Dennis Tuuri

# John 12:12-19

Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

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 and cried out, “Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, King of Israel.” Then Jesus, when he had found a young donkey, sat in it, as it is written, “Fear not, daughter of Zion. Behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt.” His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written about him, and that they had done these things to him.

Therefore, the people who were with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead bore witness. For this reason, the people also met him because they heard that he had done this sign. The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, “You see that you are accomplishing nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.”

Let’s pray. Ah, Father, we thank you for your omnipotence, for your might, your power, and your sovereignty, and your saving grace. We thank you that even out of the mouths of your enemies come forth truth about the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that we would understand this text so that we would see indeed what history shows—the world going after and following and submitting to the Lord Jesus Christ.

We know that apart from the Holy Spirit, we can’t understand this text. We thank you, Father, for the reminder of that in this text itself, that disciples had to wait until the outpouring of the Holy Spirit until the fulfillment of the work of our Lord Jesus Christ before they could understand what these scriptures meant and the significance of them. So we pray now that your Spirit would enlighten our understanding of this text, that you would transform us, Lord God, by this word that is powerful and living, cutting us apart and bringing us back together in submission to Jesus Christ. In his name we ask this. Amen.

Please be seated.

—

Another beautiful mountain as we go through the Gospel of John, seeing these various sections. Every time we take a little turn and move from one narrative to another, another beautiful picture of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ presents itself to us for us to praise him for and to be transformed by him.

John chapter 12 has been talked about by some commentators as a chapter of honor. We saw last week that Mary honored the Lord Jesus Christ with a year’s worth of wages—at least that’s the value of the nard that she used to anoint him with for his burial. We see here that the crowds honor the Lord Jesus Christ at his triumphal entry. This is a Palm Sunday sort of event here, and we actually preached on this at Palm Sunday on other texts having to do with this. So the crowds honor him here, and then we’ll see immediately after this in verse 20 that the Greeks, the Gentiles, come and seek Christ. So they honor Jesus by seeking him.

These are different kinds of honor, but honor nonetheless. And then Jesus, in the context of the further development of the chapter, prays and receives the assurance from God that God will glorify him and honor him as well. And here in this text we even see the Pharisees. The primary text, of course, is the honor of those that thronged his entry into Jerusalem with the beginning of Passion Week, the week that would culminate in his death and resurrection. Certainly that’s the focal point. But at the end we have this kind of nice climax to the text where even the enemies of the Savior do him honor by saying, “The whole world has gone after him.”

We’re going to talk today about what makes reference to what we talked about last week and then see significance from that to this week. One of the common devices I use to teach young people what we’re going to focus on today is simply the name of Jesus Christ. Jesus is both Jesus and he is Christ. The angel said that his name would be Jesus because he would save his people from their sins. And Christ is the anointed one, the great Messiah who was to come.

So we see in the adoration of Mary from last week’s message the requirement that we have to adore our Savior, the one who would raise us from the dead as he raised Lazarus from the dead, the one who would raise our loved ones who are believers in him from the dead. And we have this adoration of Mary put forth in the first eleven verses of John chapter 12. But here we see the acclamation, the shouting forth of the praises, that Jesus is not simply a Savior. He is the Savior-King. And that’s what Jesus Christ means—we can think of it that way: Savior-King.

So we’re going to move from this adoration that we spoke about last week to now the submission and obedience and praise that results from understanding that Jesus Christ is King. That’s what we’re going to do today. We want to look at the text briefly as we consider this.

Let me just note in passing that this triumphal entry is one of the few actual narrative events that is in all four Gospels. The feeding of the five thousand is another. So this is a critical event. John puts his own particular spin on it. The assumption here is that we’ve read the other triumphal entry accounts in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which were written about every ten years between 30 AD and 70 AD. The original audience had become well acquainted with the stories of the triumphal entry. John now puts out a version that sort of caps it all off for us. This is a truncated version but a very significant one. In its truncation, it helps us to see sort of the central point of what’s going on here.

I’ve done for you in your outline first of all we’ll take a look at the text itself the way it’s laid out. We’ll talk through the presentation here given to us in verses 12 to 19. One thing I wanted to point out with this outline that you should have in front of you is that we have kind of multitudes at the beginning and multitudes at the end, and then a comment by these Pharisees. In between the statement of the multitudes is what they say, and then what Jesus does.

So we’ve got some people here who are coming out and saying something to him. Then we’ve got the record of what they do. They take palms and they say some things, their acclamation and praise of him. He then responds to them by getting on a donkey. That’s the way this account wants it to be. This is how John has structured this account. He’s pointed out these details: that they acclaim him and then he gets on the donkey. When John does that, it presents his mounting the donkey to ride as his response to the people.

Then it gives us an explanation, quoting from Zechariah, about what this donkey signifies. Then we go back and we read again why the people were out there. We find out that the first group being talked about are those from the countryside who are coming to Jerusalem for the great feast of Passover and who had knowledge of the Lazarus event. They actually had been close to what was going on there.

Then by the end of the account, we read that there’s another group of people. What I’m talking about here is found in verses 17 and 18: “Therefore, the people who were with him when he called Lazarus out of his tomb and raised him from the dead bore witness. So it seems like it wants us to identify this first group of people that are shouting out these acclamations to our Savior with those who had actually seen him call Lazarus from the dead. These were people out in the countryside who were coming into Jerusalem, and then when he came in, they came in as well, and they had seen him do this act.

But verse 18 says there’s another group of people: “For this reason the people also met him because they heard that he had done this sign.” So we have two groups of people—those that saw the sign, those that heard that he had done the sign.

So we say the multitude at the beginning, multitude at the end, and explain there are actually two groups kind of coalescing together. Those that had seen the event, those coming from Jerusalem who heard about the event. In the middle of that, we have this dialogue: a statement from the people to Christ, the response of the Lord Jesus Christ to their statement. And I think it’s pretty important that we understand what that response is and what it isn’t.

—

Now, their witness to Christ is found beginning in verse 13. The first thing they do is they take branches of palm trees and go out to meet him. So what is the palm tree? Well, most of you are aware of the fact that palm trees were traditional homage given to kings. Now, typically when we read the scriptures, we want to interpret these events and what the scriptures say about the particular thing going on. But here we want to look at the historical surrounding, because these people were part of what for them was present life, not history.

In their recent history, about a hundred years before, palm branches were used to welcome into Jerusalem someone who had done his thing by defeating the Roman enemy. So the palms used for one coming into Jerusalem describe kingly rule, the one who will defeat all of our enemies for us. It had been used in this way several times. It’s interesting that some of the rebels at various times in this particular period of Jewish history would make coins and they would stamp them with the palm frond as a picture that we’re going to be victorious over our enemies.

So the palm branches certainly talk about a conquering king, and this procession of the Lord Jesus Christ and the adoration of the people as he proceeds into be with them in Jerusalem is as the conquering king. Certainly these palm branches were primarily identified in the scriptures with the feast of Tabernacles. Some people say they preserve the palms from the feast of Tabernacles, but they were also used at Passover. So in history then, palm fronds were used at Passover and Tabernacles.

Jesus is coming in at his last Passover. He’ll die in five days. He’ll be crucified. And so the Passover allusion here is certainly that he is the Paschal lamb come to give his life for the sins of the world. Jesus will save his people by his work on Passover weekend. But we also have with the insertion of these palms something that would make us think of people living in the context of palm fronds and using them at the feast of Tabernacles.

So we have this spring festival where the picture is the death of the lamb of God to save his people. And then at the end of the Jewish cycle given in Leviticus 23 is the feast of Tabernacles, where the effect of that redemption has worked itself out and now we get together and have a big eight-day long party celebration—I mean, sanctified, but very joyous.

Now, I think that we can see in this Passover and Tabernacles (or booths) something interesting. I was talking to one of the young people at church. They thought the feast of booths was where people got together and sold things because there were all these booths and booths where people sell things, you know. No, they lived in the booths. That’s what it means. Young people, they lived in little makeshift structures made out of palm branches and other kinds of branches.

But we can see in this Passover and Tabernacles Jesus Christ again, right? We can see the salvation that’s affected at Passover with his death and resurrection. And then we can see the effect of that being worked out really over the whole course of history. All the nations are being redeemed and brought into the church of Jesus Christ. And that’s pictured by that end of the season, the ingathering—everything’s harvested now. Not just the bread’s ready, but now the wine’s ready. And we rejoice at Tabernacles: the joy of having a king who has saved us from all of our enemies and whose kingdom fills the world.

And we can see that here just in these palm branches if we think about it just a little bit. So we can see Passover and Tabernacles, Jesus Christ. We can also see something else, and some of you young people that have taken some of my Bible classes will know what I’m talking about here. Luke Skywalker—the picture of the hero in the Star Wars episodes. Well, Skywalker is what Jesus is. It’s what God is. He walks on the sky.

In the other triumphal entry accounts, these branches that are normally at the top, big top of palm trees, right? They’re now down here. And Jesus is walking on them. It’s a way to dramatically represent that Jesus is walking on the clouds. He’s the one who dwells in heaven, and he’s got majesty because he’s a Skywalker—he’s above it all. He is transcendent. And I think that’s a biblical theme. Not just because it sounds cool, but because in Deuteronomy 33, why don’t you turn here so you won’t think I’m making this up.

Deuteronomy 33, beginning at verse 26. “There is no one like the God of Jeshurun, who rides the heavens to help you.” See? He rides on the heavens. The God of the scriptures, Jesus Christ, is one who rides on the heavens to help you. They’re calling out, “Hosanna, save us.” And it’s now a description of praise as well. And he answers, “Fear not. I’m going to—I’m riding on the heavens here. I’m walking on the palm branches to save you.”

“There is no one like the God of Jeshurun who rides the heavens to help you. And in his excellency on the clouds, he’s the Skywalker, he’s cloud walker, right? His transcendence means that his victory over all enemies of his people is assured. Verse 27: “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. He will thrust out the enemy from before you and will say, ‘Destroy.’ Then Israel shall dwell in safety, the fountain of Jacob alone, in a land of grain and new wine; his heavens also shall drop dew. Happy are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord, the shield of your help, and the Lord of your majesty? Your enemies shall submit to you, and you shall tread down their high places.”

So we find out that not just Jesus is a Skywalker, but we’re Skywalkers. We’re Luke Skywalkers. We’re going to tread down their high places. We’re going to be above. We’re seated with Christ in the heavenlies. And we have this same thing. We’re called as kings and queens under the Lord Jesus Christ to exercise dominion in the world. So it refers to us. Deuteronomy 33 is an important reference to that.

Now it’s important to note here in passing that in verse 26, “He rides the heavens to help you.” That’s one aspect of kingship that’s being affirmed in our text in John. And “in his excellency on the clouds”—that’s another aspect. When we think of King Jesus, as we’ll see in this text, he is the one who’s going to defeat all of our enemies. But he is King. His excellency is in the clouds. He deserves honor, worship, ascription of praise to him because he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And that’s what these people are doing.

So we have a witness to Jesus here consisting of palms referring to his kingship and these palms also referring to him being the God who would deliver us from our enemies. And they also then speak loud praises to Jesus. They take palms and went out to meet him and they cried out. They spoke loudly.

And if I missed this point later on, I’m going to make it now. This is a praise and worship service in a sense that we have going on in this text, and it should remind us of something that we spent four weeks on prior to Easter if you’ve been with us that long, if you’ve heard the sermons. What is it? It’s going to be referred to in the very text here. He refers to these people as the daughter of Zion.

Remember David? The ark comes to Jerusalem and David dances and worships and creates music to be sung and instruments to be played with the advent of the ark. Well, here it is. Here’s the ark of rule and authority—the Lord Jesus Christ—making advent to Jerusalem, and the people are to engage in what they do here. Shout forth and cry out from Psalm 118, from the psalter. The culmination of that is the last psalm, 118. Then comes the giving of the law at 119. The structure of that part of the psalter culminates in the height of all of that. You know, they’re crying out, “Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

So they’re doing just what we learned to do for four weeks from Zion worship. That’s what they’re doing. They’re rejoicing with loud praises before their King. And our worship, you know, our worship must have the adoration of Mary, the special presence of Christ. It also must have the ascription of honor and worthiness to Christ the King that we find from these crowds here. And it should be a joyous acclamation with loud voices praising the Lord Jesus Christ. We should cry out. We should have loud praise.

It’s interesting. We had an RCC planning session yesterday—strategic planning, what we’re doing as a church. Very excited about it. I’ll talk more about that in just a minute. But we were trying to talk about what another word for worship would be, what our song should be like. And we were talking about the word praise. But our songs also are sometimes a petition. And you know, does praise encompass all of that? Or is praise and petition separate?

Well, it’s interesting that this word that they say here, Hosanna, comes from Psalm 118. And it originally meant “save us”—”Come God and save us.” But by this time, quite early on, it had become an ascription of praise. So in this word, we see that petition and praise come together in this single word that’s used, Hosanna, to sing forth the beauties of the Lord Jesus Christ coming as King. In other words, petitions of the King made in the name of the King are also an ascription of praise, because he shall surely do what he has promised to do.

So our petitions have underpinning them this assurance that Jesus Christ is moving to defeat all of our enemies—our sins and our external enemies as well. So they cry out, and what they cry out here is Hosanna—prayer and praise from Psalm 118. They also say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” who his authority is based upon the fact that he comes in the name of the Lord. He is the Lord and he comes in the authority of the Lord. And so that’s important as we’ll point out a little bit later. This is also a citation from Psalm 118: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

And then they say, “The King of Israel.” Now this is not from Psalm 118. This is actually from Zechariah 9. And Jesus’s response to get on a donkey is also from Zechariah 9. And we’ll look at that in just a minute.

So we’ve got these multitudes from the country. We’ve got them witnessing to Jesus. In this witnessing, they do it with the use of palms. They do it with the use of loud praises. And then Jesus responds to them.

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Now there’s lots of ways this response is understood. And I just want to give you clearly and kind of simply what’s going on here. It’s not easy to understand. We know the disciples didn’t understand it. It is a bit of an enigmatic response, but it is a response nonetheless. And we want to let scripture interpret it for us rather than our presuppositions that we bring to the text.

So turn to Zechariah 9. The response of Jesus is to get on a donkey. And then this response is explained to us by the divine author of scripture by Jesus as being a fulfillment of Zechariah 9. Now Zechariah 9, verse 9: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion.” And in the text, Jesus gets a young donkey and he says, “Fear not, daughter of Zion.” He doesn’t say this, but it is linked as an interpretation of his actions, divinely inspired in verse 15.

So they’ve quoted from Zechariah 9. His response is to fulfill prophecy from Zechariah 9. Verse 9 says, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem. Lo, your King comes to you, triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations. His dominion shall be from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.”

Now, some commentators say that what Jesus is doing here by getting on the donkey is to blow apart their expectations of who he is. They expect him to come in and make war on Rome. He comes in instead and becomes like a humble guy, and instead of driving a big SUV, he’s got a little Beetle or something. That’s what they kind of interpret it as. And I’ve interpreted it that way myself. But I think what we have to place to balance that view is this: In the scriptures, kings are certainly forbidden to multiply horses to wage offensive war. Israel was to fight defensive wars. But there is no linkage between riding on a donkey and assuming the office of King.

And in fact, what we find—and we won’t look up these places, but you’ll just have to take my word and look them up later—in Judges 10, verse 4, it was a noble animal. The donkey was a noble animal. Jair the judge had 30 sons who rode on these kind of beasts, on donkeys. So riding is associated with donkeys in Judges 10. Ahimaaz rode upon an ass in 2 Samuel 17:23, and Mephibosheth, the royal prince, the son of King Saul, came to David riding upon a donkey.

And indeed our Savior, in his response here to get on the donkey, I don’t think we have to see it as contrast to what the people are saying, but rather as affirmation of what they’re saying. Hosanna, blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel. He’s not saying, “I’m not King.” He is absolutely declaring the fact that he is King. With his reference to Zechariah 9, he is saying, “Yes, you’re right. I am the King of Israel. I identify myself to you as coming on a donkey as King of Israel.”

And he actually, if you look at the whole context of Zechariah 9, it’s a big promise that he’s going to judge those that would oppress his people. So he will get rid of all oppressors of his people, including Rome if she becomes an oppressor of his people, which she was. So it seems to me that Jesus here, in his response, has to be understood as essentially saying, “Yes, you’re right. I am a King, and I am the Prince of Peace. Ultimately, my mission is not warfare. Ultimately, my mission is peace.” The sign of the donkey rather than the horse of war demonstrates this.

Now, if you say that Jesus rode on a donkey instead of a horse because he didn’t want anything to do with the manifestation of kingly reign, what are you going to do with Revelation 19? Because in Revelation 19, he’s pictured as riding upon a horse. And he is waging offensive war. Now, he’s waging it with the word that comes out of his mouth, right? And the warfare is first and foremost and essentially against sin and not against people that we don’t like. All of those things are corrections we can bring to the text.

But it seems to me that the fact that his response here has to be understood, at least in John’s Gospel, as telling us that Jesus is asserting the truth of what they say. He says that he indeed has brought salvation and kingship. Both Jesus and Kings ride donkeys and horses. And then as the text proceeds, we have the correct understanding of what He’s telling them.

Then it goes on to say again that there were two groups of people that are brought together in this. These two groups of people are those from the countryside and those from the city. Those that had seen what happened with Lazarus and those that had heard about it in the context of Jerusalem. So we have, and then at the end of this account, we have the interpretation of the whole thing. You know, we have out of the mouths of babes come truth. Well, here out of the mouths of rebels—the Pharisees now, the conservatives who are planning to put Jesus to death—we have the interpretation of this entire incident, the climax of it in verse 19.

And they say, “You know what? We’ve done nothing good. The whole world has gone after him.” So we have this statement that there are two groups, right? Those that had seen, those that had heard, and then the Pharisees say, “The whole world has gone after him.” And it seems like the placement of those things together indicates that there is unity now of groups that were normally diverse. We can think of them as the country people and the city people, and this unity is brought about because of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they represent to the Pharisees all of the world going after the Lord Jesus Christ.

So out of the mouths of rebels comes this word. And if that isn’t enough—I mean, if we think, “Well, maybe they’re not telling the truth”—the very next verse that starts a new section, a new narrative section, begins at verse 20 by saying, “Now there were certain Greeks among those who came up to worship at the feast, and they want to see Jesus.” So no sooner does the text record for us this wonderful unified representation of Christ the King, and then the Pharisees interpreting it (“The whole world is going after him”), and then the text tells us indeed that the Greeks even are coming seeking the Lord Jesus Christ.

So that’s the interpretation. This is a delicious piece of text, all with good news, with all good news and with news that is important and significant as we seek to honor the Lord Jesus Christ in our own lives.

—

So my comments on the text have to do with honoring Jesus Christ. And my first comment on this text is that we honor Jesus Christ by worshiping the Savior King on the Lord’s Day.

So we’re going to relate this, as we did last week, to the special presence of Jesus Christ. There is this relationship. We have Mary with her adoration of Jesus, who had saved Lazarus from death and from his sins. And now we have the crowds and Christ—the crowds giving honor to the Savior King, the King, the Lord Jesus Christ, and shouting forth and singing loud the praises to him and engaging in liturgical actions of palms that sing forth his praises as King. Mary and Jesus. And now we have the crowds and the Lord Jesus Christ.

One commentator put it this way: that in these things it bespeaks both his dignity and his honor, which we must adore, and his dominion and power to which we must submit. So we must both adore the Savior Jesus, but we also must submit to the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so these two poles of what we do in Lord’s Day worship are presented to us here.

We have on the one hand that Jesus is the Savior from death—focused on in the Mary account—and here we have the focus on Jesus as the reigning King. So again, children: Jesus Christ, Savior King. And in the worship of the church, it is to call us to both adoration as well as loud acclamation of who he is.

There is this silent adoration of Mary, without words, with actions that represent her adoration of him. But then there is the loud, joyful Zion worship, proclamation that the crowds enter into in this scene of the triumphal entry. And both of these things inform us on our worship and Lord’s Day services to the Lord Jesus Christ. On the one hand, we have great love and adoration for the one who has saved us and our loved ones from sin and death. And to complement that, we should come with a great sense of submission to the King of Kings.

You know, if all we think about is Jesus as the Savior without him being our reigning King, we’re messed up. And if all we think about in terms of Jesus is that he is this great sovereign who rules over us, and we don’t understand his great love and submit to that, receive it, and adore him for it, then again, see, we’ve fallen into a particular ditch in our consideration of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You see, the two ditches are that he is either Jesus or he is Christ. And in these two narrative accounts, it brings together to us both salvation and his universal kingship and reign. He is Jesus Christ, and our worship must be focused upon that.

We can talk about this economically as a picture of this in terms of offerings and tithes. Well, last week, you know, what we saw was the adoration. We talked about special offerings. This week, while the text doesn’t talk about tithes or that, we understand that, as we’re informed by the Old Testament, the tribute offering—which was one of the five offerings that was part of regular offering—was always ascribed to or put in context to the ascension offering. The tribute offering, the word used is the joyful tribute that people would pay to their King or sovereign. And I believe the tithe is that joyful tribute that we pay as our taxes to King Jesus.

And that’s not enough. We’re also to offer him things the way that Mary offered in her adoration of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, you know, the tithe is required, and offerings are to be entered into on a free will basis. And they’re supposed to be based on the adoration of the Savior, not done for personal benefit or gain, but simply for adoration of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we engage in those things here at Reformation Covenant Church.

Because we’re in the text, it talks about the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ, let me just say a few words about the tithe. And I know I spoke some about this last week. We remember from last week that Judas is identified as a thief and a betrayer. His theft of what belonged to God is linked in a literary structure in the text to his betrayal of Jesus. And actually, this is the reason John says that he betrayed Jesus—because of Jesus’s acceptance of all this expensive—one year’s worth of wages, thirty, forty thousand dollars’ worth of things wasted on him instead of being given to the poor.

But Judas is identified as a betrayer, and in relationship to him being a thief, and it is theft not to give God his required tithe. And it is theft that is punished by God. And the way it works is the same way it worked in 1 Samuel. You know, you reject God as King and you look to one who comes not in the name of the Lord, but you look to the civil state who comes in the name of the people. What that civil state is going to do is oppress you. If you idolize them in that way, looking to them for health, education, welfare, and all answers to all problems in your life, that King will oppress you with taking more than a tithe. And that’s what’s happened in our day and age.

We have a lot of people in the state of Oregon who are going to vote in January on a special tax. My personal opinion is—I’m one of them—but we have an awful lot, I mean the vast majority of those people, have denied the true tax we owe to our Creator and Redeemer, to the King, the Lord Jesus Christ. And I tell you that if people will not give the small tithe, ten percent, that God requires as the joyful contribution to what he does for you, then he will double and triple your penalties because you’re a thief. And you’ll have civil rulers reigning over you who exact thirty, forty, fifty percent, which is exactly what’s going on in our culture today.

The answer to the problem with civil taxation being out of control ultimately is not political. It’s not going to happen at the ballot box. It’s going to happen when God’s people get serious about tithing. God honors those things. And I don’t say this, you know, to motivate this congregation. This congregation is a wonderful example of people that understand this principle better than nearly any other group of Christians I could want to talk about. But it’s a truth. It’s a political truth, and it’s a truth that emanates from our text as a way of understanding why we need to acknowledge Jesus Christ as King. I’m saying that people have no right complaining about high taxes if they’re not willing to pay their tithe. Plain and simple. Because the taxes are a curse from God.

Okay, I heard a show yesterday, by the way—I was preparing for my sermon—and I heard a radio show, and I actually had to laugh out loud at what some of our taxes are going for. Some of you may think it’s a good thing. I just think it’s kind of humorous. Metro bought up—I don’t know—I think seven thousand acres as a bond measure, which means tax-financed purchase of seven thousand acres in the greater Portland area to restore back to natural activity. And that alone is pretty bad, I think, that they would do that.

It was interesting hearing this woman, this representative from Metro, talk about our neighbors: “Well, we have our neighbors, and we want to be sensitive to our neighbors.” As if Metro is a neighbor to somebody living next to a plot of land that they used taxpayer dollars to buy. I mean, it’s an odd thing. It’s an odd way to talk, that Metro now is like a little family living next to you if they happen to buy the lot next to you.

But in any event, what they’re doing now with these lots and your tax dollars now are being used to bring goats into these lots. They have about seven hundred goats. Some of these lots have ivy or Scotch broom or blackberry—the three of what we got, the holy trinity of noxious weeds in Oregon. And they bring these goats in and they pen them up because they can’t do a whole big area. So they put a little quarter acre, put a hundred or two hundred goats in there. And they eat away the stuff, and then they move the pen over after a few hours. They put them back in, eat up the stuff, they move the pen over. And so this is what your tax dollars are going to do: buy up what could be productive land in private ownership, make it unproductive, have to return it to its natural state.

It’s a stewardship model that our civil state has, not a dominion model in terms of the earth. And then actually they have to pay for goats to come in and keep the land cleaned up rather than people working to remove the weeds. I just—I laughed out loud as this description was going out of the wonderful thing we’re doing with goats. They also produce fertilizer, of course, for whatever will grow next.

So, and you know the funny thing is they don’t just leave these goats there. They have to have people there tending them and moving the goats and stuff. So you’re not getting away from manpower. You’re just using both. Well, that’s the kind of thing we end up with if we really do not, in the context of our worship, honor King Jesus with a loving giving of his tribute, his tithe, his tax, to him.

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Now, I want to talk about two other aspects of this. You know, worship that does not produce downstream changes the other six days of the week is not biblical worship. You know, there’s two ditches in regard to worship. One is to say that worship is no more important or different than anything else we do all week. It’s simply not true.

What does Noah do when he gets out of the ark? Brand new world. What is the first thing he does? Some of you little guys know the first thing he does is worship. He kills a whole bunch of clean animals. He worships. The first of our week we worship, right? So one ditch is to not understand the importance of worship. The other—it’s the highest, the missing jewels, we said last week from Tolkien. But the other ditch is to think that all we do is worship, and we don’t really try to think of how that worship impacts the rest of our lives. And that’s the other ditch we can fall into.

I thought about this in terms of the two central miracles at the middle of John’s Gospel. You know, if you include Jesus raising up himself, the temple—and that’s what he says he’ll do earlier in the text, as the eighth miracle—then the middle two miracles, in terms of the miracle outline of the book, the center two miracles are the feeding of the five thousand and then the crossing of the sea.

Now, what do those miracles speak to? They speak to the special presence of Christ, the good Shepherd. Much grass. He brings us together on the mountaintop to meet with us and feed us and love us as the good Shepherd. But then we leave there, and then we go out and cross the sea. And what did that miracle teach us? Well, I think you could say it teaches us about the special absence of Jesus Christ.

There is a special presence of Christ in Lord’s Day worship. Today, we meet with the one. He comes and sits with us. And like Mary, we give him access to adoration, loving acts of adoration. And so he’s here in a special way. He comes into Jerusalem. He proceeds into this place on the Lord’s Day. The special presence of Christ demands the loud acclamations of praise to King Jesus from us.

But then what happens in the next miracle is he deliberately sends his disciples out without him, and he deliberately stays over on the shore while they row and row and row all night long. They can’t get to the other side. The special absence of Jesus. And if all we do in worship is to preach the special presence of Christ—and it’s very important, we must do that, we must assure you that as you come here today the first words of what Jesus says, or the interpretation of what Jesus does, from Zechariah, is “Fear not.” You must know that Jesus is here in a special sense to feed you, to cause you to recline. He’s the good Shepherd who will cause you to lie down in green pastures today.

But then I also must prepare you. If I’m going to do my job, I think as a preacher of the Gospel, I must prepare you for the special absence of Christ the other six days of the week. Things change when we leave here. Now Jesus is with us. His eye is upon us. We’re not really absent from Christ. The Spirit is with us. The Spirit brings Christ to us. But it’s different the rest of the week. And so this worship must usher forth into downstream realities.

And I only have two today that I want to talk about. They’re really the same thing. They have to do with our perception of the Kingdom. What I think we want to do is to honor Jesus Christ, not just in Lord’s Day worship. We want to honor Jesus Christ by the other six days of the week, discerning excitedly the advance of the King and the Kingdom that comes with the King.

You see, so in a way, we’re like those pilgrims. We’re gathered together, and in a way, what we learn on Sunday—that Jesus draws near—and we get excited. We tell our kids: “We’re going to have a meal with Jesus. Jesus, today. He’s going to be here. He’s going to give you grace from on high. You’re going to hear his word. He’s going to have you sit down. He’s going to feed you.” This is the model for what happens the rest of the week. And so we want to look for the drawing nigh of Jesus and his Kingdom the rest of the week.

You see, we want to be like those excited pilgrims who understand that Jesus doesn’t just come to us in Lord’s Day worship. He’s coming. His Kingdom is advancing in all of history. There’s a wonderful correlation: Jesus’s response to the people is an action. It’s not words. It’s interpreted by the words of scripture. And what it tells us is that God is at work in actions, fulfilling the scripture. The Kingdom is advancing day by day by day in different ways. God is working in the world. And if we would understand that work correctly, we would interpret it in terms of how it manifests Kingdom work. We would look for the advance of the Kingdom in our time.

It is dishonoring to Christ to go into the rest of the week and forget about what we learned at special presence. It’s dishonoring to Christ to somehow doubt that anything good is going to come out of life. It is dishonoring to Christ not to look excitedly for the manifestations of the advance of the Kingdom. We want to look for those things. We want to discern those things.

And I’ve mentioned a few things here in the context of the outline. Our children had a wonderful telephone call—I don’t remember if it was Thursday or Friday—from a young man. And this young man’s kind of struggled some in the last few years. And the young man just called to tell me he wanted to walk with Christ and God, and we’re going to get together this next week. And you know, I’ve always had good reason to believe that—well, let me just put it this way. The young people that have been baptized and grown up in the context of the church, they may, you know, have troubles and difficulties like you and I have had as adults. But we should never lose hope for them. And we should always look for any small movement in terms of the advance of the Lord Jesus Christ in their life.

We should excitedly look for that, and when it comes, we shouldn’t fall into doubt: “Oh, well, we, what do I do this time, or what will my teenager do this time? You know, they’ve said this many times.” No, no, no. We have optimism because we know the Kingdom of Jesus Christ is advancing, and we know that he’s made us great promises about our children. We don’t know for sure about all of how every one of them will turn out, but we know with great assuredness that the bulk of our children will walk with the Lord. And we should look excitedly for the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in any small way in their lives. And we should be encouraged about that, and we should encourage them with that instead of filling them with doubt.

And the same thing is true in our own lives. Wives to husbands, husbands to wives: don’t be a discouragement. You know, don’t extinguish the smoldering wick when it begins to flare up. Look for excitedly and thankfully the manifestation of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and its advance. Look with excitement to the coming of the Institute and Basic Life Principles Conference coming up in a couple of weeks. I’m excited about that. And what it is, it’s going to be a real opportunity for the young people of our church. It’s the advance of Jesus Christ and his Kingdom in terms of the preparation of these children to have good attitudes as they prepare to enter into their adult lives. And we should have our kids there, every one of them, if at all possible. Very important. We’re going to screen the stuff first. I’ve got the videotapes and all that stuff. But it’s an indication of the advance of Christ’s Kingdom.

I’m just excited as can be about the maturation of RCC. I was writing the voters’s guide for the parents education association this week, and you know, one thing I think is my personal opinion ridiculous measures on our ballot is the state legislature controlled by Republicans. A lot of Christians in this state have worked over and over and over for ten, fifteen years to get Republican majority, and they give us a referral supported by conservatives to make eighteen the minimum age for being a state legislator instead of twenty-one. They want to put teenagers as state senators or something who would govern you and make laws for you. I mean, it’s absurd.

The age in the scriptures for entering into combat is twenty, and then for actually ruling seems to be probably thirty—the year at which David began his reign and the year Jesus Christ began his public ministry. Maturity is important, and 1 Timothy 3 tells us not to let novices be put in positions of authority. So why would an eighteen-year-old be considered anything other than a novice in terms of public policy? It’s ridiculous.

Well, RCC is turning twenty. You know, we’ve been a novice. We’re a teenage church. That’s what we are. You think of the church as an organism. We’re a teenage church, and next year we become adult-like. Turn twenty. And as part of this maturation of our church, we’ve engaged in a couple of strategic planning sessions now in the last couple of months. They’re just exciting as can be to me. Since we’ve moved into this church, many things have changed. A lot of activities going on. My time is called for in many different directions. And I’m sure it’s true of all of you. The resources of the church—what do we do with them? Well, we’re sitting down, a group of men, thinking this through, praying about it. We’ll be presenting things to the congregation in terms of what is the mission and vision of this church that the scriptures teach us to engage in. And then what are the specific initiatives we should engage in to accomplish these things?

We had some wonderful initiatives yesterday, for instance, about the maturation of our worship and singing and musical education and perhaps a song leader, a music minister, at some point in time. Seminars to develop and better the singing of the church. Excellent initiatives thought of by that little group that met. It’s an exciting time.

I want you to be excited about these planning sessions that a group of us are having, and they’ll work their way out into the rest of the congregation. I want you to see them as Jesus coming. You see, the Kingdom is advancing. You know, R.C. Sproul two weeks ago—I thought it was just wonderful. He really touched on both the things I’ve touched on the last two weeks: the adoration of the Savior, particularly as we come to the table, but then also the great excitement he has for Kingdom work. Well, that’s what this is. Are you excited about the Kingdom? Is this the driving force in your life to see and to pray for and to discern the advance of the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the way you would see Jesus coming into Jerusalem?

Maybe the temple is a model, not just, you know, for worship. It’s a model really of the whole world. It’s what it is. It’s a world model. And so the advance of Christ to Jerusalem is analogous to the advancement of the Kingdom into all the world. And I want us to be a people who are excited about that and looking for that, looking for manifestations of that, and praying diligently to that end.

I’m excited about the voters’s guide, again, and about how many Christians over the last twenty years have moved into a consideration of public policy measures from a biblical perspective. I mean, if the triumphal entry is accurate, and if Jesus didn’t say, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I’m not going to be a King. I’m just going to be a Savior.” If he didn’t say that, if he said, “You’re absolutely right. I am a King. I’m the Prince of Peace here. I’m riding on a donkey because I am King, and I’m going to save you from all your enemies, and I’m your civil ruler ultimately.” He said that.

And when you have the ability to honor Jesus Christ by discerning, cheering for, and praying for the advance of the number of Christians who consider public policy measures from a biblical perspective—now, it can be wrong, or we can disagree about how to apply it. But the point is we must, I think, as Christians, if we’re going to truly honor Christ, we must say that whatever we vote for next month, we do so from a biblical perspective, right? And that we actually do vote as an affirmation of our citizenship because we’re seeking the advance of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

And part of that advance, just part, but a part of that advance nonetheless, must be the manifestation that our rulers are those who come to us not in the name of the people, not in the name of the state, not in the name of some other Savior, but rather our leaders—increasingly we want to see them manifested as those who come to us with declarations that are coming in the name of Christ. And we want to see our laws reflecting the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. That should be a passion for us, right? Whether it’s the advance of Christ’s Kingdom in our families with our children, in our husband-wife relationships, in the church, the institutional church and its outworkings, or the civil arena.

I think that this text tells us that we should have an excitement that honors the Lord Jesus Christ by looking for the advance of his Kingdom in these various ways and taking great joy from them.

I noticed three or four months ago—and I should have told people this, I suppose it would have been good—that the only abortion clinic in Eugene closed down abruptly. And I don’t know if another one has reopened or not. But you know, we pray about that. We pray about it for twenty years. And we should look for the small advances of the Kingdom when God, for whatever reason, closes the only abortion clinic available to a large population base in a liberal city. We should be cheering and saying, “Hosanna! Blessed be the one who comes in the name of the Lord, King of Israel! He’s manifested something here to us, right?” And what that means is, you see, you didn’t know about it, so you couldn’t cheer, because I didn’t do my job.

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The second aspect of this—the third point on your outline—is we don’t want to just discern these things happening. We honor the Lord Jesus Christ by laboring diligently to see these things occur. We labor diligently to see the Kingdom manifested. And part of that is in informing one another of the advance of the Kingdom and working diligently to see that advance produced, and also praying for the advance of that Kingdom.

Now, again, we do this in Lord’s Day worship. Elder W., we all corporately together pray that his will might be done on earth as it is in heaven. The Kingdom of Christ might advance, which means we’re also praying against the Kingdom of those that come in the name of a different Savior. So we want to be those who delightedly anticipate the arrival of the King.

And I skipped over a point. Let me go back to it. The first response of the citation from Zechariah 9, interpreting Christ’s event—what does it mean when he gets on the donkey? The first thing this text in John tells us that it means is “Fear not.” What we must do to see the advance of the Kingdom is to put off fear.

Calvin in his commentary says, you know, the thing that gets in the way of our joy is our fear of events. And even if you can’t rejoice, take the first step that our Savior tells us here. Work diligently to retard fear in your life. Work hard at it. You think you’re the only one fearful? You’re not. Jesus tells this to all the masses. That’s the interpretation. He tells it to us every Lord’s Day. “Fear not. I’ve forgiven your sins, right? Don’t fear as you come into this place ultimately. And certainly don’t fear men for what they can do to you.” This is proper reverence. There’s a proper respect to our King. I’m not putting that aside. But what I am saying is that all too often the fear of men, the fear of the consequences of our sins and unbelief—they’ve been paid for through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ—these fears ball us all up and get us all concerned.

Yeah, children—the same thing. “Oh, well, you know, they say they’re repenting, but oh, you know, I know they’ve done this in the past, and I’m just fearful that I’m going to end up in twenty years, and my children are going to deny the faith, and worse things, they’ll have killed various, you know, twenty, fifty people, whatever it is.” We fear for our children, and you know, we just got to put that off because it puts a negative cast on everything.

Jesus says, “Fear not.” We fear the church, you know. “Well, he’s talking about worship again, and gee, we all, we’re going to do is worship, worship, worship, worship, worship. And we fear that we’re going to become, you know, a group that has nothing to do with exalting the importance of the family and their application of the civil state.” Don’t fear like that. You know, it’s easy for me to fear. As you move toward a broader group of leadership making initiatives, taking directions, you start: “Well, you know what’s going to happen here? The whole thing might come off the wheels, or something.” Forget it. These things are manifestations of the arrival of Christ and the advance of his Kingdom, folks. And it’ll do us well to put off fear as we seek to discern the advance of the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That Kingdom comes through conversion, not military power. But nonetheless, it comes, and it comes surely. And so the third point is we honor Jesus Christ by seeking diligently the advance of his Kingdom. Not just anticipating it or praying for it or delightedly seeing him advance, but now we want to work toward the manifestation of that Kingdom in our various areas.

Perseverance in child rearing is not just delighting in the events of the Kingdom, but making it happen, right? To persevere in spite of your fears, in spite of your difficulties, in spite of the opposition, in spite of how old you are, you’re tired, your hormones are out of balance. You know, it happens to men and women both. Doesn’t make any difference. Persevere in doing what’s right. “Well, they don’t. It hasn’t worked out like I thought. Put those kind of thoughts off. Seek the advance of the Kingdom of Christ by persevering in your child rearing. Tell your children to come to the IBPL conference. Don’t ask them. Just tell them: ‘Yeah, you’re going to go to that thing, and it’s going to be good for you.’”

Perseverance in child rearing. Initiatives in this whole RCC strategic plan—working it doesn’t do us no good, you know, men are like this. We make a map. It’s done. We’ve conceived how we could be a wonderful church, and that’s enough of that. Now we go back and do whatever else we’re going to do. No, you have to work a plan. You have to bring it to reality. Praise God for Brad, coming yesterday. Brad’s very busy. Hope he doesn’t mind me using it as an example. He took on an initiative or two yesterday that was produced from a little group that talked about worship and song. See, he’s looking for the advance of the Kingdom. He rejoices in the movement for the maturation of worship here, seeing it that way. And he’s willing to commit a little bit more of his time—maybe he’s not sure where he’s going to get it. He’s going to commit a little bit more of his time to making an initiative happen here, to not just delight in the advance of the Kingdom, but to labor now to produce the advance, the manifestation of the reign of Christ in a fuller sense than how we can sing loud hosannas to Jesus Christ in the context of our corporate worship and then into the rest of our week as well.

We seek diligently the advance of the Kingdom by submitting to the crown rights of King Jesus. It doesn’t do any good just to ascribe it to him here. When you vote come October and November, vote in obedience to Christ. Whatever you think, we don’t have to agree with me or anybody else here, but you must have thought it through biblically. Jesus must be Lord over every aspect of your life. If not, really, you haven’t understood his lordship at all. And so we have to work sacrificially—child rearing in the context of the institutional church, in the context of the institutional state. For some of you that might mean running for office. For some, it means putting a little effort into discerning what the issues are you’re going to vote for and who the candidates are. Almost always sacrificial because we walk the walk of Jesus. We walk in his path. And Jesus came, and his Kingdom advances as he goes to Jerusalem. He’s going to die, and through that death to rise. And so we must work self-sacrificially for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ as well.

Matthew Henry said that things of the approach of Christ in his Kingdom should awaken us to consider what is the work of the day. We see the Kingdom advancing. Then it should awaken in us, Henry says, a consideration of what is the work of the day, that it may be done in the day. Remember, there are only certain opportunities for what we end up doing. Jesus says, “When the night comes, no man can work.” You have opportunities. Seize the opportunity. Let the excitement of the advance of King Jesus’s Kingdom motivate you to participate in what you can do in the work of the day.

Those who wish well to Christ’s Kingdom should be forward to proclaim what they know, that it may redound to his glory, and so work to that particular end. Calvin said this about the advance of Christ’s Kingdom. He says: “When we see the advance of Christ’s Kingdom is less prosperous than it ought to be, or rather it falls into decay, as we perceive it to be at the present day in his day and age, fearfully scattered and wasted, this unquestionably arises through our fault. And when but a small restoration, or almost none, is to be seen, or when at least it advances slowly, let us ascribe it to our indifference. We daily ask from God that his Kingdom may come. But scarcely one man in a hundred earnestly, earnestly desires it. Justly, therefore, are we deprived of the blessing of God which we are weary of asking. You get tired of asking. You don’t see the manifestation. And Calvin said, ‘One reason you don’t see the manifestation is because you’re not working to help affect that manifestation in our day and age.’”

I talked in the lessons we’re producing for the six and seven year olds about having the kids memorize part of Hebrews 6. I have a note on your outline: the diligent patience of Abraham. And this is sort of what it’s about. Hebrews 6:11 says this: “We desire that each of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end, that you do not become sluggish or slothful, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. For when God made a promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself, saying, ‘Surely blessing I will bless you. Multiplying I will multiply you.’ And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.”

You see the connection to what we’re saying today? The patience of Abraham. He was patient, waiting for the seed. He was patient, waiting for the land. He was patient, waiting for what God had assured him would come. And we need patience as we look for the advance of the Kingdom. But he was not slothful in that patience. He was diligent in that patience. And so as we see the great assurance the triumphal entry gives us, that Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The point of his response is not to say, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, Kingdom.” The point of his response is to say, “Absolutely, Kingdom, that I am King of Kings, and I shall reign from sea to shining sea over the entire earth.”

We have the great assurance of that given to us so that we can be patient with small advances that we see. But we must never let that patience and assurance of the postmillennial hope bring about a slothfulness in us. You see, diligent patience sounds like an oxymoron to us. But it’s precisely what Abraham pictured, and it’s precisely what God calls us to do today. He calls us to know of a certainty that Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Look for the advance of that Kingdom. Rejoice and give him worship and praise when it happens. And then apply yourself diligently in the church, the family, civil affairs, and in your vocation, of course. Apply yourself diligently to see the manifestation of the Kingdom happen in your lifetime. Diligent patience.

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There is a warning in the text, and I should touch on this at the conclusion. I mean, these same people who worship Jesus here with such great acclamation received by him, not rebuked by him. And in fact, he defends those calling out to him in a different account of the triumphal entry. The Pharisees say, “Why don’t you tell these people to be quiet?” And he says, “Well, if they’re quiet, the stones themselves would cry out.” So Jesus affirms the correct worship of the people of the triumphal entry. But in five days, many of these same people will be shouting out not “Hosanna,” but “Crucify him.” The picture, the required warning to us, is that Jesus is not a King for your Kingdom. He’s not come to help you rule in your Kingdom. He’s come to establish his Kingdom, not yours. And he’s come to bring you into the joy and advance and work of that Kingdom.

Lots of people talk about how good Jesus is. They say he’s a good philosopher. He’s a good Marxist. He’s a good New Ager, all that stuff. And to each of those, the scripture, the Jesus of the scriptures, is an athlete. And he is to us as well. When we try to utilize the power of the Lord Jesus Christ for our purposes, for the development of our Kingdom, God says that ultimately Jesus comes not to get rid of the Romans. He comes to get rid of our pride. He doesn’t come first and foremost to give us political deliverance over our enemies. He comes to give us deliverance from sin. And as that happens, boys and girls and dads and moms, people throughout the world—as that happens, Rome is defeated. If it raises itself against him, the kingdoms that come in the name of the state, of the people, are defeated. The Kingdom of Christ is established.

In other words, he calls us today to remember that as King, he is still Jesus. The manifestation of the Kingdom comes through his dealing with sin in the context of our lives. He calls us to submit with great joy and delight to his reign as King.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for the special presence of Christ, the adoration and submission to him that’s due. And we pray that this would not be some kind of empty exercise we do today, but rather submitting to King Jesus today, we would do so delightfully and joyfully the rest of our lives. In his name we ask it. Amen.