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G. K. Beale, in his book We Become What We Worship, wrote: “What people revere, they resemble, either for ruin or for restoration.”
Palm Sunday is about worship, the great need of this hour and every hour. The question is: what or who are we going to worship, and how is that worship going to change us and define us?
Luke’s account of the first Palm Sunday has some important things to teach us about worship. Let us see what Luke has to say in chapter 19, verses 28 through 48…
After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.
When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’” So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They said, “The Lord needs it.” Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power 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 heaven!”
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They 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.”
When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be a house of prayer’; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words.
The one sentence that most captures my attention in this passage consists of just four words: “The Lord needs it.” When Jesus sent his disciples into the village to get him a colt to ride on, he told them that if anyone asked why they were taking the colt they should reply, “The Lord needs it.”
What an amazing statement that is, when we realize who said it. The New Testament reveals Jesus to be God in human flesh. How can it be that the God of the universe needs anything? Diogenes Allen answers this question in this way in his book Finding Our Father….
He [God] humbles himself in that the goal of the universe is that he share his life with us, and we in him share our lives with each other. That is to say, he now needs us in order for there to be a kingdom of God…He neither needed to make realities nor to give them and himself a destiny to dwell in one another; for he had a complete and full life in himself without any other reality but his own. But by so doing, he now has a dependence on us for the consummation of creation and for his own satisfaction, one freely undertaken and because freely undertaken more profoundly humble and loving.
Thus, God chooses to need us. He does not have an absolute need of us, for he is complete in himself. However, when God chose to create us, then he also chose to need us to fulfill his plan. When God took on flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, he made it even clearer that he was choosing to need us because Jesus in his human flesh needed the help of others to carry out his purpose.
The Lord chose in creation, and in his incarnation, to need you and me to complete the work of his kingdom. He still chooses to need us.
A second thing we can see in this passage is that the Lord desires our praise.
Many scholars believe that Jesus planned his own parade on that first Palm Sunday. He had studiously up until that moment avoided public acclaim. Now he reached out for it. Jesus was carefully presenting himself as the Messiah that the people longed for. He entered Jerusalem in such a way as to focus the whole limelight on himself and to occupy center-stage.
Jesus was deliberately fulfilling the prophecy in Zechariah 9:9,
Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion!
Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
Righteous and having salvation,
Gentle and riding on a donkey,
On a colt, the foal of a donkey.
In this action Jesus came, as it were, with hands outstretched saying, “Even now, will you not take me as your king?”
When Jesus came near the place where the road went 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.” Notably, Jesus did not refuse their praise. Rather, he welcomed it.
To say that Jesus desires our praise is just as amazing as saying that he needs us. What a marvel! I like the way Joseph Bayley stands in awe before this truth in his Psalm for Palm Sunday…
King Jesus, why did you choose
a lowly ass to carry you to ride in your parade?
Had you no friend who owned a horse—
a royal mount with spirit for a king to ride?
Why choose an ass, small, unassuming beast of burden
trained to plow not carry kings?
King Jesus, why did you choose me,
a lowly unimportant person to bear you in my world today?
I’m poor and unimportant, trained to work, not carry kings—
let alone the King of kings,
and yet you’ve chosen me to carry you
in triumph in this world’s parade.
King Jesus, keep me small so all may see how great you are;
keep me humble, so all may say,
“Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord,”
not what a great ass he rides.[1]
Amazing but true: Jesus chooses to need us; he desires us to carry him through the world on hoof beats of praise.
Yet left to ourselves we do not praise God as we ought. Often, we do not recognize his presence with us, just as the citizens of Jerusalem did not recognize God coming to them in Jesus.
We read, “As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes…because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”
Jesus wept over Jerusalem because the people did not really know him as the Prince of Peace. He wept because they did not really see him for who he is and therefore could not praise him rightly. The praise that Jesus did receive on this day was fickle. In less than a week, their shouts of praise would turn to cries of “Crucify him!”
Do we worship Jesus in the way he deserves?
A Frenchman once commented that Americans have three idols: size, noise, and speed. True worship of the Lord cuts against the grain of such idol worship. True worship of Christ reminds us of the greatness of God, yes, but it also reminds us of how small we are. True worship is being still and knowing that he is God; true worship does not require any noise at all. True worship involves waiting upon the Lord. In a society that thrives on fast food, microwave ovens, one-minute managers, and thirty-second sound bites, we must beware of fast worship.
As Gordon Dahl has written, “Most middle-class Americans tend to worship their work, to work at their play, and to play at their worship. As a result…their life-styles resemble a cast of characters in search of a plot.”
Robert Shannon writes about a newspaper article that warned about buying meat in large quantities. The article reminded consumers that there is considerable shrinkage in the cutting and packing of meat. The person who buys a hundred-pound side of beef will not have a hundred pounds when he or she gets it home and in the freezer. Just so, there is also shrinkage of true worship of God in our world today.
What is the solution to the problem? If we are not praising God in the way we should, how can we change? I believe we need a total invasion of Jesus into our lives.
Jesus must enter our lives just as he entered the temple in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. He must come inside and “clean house” just as he cleansed the temple.
We need Jesus to come and live a new life in and through us. As Jesus taught in the temple and his voice echoed therein, so too must his voice fill every hall and chamber of our lives.
What does such a Jesus-invasion look like? Bill Wilson, former professor of psychiatry at Duke University, tells the story of Jesus’ invasion into his life. He was on a backpacking trip with his son’s Boy Scout troop when the change took place. He described it in these words…
My thoughts wandered back to the morning worship service and the strange effect it had on me. As a man of science in a field where religion was often viewed with skepticism, the idea of a living God had always seemed remote and archaic. But there was nothing outdated about the morning’s message—God wanted us to be clean and healthy, inside as well as out, in order to be the kind of human beings He had designed us to be. Inherent in that concept, pure and simple, was the essence of modern psychiatry.
Ruefully, I recalled the emptiness and lack of purpose I often felt. I also thought about my nasty temper and the way it often caused me to hurt the ones I loved most.
What was it, I wondered, that could possibly clean up the inside of my life?
It suddenly became clear to me that the only true way for me to clean up my life and be completely fulfilled wasn’t through science—through medicine or psychiatry. It was through God. Looking out over the placid waters of Basswood Lake, I knew that this was what I needed and wanted more than anything in the world—for God to come into my life and make me whole.
Before I knew it, tears were streaming down my face. As the sunset I had been watching melted into a golden blur, I felt as though I’d been dropped in a bucket of love. It was a feeling of love—of being loved—unlike anything I’d ever known. It bathed the deepest recesses of my soul, washing away all loneliness, despair, guilt, and anger. As I basked, dumbfounded in the experience, an awesome thing began to happen. Gradually, I became aware of a Presence. Someone was with me!
This someone, I perceived, was not only responsible for all the love I had been experiencing—He was the incarnation of Love Himself. It was then that I knew I was in the presence of God. He was real. He was truly with me.
Bill Wilson did not know it at the time, but that was the beginning of Jesus’ invasion into his life. There were many changes yet to come, but that was the start.
I wonder: will we allow Jesus to invade our lives today and fill them with his love? If we do, then I believe our lives will become endless acts of praise to our God.
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