. So everything is about the coming of our King, Jesus Christ. We're preparing for his birth and for his return on the last day, which means we get a reading that we are used to reading during Lent, right? I bet you saw the reading from Luke And you thought, wait a second, didn't we skip ahead? Isn't this the end of the story and not the beginning? Shouldn't we be reading about Mary and the angel or Zechariah in the temple? Why Palm Sunday today? Well, Advent is all about the arrival of Jesus Christ. It's about the coming of the King. And why not celebrate the entrance of the King into his holy city on the beginning of the time that we talk about the entrance of the King into our lives. And so we see Jesus coming into Jerusalem just as He comes to us with shouts of Thanksgiving. And so we celebrate His coming that first time, his coming to us now and his future return, and we use the words just like the people did then, words that the church has sung for 2000 years. They go something like, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. That's what the crowd was doing on the day that Jesus was coming into Jerusalem. Luke records this as he was drawing near, already, on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen. They used this word, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Other gospels also recall the words Hosanna in the highest probably remember them. We shout that while we wave the palm branches. In a few months, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Now, what were the mighty works that the people had seen that they were celebrating the coming King? You know the Gospels Well, we hear about the miracles in the Gospel of Luke just before this, Jesus healed a blind man who saw him on his way to Jerusalem and cried out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. On Thanksgiving Eve, we read the story about how Jesus healed 10 lepers and only one returned to give thanks. Before that, we see a woman on the Sabbath day who is hunched over and unable to stand up, and Jesus heals her, she can straighten her back. But perhaps the biggest one that happens before this story is found in Luke chapter seven, where Jesus comes to a town called Nain, it reads, as he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her, and when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said to her, Do not weep. Then he came up and touched the buyer, and the bearers stood still, and he said, Young man, I say to you, arise. And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying A great prophet has arisen among us, and God has visited his people in. And this report about Him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country. That sounds like a pretty cool miracle, doesn't it? The dead man sat up. What kind of great work could it be? But it wasn't just the miracles. Jesus was the kind of guy who taught sinners and ate with them, much to the chagrin of the Pharisees. He forgave people. That is why the crowds gathered together as Jesus rode in on a donkey, and why they crowd out, cried out, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. But the funny thing is, is they hadn't seen anything yet. They didn't know what Jesus was about to do, the amazing miracle that would be accomplished when he would go to the cross. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord? In the earliest days, the church sang that song. We actually have it coming up in our liturgy today, called the Sanctus. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord Hosanna in the highest we don't know when that song began. We don't have records of the first time it was sung in the church. We do for most of the liturgy, but not that one goes perhaps all the way back to the very beginning, maybe even the apostles sang it about the same time that we do. In fact, it could be that each of the Gospels records this song because that's what they sang. Altogether Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. You see, they were remembering the greatest work that Jesus had done, the work that came after this story, the work that we all know very well that after he entered into into Jerusalem, he was arrested on Monday, Thursday, he was brought before the High Priest and put on trial and falsely accused by false witnesses who said all sorts of lies about him. He was beaten by them and the guards, and then he was taken to Pontius Pilate, where He was whipped and beaten again and had a crown of thorns placed on his head, and he was finally nailed to a cross, an innocent man, where he died. He was taken down and placed in a tomb, and a stone rolled over the entryway, and three days later, when the angel rode the stone back, they discovered the tomb was empty, that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead, the greatest and mightiest work of all. What better work could teach us to sing Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord Hosanna in the highest the church has sung this song all the way back into the earliest of days. It was one of the ways that Jesus encouraged the church when they remembered his great works under the persecutions of the early Roman Empire, the worst of which was done by the Emperor Diocletian. It's pretty amazing to me that the worst persecution happened right before Christianity was legalized, because the next emperor Constantine made it legal. Diocletian was a pretty bad man. He hated us. His big program was to get the bishops and the pastors to give up their holy books, The Holy Scriptures, so they could be burned. And if we refused, the pastors and bishops would be hamstrung. What that means is they would cut the hamstring of one leg and the Achilles of the other. Pretty awesome, right? Sounds great. When the Council of Nicea happened after Diocletian was gone, the most respected names were the ones who couldn't walk to the front to talk, but had to be carried because they stood firm, firm in the Savior.
A firm in the promises and the great glory of the miracle that he did when he died and rose from the dead, encouraged by the great and mighty work of our Savior to remain faithful. And this is why, even through all that difficulty, they still saying the words, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Because they knew the power and the promise of what Christ has done, they praised their god for the great works that they did among them, encouraging and sustaining them through the worst of it all, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord? We too sing that song. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord? Because we have no shortage of wonderful promises and great works that God has done among us too. We certainly remember that great death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but just as much we remember how that has sustained us and kept us as we come forward and receive His Body and Blood, we remember all the times that he has sustained us through the worst. He's forgiven our sins, comforted us when we mourn, strengthened us in loss, encouraged us to persevere through difficult times and temptation. When I got here, I did the thing that pastors do, rummaged through storage units, because sometimes you just gotta figure out what's there and know what's going on. And I found something cool. Wasn't terribly long ago, maybe about a year ago. I found a box of old VHS tapes. They had library slips. I guess you used to be able to check out these VHS. And there were about 11 of them, and we got some really cool stuff in there. One you can see on our YouTube channel. It's a documentary of the building of mackenson, you know, the preschool building. It's about 50 minutes long, pretty cool. We have a concert and an Advent service. So that's unlisted for copyright reasons, but the one that makes me think about this passage today is one called a message to the troops of Desert Storm, which we put together in the 1990s you don't have to raise your hand if you were here. Don't worry. What it is. It's about 20 minutes of recording of our congregation encouraging our members who had to leave and go overseas, reminding them that not only is Christ with them, but their community was too. And it's fun. I watched most of it, you get to see like individual families wishing them well. Our choir sings a song, pretty fun. But this is more than just a a group of people offering good wishes. What it is, is a sign that Christ's Body and Blood have bound us together as a people, because if you look around, most of us don't have a ton in common. Do we? We don't didn't grow up in the same neighborhoods. We're not bound by family, but we are bound by Jesus Christ, as we come together with his body and his blood, and this is the reason we are bound to each other and encourage each other, why we put together that message back then, and why we do it today now too, as we gather together Around Christ in his body and his blood to receive Him and encourage one another. It's not because we're the greatest people of all, but because Christ has unified us in Him to encourage one another, to support one another and to see the amazing works of salvation delivered every single Sunday. And just as Christ preserved his church through the emperors and the persecutions, he continues to do so today through his body and blood. And this is the great. Work that we see among us, the amazing power of Jesus Christ, and why the church still sings when He comes to us with His body and His blood. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, because we praise our great king for the mighty works that he has done among us? Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. What a great song that is, because we're looking forward to a day when we get to sing it one final time. Right? The season of Advent is mostly about getting ready for Christmas, right? You're probably pulling out your your manger scenes, getting the shepherds out and the roof, the little manger with the hay, Mary and Joseph and all that stuff. You might even be decorating your home, getting ready for all of that, but we're also getting ready for the last day, not the day when Jesus came lowly and meek, but the day when he comes with power and might we're getting ready for the day when we sing that song one last time, when we can look up into heaven and sing, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, and we will see the final mighty work of our Savior and King, as he calls all of us out of the ground, every human being who has ever lived and gathers us before his judgment throne to give us eternal life. But better than riding in on a donkey, better than palm branches being waved on high, our Savior will come finally with power and might and give us the life that we have been waiting for. Finally give the fullness of the salvation that He delivers every single Sunday here, on that day, we will cry out one last time Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord, Peace in heaven and glory in the highest, in Jesus name Amen. Amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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