Rock Concert
SBS: It is good to be back. For me I mean, I feel sorry for you. Next week is Easter and I will be preaching. I will promise you two things. First, if you bring a visitor I will not embarass them. I will not say “hey, I think I saw some of you last Christmas and you were wearing the same outfit.” I want them to come back, and embarassing them is not the way to acomplish that. Second, I promise that I will do my best to give them the gospel. I will be preaching a method on ‘can a sceptic believe in the ressurection?’ I will be trying to show that Christianity is not a foolish belief for weak minded who need to be coddoled at night because they are afraid. I will be trying to show that Christianity, unlike all other religions is historically defensable and that defense is based upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
So I would like to ask that each of you do your best to bring someone with you. At the end of that service I am going to ask everyone to bow their heads, and then ask those who are convicted by the Spirit to raise their hands if they would like for me to pray for them. After that I will ask them to meet me in the back of the sanctuary if they would like to know more about becoming a Christian. I would like to ask all of you who are trained in EE to please be available so that I can turn these interested people over to you as they come to me. Let’s begin now to pray that the Lord would give us a great day for his glory.
PRAYER: Our Father and Our God, be with us now as we think about your son and our saviour. Guide our thoughts, guard our hearts, and bless our souls. May you bless those who are downhearted here today and lift them up; may you break those who are proud and take them down; may you show those who do not know you that there is no hope apart from Jesus who was crucified, died, and resurrected. Father may we lift him up and not ourselves. May you take these poor words and use them as only you can. May you take this broken instrument and have it sound forth the music of your grace. We pray this in the name of our most gracious saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen
About a year ago I decided that I would take a red pen and underline every person in the book of Luke. I wanted to see how many of them were down and out in one way or another (and many of them are). I underlined the shepards, the lepers, the bent woman and the little man. Then I came to verse 40 of today’s reading and I realized that every person in the book was replacable by a rock. That Jesus is saying that he is such a great king that if people did not rise up to tell of his greatness, the rocks would do so. That made me ask some questions about Jesus, and I want to share those questions with you today. These questions will help us to realize that JESUS IS MORE THAN JUST A KING, HE IS THE KING. If you have not recognized him as the king, you are in grave trouble.
Standard Outline (headings and body text)
WHO IS HE? He is a king. vv. 29-30
He shows his royalty by commandeering a colt.Zechariah 9:9
9 “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation,
Lowly and riding on a donkey, A colt, the foal of a donkey.
He shows his royalty by riding into the city. When he told the disciples that he was going to ride into the city they must have shouted “finally we are going to be able to kick the tires and light the fires; finally we can knock down some of these crazy mean romans”
WHAT DID HE DO? He showed the strangeness of his kingdom v.31-35
The Kingdom is miraculous-he rides an unbroken animal through a wild screaming crowd “Whitfield said that the reason that animals bark or hiss and run away from us is that they know that you have a quarrel with their master.” C. S. Lewis in The Four Loves says “man with dog closes a gap in the universe.” We love our dogs(mostly) and they give us their unyeilding trust. That is a small tiny snippit of they way things are supposed to be
The Kingdom is a paradox-He rides a donkey. The disciples must have told him no, this is not the way we had it planed You can’t win the election this way. The king is supposed to ride in on a great white steed not a small grey donkey.
WHY DID HE DO IT? He showed the kind of king he really was.
He rode in to show that there would be some who would love him. v. 36-38 2 Kings 9:13
13 Then each man hastened to take his garment and put it under him on the top of the steps; and they blew trumpets, saying, “Jehu is king!”
He rode in to show that there would be some who would hate him. v. 39
He rode in to show that it did not matter because God will always have his worshipers. v. 40
Isaiah 55:12 “For you shall go out with joy, And be led out with peace; The mountains and the hills Shall break forth into singing before you, And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Josiah when he was five- “That was the best day ever. I got to ride in a real limo and watch TV and I got to have my picture taken with Spiderman.” I couldn’t help but think that he would have many, many better days in his life. And so will we when the kingdom is fully come and we sit at the banquet table with Abraham and David and our good friend Matthew. If the trees are going to clap their hands and the rocks are going to cry out, imagine what we will do. What a day, what a time, what a kingdom, don’t miss out because you followed the wrong king.