Psalm Sunday
Text: John 12
Proposition: Palm Sunday was a clash of nationalistic dreams and divine plans but they both had this in common, the outcome was to be a release from captivity.
Introduction: In 63 BC Julius Caesar was Emperor of Rome as his army marched into the country of Palestine liberating from the Syrians and placing it into servitude to Rome. Some 93 years later an event occurred which the people thought marked the end of this occupation, it’s was the day we call Palm Sunday. For us that would be like an enemy force being in power in Canada since 1922 and then comes the day that three generations have longed for and there is a nationalistic fervour that surprises everyone, everyone that is except Jesus. The people saw their captivity as a political one, Christ saw it as much deeper, far more lasting and a far more devastating captivity, a captivity to sin and death. Since there was such a difference of understanding between what the people expected and what Jesus intended let’s look closer to see what Palm Sunday was really intended to be for us, the events are described in John 12:12-16.
Verses 12,13 say, “The next day a great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him…”. The previous day had been the Sabbath, a Saturday and Jesus had spent that time with Martha and Mary and Lazarus in the town of Bethany. On the Sabbath Mary had taken a jar of Spikenard or Myrrh, worth 300 denarii, the equivalent of a years salary and poured all of it over Jesus’ head body and feet. The extravagance was shocking, the effect overwhelming, the meaning veiled to all except Jesus. She had anointed Him for death, by the next Sabbath Jesus would be dead and laid in a tomb. So it is the next day, Sunday morning, Jesus moves towards Jerusalem and as they leave Bethany He has two of His disciples go and get a young donkey upon which He intends to make His arrival into Jerusalem. They were less than two miles from Jerusalem when the smaller crowd that was with Him suddenly meets an even greater crowd that had come out from the city. Lazarus, the man raised from the dead, was one of the attractions but it was this Messiah who could tip the country upside down that they really wanted to come and urge on. The two crowds merge together, palm fronds waving like flags, the boughs and even their coats laid on the pathway for Jesus. John remembers their cries, “Hosanna!‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!’The King of Israel!” They were familiar words, words the people had actually sung as they had made their way to the Passover feast. It was a Hallel Psalm, just one the Psalms of ascent the people recited and sung as they made their way up to the Temple at Passover. These particular words are from Psalm 118, written by King David some 600 years earlier. Listen to what he writes in verses 22 –27 of Psalm 118: “The stone whichthe builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the LORD’s doing; It ismarvelous in our eyes. This is the day the LORD has made; We will rejoice and be glad in it. Save now, I pray, O LORD; O LORD, I pray, send now prosperity. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD!
We have blessed you from the house of the LORD. God is the LORD and He has given us light;
Bind the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar.”
For generations upon generations they had sung this Psalm and now it was Psalm Sunday, the day it was actually being fulfilled. Now when they cried out ‘Save now’, that’s what the word was ‘Hosanna’ means , they were actually witnessing it. The stone the Pharisees or ‘builders’ had rejected was Jesus, now as the chief cornerstone all would rest upon Him. This was the Lord’s doing, even more so than the Psalm might have inferred. It was a marvellous day that Psalm Sunday pictured, a day of rejoicing, a day that the Lord had made, a day when prosperity would be poured out upon the people of Israel and all mankind, a prosperity that would make them rich in a way that thieves could never touch nor moths could ever destroy. So they cry out ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.’ It makes you want to ask the question, ‘Just how was Jesus blessed as He entered Jerusalem that day? To be blessed means not just to be favoured but also full of joy. This Psalm Sunday would set into motion the final details needed for the redemption of all mankind. It was for the joy set before Him, even the joy that would come from what the cross would accomplish that blessed Jesus that day.
For years it had been as they had sung, “We have blessed you from the house of the Lord.” Then as this Psalm pointed the light straight into their eyes they became blinded to the very words they had proclaimed, “God is the Lord and He has given us light.” It was what Jesus had said to them again and again, He was not unclear about Who He is, from the time He read the Scripture of Isaiah to them in Nazareth to the days in the Temple when He had flipped over the tables of the money changers. Jesus claimed absolute equality with the Father. He had said, ‘Before Abraham was, I AM’, Self existence, Omnipotence even over death, Omniscience to know even their thoughts before they spoke… all the attributes of the Father are in Jesus. God is the LORD and He has given them light. But what was even more obscure to them, impossible to conceive or even contemplate was how the next line of this Psalm might possibly also relate to the Messiah.
“Bind the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar.” Could this their Messiah be bound with cords as the sacrifice was to be? Could He be the sacrifice, could He die and yet still be their Deliverer?
Psalm Sunday, it was like tomorrows news printed in yesterday’s paper, there to be read, there to ready them, just as the Scriptures are for us today.
Psalm Sunday, the Triumphal Entry of Christ into Jerusalem was a much misunderstood event so what was it really all about?
Let’s summarize it into four points:
1. It was to demonstrate the choice of Christ to lay His life down for us. Way before Mary anointed Him with Myrrh Jesus knew what was going to take place because of the Father’s love for you and I. In John 10:17,18 Jesus says, “Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father.” It is the choice of Jesus to give His life for us, no one, not the Romans and not even the Jews and the Pharisees took it from Him. He gave His life for you!
2. It was to reveal the sovereign design of God’s timing over man’s. The Pharisees and Sadducees much less the Romans had no intention of killing Jesus during the Passover Feast. To their eyes that would have turned the tide of public opinion against them. To the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, this Passover was the only time they had ever intended for this to be fulfilled.
3. It was to reveal to Israel and the Gentile peoples that Jesus is indeed the Messiah. The multitudes and even the children hail Jesus as the One who comes in the name of the LORD, the One who comes as was prophesied in 2 Samuel 7 to fulfill or continue and complete the kingdom of King David, a kingdom which would never end according to that prophecy. When the crowd hailed Him as the Messiah He did not try to quiet them. The Pharisees objected because they clearly realized what the crowd was saying about Jesus, that He is the long awaited Messiah. Do you remember Jesus words to them, “I tell you that if these were to be silent the stones themselves would immediately cry out.” Lk 19:40 Psalm Sunday is all about the revealing of the Messiah.
4. It revealed the kind of Messiah God had sent, it revealed the kind of saving they ultimately needed, it revealed the kind of love that God loved them with. The colt He rode upon, exactly as Zechariah 9:9 said He would, the gentleness of One who would not break a bent reed or put out a smoldering wick as Isaiah had said (42:3), the shepherd who would leave the 99 to go after the one. This is what Palm Sunday is all about, it is what Psalm Sunday has been whispering to us, shouting to us for almost 3000 years. It reveals the Father’s love for us...1 John 4:4 “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”