Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Sermon text today is found in Matthew chapter 21:1-17. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Now when they drew near Jerusalem and came to Bethphage at the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Loose them and bring them to me. And if anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord has need of them,’ and immediately he will send them.

All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, lowly and sitting on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.” So the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them. They brought the donkey and the colt, laid their clothes on them, and set him on them. And a very great multitude spread their clothes on the road.

Others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road. Then the multitudes who went before and those who followed cried out, saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.” And when he had come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, “What is this?” So the multitude said, “This is Jesus the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee.”

Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And he said to them, “It is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.” Then the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying Hosanna to the Son of David, they were indignant and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?”

And Jesus said to them, “Yes, have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants, you have perfected praise’?” Then he left them and went out of the city to Bethany and he lodged there.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for these historical events that we read of in your scriptures. We pray that you would make our lives a living history of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ built upon the rock, built upon our Savior. Help us to understand this text and its great relevance to us. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Eight days that shook the world, that remade the world. Eight days that are at the center of reality. The Christian faith is founded in history. Historic Christianity is not a series of ideas. Ultimately it has ideas, of course. It’s not a set of abstract intellectual teaching. It is first and foremost the declaration of the good news of the ascension of the Savior King to the throne—a fact, a historical reality.

And what we celebrate every year on the Sunday before Resurrection Sunday is a historical fact. A fact that God saw fit to record in all four of the gospels, citing its significance to us. This is the beginning of what some call Holy Week. Palm Sunday—Jesus’s triumphal or royal entry into the city. And then we have events that happen in the context of this week.

Maundy Thursday—Maundy coming from the old word “mandate.” It’s the evening when Jesus met with the disciples and gave them a new commandment. Mandi means the new law: “Love one another even as I have loved you.”

Good Friday, which we’ll have a service this Friday here at Reformation Covenant Church. Someday we’ll have a Maundy Thursday service, but not yet. This year we’ll do, however, another Good Friday service as we have traditionally done. And then next Sunday we’ll celebrate the historical reality of the death of death, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and the initiation of the new creation by his power and strength.

These are historical realities. These are actual days, real events. And I think God would have us understand the historical realities we’re talking about and then see their relevance to our lives. But to get a firm grip on understanding of Palm Sunday is essential to the Christian faith. These were the most wonderful days, the most glorious days, the most astonishing days in human history—indeed, we could probably say in all of eternity.

These are the days that ultimately our relationship to the historic account of these days determines our eternal destination. It is the appropriation of the reality and a belief in the history—a belief only given to us by the gift of the Holy Spirit—that ultimately puts us right with God. And an understanding of the history of these days is at the center of the Christian faith. It’s important for us to understand what came to pass in those particular days.

Here in the Gospel of Matthew, these days from Palm Sunday to Resurrection Sunday—Matthew is the longest gospel. There are 20 chapters given to the first 33 years of the Savior’s life and fully seven chapters to the last six days of his life. The Gospel of Mark devotes nearly 40% of the total space to this passion week that I’m talking about this morning. Luke devotes 20% of his gospel to these five days.

The gospel of John—you know, we can sort of see the gospel of John is the great culmination of all of the scriptures. The gospels are the fulfillment of everything that was written in the Old Testament. The Gospels are that great capstone, and the great capstone to that is the Gospel of John. And the Gospel of John spins roughly half of its entire pages given over to an account of these eight days that shook the world.

So these are important days for us and it’s good that we pause to consider them. These are the days of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the night spent in the upper room with his disciples, his hours in Gethsemane, his trial, his scourging, his crucifixion, his death, and his burial. Upon these things, eternal life is founded—the reality of these historical events.

The atonement is not some kind of example for us. It is a historical reality that is given to us, but it is a historical reality that has accomplished the redemption necessary for our sins, the forgiveness of our sins.

So I want to first of all just give another brief overview of the first of these days, and we can say by implication there’s another very important day which we’ll talk about a little later. But the first of these recorded days for us here—I want to give us a brief overview of what we call the triumphal entry. Perhaps “royal entry” is a better way to put it. And on your outline we have, then, just an overview of this triumphal entry as recorded in Matthew’s gospel.

The first point we want to make is that the king’s procession—this is a procession, there is this procession of Jesus Christ from one place into the city Jerusalem and then beyond the city into the temple. He goes right to the temple. Remember that Jerusalem and the temple are a worship facility and the culture that’s built upon that. So in an antithetical way—the Tower of Babel was a tower but they also built a city. The biblical account tells us a city. So Jesus processes into the city and as he gets into the city, he goes to the tower, the place where men were communing and worshiping God.

So there is this procession. It is a kingly procession. You know why a donkey and a colt? Well, lots of speculation about that. But what we’re told in Matthew is specifically told us—you know, the important thing is not to focus as much on the fact that it was a donkey and then a colt that had never been ridden and how did he ride them both, et cetera. But the important thing that Matthew draws our attention to is this is the fulfillment of the prophecy in the book of Zechariah—that this is the mark of Jesus’s kingship.

The greater David would come on a donkey. Solomon and Adonijah—you know, pictures of those who were associated with the king or would be king—they come on donkeys. You see, so in the Old Testament, it sets up this imagery that as we see Jesus entering into the city, he comes as king. That’s the big question: at this time in Jesus’s ministry, who is he? The identity of Jesus and our identity in relationship to this story are sort of key and central to a consideration of this historical account. And the identity of Jesus is revealed to us here—that he is the greater son of David. He is the king.

So this is a procession of the king moving into the city. Now this procession—as I point out in the first point of the outline—is from the Mount of Olives to the temple. If we were to look at all the historical accounts that I just referenced in all these gospels, including this one, we read that Jesus goes back out. We find that Jesus spends the evenings of Holy Week in connection to or basically in the context of the Mount of Olives.

So Jesus his procession is from the Mount of Olives, Bethany, the town he’ll get into the city. He comes from the Mount of Olives and then comes into the city and then to the temple. Now that may seem like just some kind of throwaway geographical reference. It’s not, because as I list for you, we have various very important truths about olives and what an olive grove means and what an olive tree is signifying built up throughout the rest of the Old Testament revelation.

An olive branch was the first sign that the new world had come after the destruction of the old world with the flood. Noah in the ark—it’s brought by the dove, an olive branch. So an olive tree is connected to the new creation, the post-flood new world. Olive oil specifically is the major component, the major element of the anointing oil for the priests. And the priests are essentially a new humanity—the picture of the ordination of the priests in the book of Leviticus parallels the new creation. It’s as if a new creation of Adam is coming to pass.

And so these priests are anointed as emblematic of the new humanity to come when the great high priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, comes. Olive oil definitely—olive is connected with the Spirit recreating and empowering his people.

In Zechariah 4, the vision that is given is that there are these two cherubim of olivewood on either side of the ark of the covenant, and these are pictured as an olive tree, and the branches of the olive tree provide the oil for the lampstand. Now, we know we’re engrafted into an olive tree. Well, here in Zechariah’s vision, we have this olive tree in the Holy of Holies providing empowerment and lighting the lampstand. And so it’s a very significant element—the holy of holies items that we talked about last week.

Olivewood cherubim are also connected to the olivewood doors. Both the holy place and the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s temple—the doors that guard this holiness. The holiness will come out and fill the world, but the doors that guard the holiness of God in the context of the Holy of Holies and then the holy place in the room anterior to that is guarded by olives, by the olive doors. And so olivewood is associated with the guarding principle—guarding God’s holiness.

Gethsemane is an olive press. This is where the Lord Jesus Christ goes for his suffering, and to Gethsemane, the olive press. The passion of the Lord Jesus Christ really takes on its full function there. And the historical accounts in these four gospels given to us make the association—it is in the context of olives, the olive trees, that Jesus Christ prays. It’s in the context of the olive trees that he is betrayed and arrested. It’s on that olive, up on the Mount of Olives, in association with that, where he is crucified. His resurrection is seen in the context of that. His burial is in connection to the Mount of Olives, or an olive grove. That’s what Mount Olivet means—the mount of the olive grove. And his Ascension also occurs at the Mount of Olives.

So this is not just some throwaway geographic line—that the procession happens from the Mount of Olives to the city. Jesus Christ is moving in the power of the Holy Spirit bringing the new creation. Now we could say that really Jesus is in the true Holy of Holies where his blood will be shed, where the work of redemption will occur, on Mount Olive. That’s where he spends the week. That’s where he returns to at the end of every day. And it is from that Holy of Holies that he comes into the city and processes through city and tower, through culture and place of religion and worship.

Jesus’s—the king’s procession is from the Mount of Olives to the temple.

Secondly, the king’s procession is marked by this sign of humility. It’s the king, you know, the prophecy is definitely one saying this is identifying who this is. This is Jesus Christ the king, but explicitly the Zechariah text tells us that he comes humbly. And you know, that isn’t necessarily a reference to the donkey, but it is this fulfillment. So when we see Jesus riding in as king in this procession and we see him on the donkey and we see the prophecy of Zechariah fulfilled, then Matthew wants us to identify that this king is unlike the Gentile kings. This is no Caesar. This is the King of Kings, but he is coming humbly, meekly to his people.

This is the same word in Zechariah that’s used interchangeably in the Old Testament for affliction and what affliction produces: humility. He’s the man of sorrows, but he is the man who is the exemplar to us of humility, meekness, and following the Father’s will. And that’s that same word that I talked about a couple of weeks ago, looking at the suffering of Lent as afflictions of our souls meant to make us humble as Jesus enters into Jerusalem humbly as well.

So we have a sign of Jesus’s humility.

Third, the king’s procession is marked by a sign of ascension and heavenly rule. I love to tell this story. If you’ve been here very long, you’ve heard it many times. But you know, it’s easy to get a little mixed up in our chronology here with this very important week and to think somehow we’re at the Feast of Booths. You know, you probably have thought that at times—that well, this must have happened during the Feast of Booths—and you think that because of the association of the tree branches and the palm fronds. But the people of God at the great rejoicing time at the end of the agricultural cycle in the fall—rejoicing at the eight-day festival of the Feast of Booths.

And it’s easy to make that association, but it’s wrong. Of course, Jesus is crucified. Holy Week occurs in the context of the beginning of the new year, which is Passover, a commemoration of that event, the Exodus.

We make that association, though, rightly to the Feast of Booths because clearly the palm fronds are intended to bring back to us that imagery—that God’s people indeed dwell in the trees. You know, in the Old Testament, the end result of what Jesus will accomplish on Holy Week is God’s people coming to dwell in trees around him. The great picture of the Feast of Booths at the end of the cycle. What does it mean, though? You know, we talked last week about the progression of the architectural symbolism of the temple from the golden pot of manna to the sacramental, uh—excuse me—the showbread in the holy place and then the bronze laver of cleansing in the outer courtyard. And we talked about how in Solomon’s day that was then referred to as a bronze sea, a large laver.

And attached to the sea are oxen. So if you wanted to produce an imagery that this water is going to go out and fill the world, this is how you did it. You’d set these oxen up in connection, pointed in the direction showing that they will go out from the temple with the water. And then of course in Ezekiel’s vision, we see that fulfilled. The water comes out from the temple and cleanses the whole world and the whole world is reborn.

So these architectural symbols are ways to demonstrate things without having a videotape. And you do that in art through these water-chariot, essentially, in Solomon’s temple to show the coming movement of cleansing that will happen out from the temple. Well, the architectural symbolism—we could say the foliage symbolism of Jesus walking on branches—is that he is walking in the trees. The symbolism of us dwelling in booths around God at the Feast of Booths in the Old Testament is that we are dwelling in the clouds. We’re a heavenly people. Ephesians tells us that our citizenship is in the heavens.

You know, by way of symbolism, what’s going on there is that the casting down of these branches under the feet of Jesus and his donkey that he rides on is a way to say that he is riding on the clouds. And of course, this is the image of Jesus—Yahweh in the Old Testament. God comes on the clouds and his chariot is drawn in and he comes into—he comes from, you know, the true picture of heaven in the heavenlies. That’s where God comes from in the Old Testament when he visits men. He comes from the true Holy of Holies. Okay? And he comes in the clouds and then he comes to visit men and he visits the city.

But he begins first by judging and evaluating the church. The power and from that he then evaluates the city. This is the imagery of the Old Testament. This is what’s being portrayed for us on Palm Sunday. Jesus Christ is coming from the picture of the Holy of Holies, all the olivewood, the holiness of God, and he’s coming to bring judgment to the nations ultimately by bringing judgment first to Jerusalem and the tower. And he comes as the one who is riding on the clouds. He’s walking in the trees. He is—this is a picture. We have a visual representation of his ascension and his heavenly rule that will come to pass.

So this is what’s going on in the triumphal entry.

Fourth, the king’s procession then is unto judgment but also unto healing and transformation. The text goes on to tell us that just like God—when he came in the Old Testament from the heavenly Holy of Holies in the clouds—coming as the one who brings his presence to earth, that coming is a judgment upon the earth. Jesus comes and immediately goes to the temple in Matthew’s account and there he brings judgment to the temple. He brings chastisements to the worship that was going on. So he brings judgment. He overturns the tables. He says, ultimately of course, that these will no longer be necessary. In seven days—

This is the beginning of the last and great climactic week of the old covenant, the old order. And these that were at one time a proper symbol of my coming will now be done away with. Jesus will permanently stop the selling of animals and the sacrifice of animals that goes on in the temple with his death and his resurrection and his ascension and then finally the judgment on Jerusalem in AD 70. It stopped for 2,000 years. And that’s pictured for us here.

But he’s bringing judgment. He chastises them for turning the house of prayer for all the nations into a place of commerce where illegal commerce was going on—in the sense of people were being ripped off by the prices charged. So Jesus condemns them, and of course we’ve said this before, but ultimately what they’re doing is they’re not leaving room for the Gentiles. You know, in the very place—the Gentile court—is where this cleansing of the temple occurs and Jesus says that this house is clean, and it’s specifically unclean because you’re sectarian. You’re walled off. You don’t really want the Gentiles here. And when they come, you won’t even let them into the very court itself because you’re filling it up with all your booths and you’re selling.

So Jesus brings judgment. And this is not unexpected. Of course, this is what God always brings. Judgment begins at the house of God. But Jesus also then the text in Matthew goes on that we read to say that he then heals the blind and the lame. And did you notice when I read the text where he does this? They come to Jesus, the blind and the lame, in the temple. And they weren’t supposed to be there. They were excluded from the temple. In First Kings, we read the exclusion of the blind and the lame from the temple and its regions.

At the temple is where Jesus receives the blind and the lame. And he brings sight and he brings wholeness rather than shutting the thing off from those that are blind and lame. He transforms their state so that they can be in that temple worshiping and praising in the correct way him. So Jesus processing into the city from the heavenly Holy of Holies—we can say—brings judgment but he also brings transformation, healing, the bringing of true sight, the empowerment of men again to vocation through the ability to walk and to go into the temple and give praise and glory to God.

So we have this wonderful picture of Jesus in this triumphal procession with many things to meditate on, many great truths contained in this historical account that’s given to us in all four of the gospels in various ways. And so we’re sort of reminded—you know, what’s going on here in the history of the event. But we want to know more than that, right? We know who Jesus is. We know what’s going on now.

But what we want to see in terms of this is: where are we in the story? We understand the narrative. We understand the big picture and the big things that are going on. Maybe at this brief overview, we identified who Jesus is. He’s God of gods and King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He’s the greater David. He’s coming to cleanse the world. He’s coming to stop sacrifice. He’s coming to pay the price for the sins of his people and to bring about a transformation—into the old world and the recreation of the new world.

He comes from that olive grove and all of its associations to the Spirit, rebirth, recreation, and the holiness of God. And he comes to exalt the holiness of God. He comes—the text tells us in another account—and when he overturns the temples, the disciples remember that zeal for the Father’s house will consume him. He comes pledging his loyalty, first and foremost, to God.

So we understand who he is. But where are we in the text? Palm Sunday is a little bit of a conflicted celebration, isn’t it? You guys, you know, it’s a joyful thing to enter into these great Palm Sunday songs and the children bringing the palms and we have great glory. But we know that, you know, five days out, we’ve got Good Friday. And five days away from this historical event, these same crowds that we join with today in singing Hosanna, these same crowds will be crying out, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

So where are we in this? Well, I think that first of all, we are—and I say this on the outline—singing his praises as we have done. We’ve picked up the refrain: Hosanna to God in the highest. We’ve done this. We do it every Lord’s day. Singing his praises using the very words that were used at the triumphal entry. We are those visited by Jesus’s entry today, okay?

First of all, we’re those visited. We’re the church. He went to visit the church. He went to visit the city. We’re those people. We’re united to the receptive group that are receiving the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we would do well to stop for a moment there and to reflect on that just a little bit. You know, why is it that these crowds will then later cry out crucify him? What were they singing in those praises?

It would appear from a cursory glance at the text that these people were looking not for the suffering Savior who would die for their sins. They were looking for the one who could bring Lazarus back from death. He had just done that miracle. And a man that powerful will certainly bring us relief from the Romans. He will certainly make us again the ruling people in the earth. He will bring physical might and establish us. They had by all acknowledgment their own agendas at play and their own agendas, you know, are still in back of their singing praises to him.

They weren’t interested ultimately in having their sins forgiven by this man and certainly not in hearing their sins pointed out by this man. They were interested in using Jesus Christ for the well-being of their lives. And when he refused to be used in that way, then their true colors came out and they cried, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Jesus Christ guards God’s holiness. Zeal for the Father’s house consumed him. And I put on the outline: zeal for his day. That’s the day that we don’t mention during Holy Week, but it’s yesterday in terms of our text—the day before the triumphal entry. Rob Rayburn in his sermon on one of the accounts of the triumphal entry makes this point: that Jesus Christ begins the whole thing the day before the triumphal entry. Our Savior, in the words of Rob, kept the Sabbath day holy as he had always done. He spent it in Bethany with the twelve and his good friends Lazarus, Mary, Martha. No doubt he understood how much he would need the refreshment of that day, knowing at least in general what the next week was to bring.

So we could add another day: Jesus keeping the last Sabbath that he will keep before his death on Good Friday. And it’s not just again a minor throwaway time reference. Zeal for the Father’s house, zeal for the glory of God. As Jesus comes out of the olive doors guarding the holiness of God—we can say as he comes from the Holy of Holies—he comes in judgment.

Nadab and Abihu are another reflection that we’re given in this account. They come before God to worship him as they see fit. In the book of Leviticus, they’re going to worship for their purposes. They bring strange fire, not content with God’s provided fire. They bring their own autonomous worship and fire into the tabernacle area. And the holiness of God, the presence of God that they think is just some sort of symbol, comes out of the Holy of Holies and devours them, burns them alive.

We come close to God. We sing his praises, but recognize that God, the King of Kings, the Lord Jesus Christ, is not first and foremost he’ll die for us. He’ll show his great love for us, but only after he cleanses this house and affirms his primary commitment to the Father’s glory. Do we share that commitment? These people didn’t, and the judgment of God is pronounced upon them. Now, many come to faith eventually, but you know, we are united with those who sing Jesus’s praise.

And they should have asked themselves: Why are we here singing this? What is it that we mean when we cry out “save”? Do we mean save us from all of our troubles that are inconveniences to us? Do we mean save us from the Roman power? Do we mean save us, feed us bread, and leave us in our sinful state? Or do we mean save us from our sins? Because that’s why he’s there.

What do we mean? Why are we here today? What’s our identity? Are we committed first and foremost to the glory of God in the worship of God? We take our worship very seriously. Some people think too seriously, but in reformed circles, we recognize that the worship of God is the highest duty and privilege we have as people and we come close.

Jesus comes close to us. That glory cloud comes right down amongst us today as we approach him at this table and in hearing his word. Judgment begins at the house of God and he judges us. Why are we here? Do we keep his day holy? I thought about this last week. I didn’t talk about it. You know, I talked about giving glory. We’re given the gift of glory from God, and we are to give the gift of glory to others. But ultimately, of course, we’re to give the gift of glory and honor to God.

And God says that one very important way—one very important way that our Savior shows us here—is to keep his day, to keep it holy. And I—it’s a concern to me that reformed churches across this land, you know, regularly see this day as any other day except for an hour or two at church. And even that’s becoming more and more optional. It’s a world and a reformed community filled with humanism.

I think ultimately we can’t move on to be successful triumphant processors with Christ if we don’t recognize his coming to judge us first and to bring forth the judgment for us for not regarding the holiness of God, his day, his person, and his worship as our primary goal in what we do in this life.

So who are we? Well, first of all, we’re those hypocrites who have come together today—and let’s all acknowledge it—for various purposes not all of them pure. But we’re those that are being saved by the Lord God who are being reminded every time we come before his presence that we come primarily to get our sins forgiven and on the basis of that forgiveness of our sins to be new men and women in Jesus Christ.

So this is who we are. This is part of who we are. And in today’s service we’re going to have an installation of two previously ordained men: a deacon and an elder. And on the outline, I point out here that the Lord God helps us prepare for this role, this our part in this story, through men. The Lord God has given gifts to his people. He gives gifts of pastors to his congregation. And the pastors are called to set aside, help you to set aside this day, these few hours of worship with Christ. We prepare you for the visitation of Jesus Christ. Every Lord’s day we prepare the congregation and we are prepared ourselves.

How do we do that? Well, we do it in preparing the worship service. We do it in proclamation and preparing to proclaim the word. We do it in the selection of songs to reinforce the teaching of God’s word, to cause us to rejoice in God’s glory and call us to renewed senses of commitment. And to assist the elders: the elders are there like the Levites—teach and pray, right? Those are the two things: to preach the word of God and to lead in the worship of the church.

This is given to the elders of the church. And in this formal way, we prepare this day for you that you would come into it and be those who are singing Hosanna to King Jesus. But we remind you as you do this to put aside your sinful motivations for wanting Jesus and to look first and foremost at the glory of God.

So the elders help you prepare for the day of Christ’s visitation. We tell you what it’s like to have godly families, how to go about building godly businesses, how to engage in godly worship, how to show mercy to others based on the mercy that God has shown us, how to talk about the claims of Jesus Christ in the civil arena. All these things—we’re helping to prepare you for the day of Christ’s visitation, the day when and the particular moment as we come to this table where that judgment is heightened upon us, both causing us to tremble but causing us to rejoice in his acceptance of us through the work of Jesus Christ.

And God has given men to the elders. He has given deacons—servants, that’s what the word means—to the overseers of the church. God has given some men who are helping the elders to help prepare you for the visitation of Christ. This doesn’t happen just because we all casually think, “Let’s go to church this morning. Oh, maybe 10:00, maybe 11:00.” There’s an order to all of this.

The building has to be prepared, and it’s got to be prepared in a way that brings some of glory to God. Now, we’re not, you know, we’re not bound to the physical structure. We can worship God in a dump someplace, but God wouldn’t approve if we let it stay a dump. So the provision for the physical place where we worship—the deacons help in providing for this facility and helping to manage the funds, specifically given to that task. Roger helps prepare you for the visitation of Christ as we move into the rejoicing time together.

The deacons help by helping to provide ushers, greeters, people to provide for the orderly flow of people into and out of the worship service of God. Bob and Brian and Howard provide for the physical structure of this place and help to do that. All of these men are helping prepare you for the day of God’s visitation on the Lord’s day.

These men are given to you to assist the elders. If the elders had to keep doing all these things—you know, okay, when a church is small, these administrative details are relatively minor, but the apostles made it quite clear, speaking for the elders in Acts 6, that these tasks can start to overwhelm the overseers of the church. And so they have men given to them and given to the congregation to take on these administrative tasks so that they can focus on the preparation of the people with the preaching of the word, the preparation of the liturgy and the prayers of the elders for the people of God. And in that way prepare you for the day of visitation when Christ comes to be with us.

So we have these officers of the church to help prepare you in this one of your roles of identity as you meditate on the coming of Jesus Christ—the day of visitation to us.

As we join with the crowds in praising God, we remember that those crowds were ultimately within a week—when things didn’t go their way—were grumbling and disputing about Jesus and eventually cried out, “Crucify him. Crucify him.” May God grant that our children who sing these loud Hosannas today be taught and prepared by us for the visitation of Christ. That our tables would not be overturned. That our worship would not be condemned by the Savior. That our hearts would not be seen as ultimately way out of place, but rather that God would establish faith in this community.

We’re there with those crowds. But secondly—and on the outline—united with Jesus, right? Where are those who are united with Jesus Christ? Now, we are—the New Testament says—the body of Christ, okay? We’re the ones who process out of God. “Will send strength out of Zion. That’s you and I leaving this place.

And so we’re united with Jesus Christ. And as united with Christ, we’re grafted into that olive grove. We’re identifying with Jesus in the olive grove, amongst the olive trees, amongst the true heaven, the Holy of Holies in heaven. We’re united to him. The Holy of Holies has opened up to us. We participate in those gifts because of the work of Jesus Christ. We’re grafted in. That power of the olive oil fills us. We’re the lampstand, the watchtower for God—to report on the earth, to sing prayers rather to Jesus, to watch over the affairs of the world.

We are those then who enter into the city. You know, it’s interesting to me—a lot of hubbub about robes and worship. It’s really sort of sad. When I preached on robes, you know, the whole point of robes—or one of the major points of robes—in worship is the recreation of vocation. That’s what it’s about. It’s not about ultimately setting some men up here with robes apart from everybody else and saying they’ve got a holy calling. It’s just the reverse. It’s to remind men and women that when they robe up tomorrow for their work and put on the uniform of a policeman or the uniform of a businessman or the pocket protector of a geek computer programmer, I suppose—whatever it is that you’re seeing that as a holy calling from God.

The robe is meant to reinvest all of us in our callings. And when the robe serves to do other than that, dump it. But may God grant us at some point in time the calmness and the lack of sensitivities that you know are always feeling like somehow the guy’s just trying to make himself better than us.

We need the re-centralization of vocation and we need to see it symbolically. The Lord God represents symbolically Jesus Christ coming in the clouds. This is how God works. Symbols are important. Well, you know, it’s the same thing—the couple of us elders process in. You know, we’re bringing the word of God in to reinforce that Jesus is preaching here. His word is being proclaimed. And then we recess out. But if what you think from that is that the only ones here representing Jesus are the elders and the only ones who recess out with Jesus are the elders, we’ve done something way wrong because this is Mount Zion.

And in Psalm 110, God sends strength out of Zion—and not just the one or two guys who are called to help prepare you to be more than conquerors in Christ. You’re the ones recessing symbolically when the elders leave this place. You’re the ones who go down the hill literally here in Oregon City into you—enter the city. You’ve come to the holy place. You’ve been given the holiest of holies—these gifts of God—and you’re to process out of your union with Christ with the olives in the Holy of Holies, protecting the glory of God, declaring it.

You’re to go to the city tomorrow and you’re to change it. Right? This is who we are. In the story, we’re linked with the crowds, but we’re linked with Jesus Christ. We are those who enter triumphantly in procession into the city. We are those who receive Sabbath day enthronement.

2 Corinthians 2:14 says it like this—and I’m going to read it in the NIV. But the same sense is in the King James: “Thanks be to God who always leads us, that’s a collective of us, not just Paul and the elders, leads us as a group—the church of Jesus Christ—in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.”

You see, it’s what we see Jesus doing. This is what we do. We leave here in triumphal procession into the city as spirit-empowered men and women, boys and girls, and we transform the world. We everywhere take the fragrance of the knowledge of Jesus. We are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. When you go out tomorrow, wherever you go—the store, the workplace, recreation—you will be amongst people who are being saved and others who are perishing. To some of those, we are the stench of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.

Who is equal to such a task? Dennis, you’re telling me that we’re Christ processing into the world, bringing judgment and yet transformation and healing. That is precisely what I’m telling you. Who is equal to such a task? We can say the same thing. And the answer, of course, is only those who are joined to Jesus Christ—who with him seek more than anything else, not our kingdom, not our deliverance, ultimately our salvation from sin and the holiness of God.

Paul says, you know, “Who is equal to such a task? Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ, we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God.”

Jesus says he will send. The Holy Spirit will proceed from the Father and the Son in triumphal procession to you and you will then be sent by Jesus into the world. We are those who enter in triumphal procession into the world that Jesus has called us to enter as well. We’re the ones who are called to do this. And we’re called beyond that to lead some others in procession.

Isaiah 60:11 says this: “Your gates will always stand open. They will never be shut, day or night, that men may bring you the wealth of the nations, their kings led in triumphal procession.” We go in triumphal procession into the city, into the culture and its religious system. We go as the fragrance of Christ and we then bring that city back—the kings of the nations—into triumphal procession through the doors that lead into the worship of God into Zion, the new tabernacle of David, the church and her worship of Jesus Christ.

This is who we are. And for this task as well, the Lord God has given you men. Our job is totally failed. Myself, Chris W., John S., and after today, Doug, if all we do is make you good worshippers—if somehow that worship doesn’t transform you into men and women who enter the city tomorrow and change it in small but significant ways: to the raising of godly children, being godly employees and employers—if we don’t equip you for that task, we failed.

If all we do, deacons and elders, is prepare you for the visitation of Christ today amongst you, that’s only half the job. Our job in the preaching of the word, in the development of the liturgy, in the prayers that we offer up, the elders of the church, in our general oversight of every aspect of this church—our job is to equip and prepare you, the body of Christ, Christ’s offspring as it were, to go triumphantly into this world and transform it by the simple lives of obedience and glorifying God and honoring him and proclaiming the good news in what you do and, yes, sometimes in what you say.

This is the job of the elders, and the deacons are the same way. If the elders were to arrange family camp and have to care for all the details of it, it wouldn’t come off. It would distract us from other duties that we have to do. So there are men that God has raised up—deacons, primarily Howard in that thing. We need to see ourselves not as lone rangers in the week either, but as part of the community of Christ. The joy of the Lord is our strength. And what we do here in exhibiting community is followed up on throughout the year, throughout the week as we get together in fellowship groups, prayer groups, for a week of rejoicing at the camp.

All this is preparation for you to recognize Jesus goes with you in the fulfillment of the Great Commission. As we have the events of the church that you know go out from the worship service, the elders and deacons are preparing you for that. As they help you think through vocation, as the deacons help with budget counseling with men or getting people out of debt—you see, they’re preparing you for being triumphant processors into the city and transforming it. As the elders teach you how to be good husbands and wives and children, brothers and sisters, they’re preparing you for that part of your identity in this story.

And as the deacons assist the elders by taking off administrative tasks both in the context of the Lord’s day and the other six days of the week, they allow us to help prepare you for this work—this other half of what the text tells us we’re to do: to process into the city through Jesus Christ.

We ordain men today and we ordain men who in some sense are sort of the ones that guide and guard the family of God as we fulfill this mission.

In Psalm 110, we read: “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.’ The Lord shall send the rod of your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of your enemies. Your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power. In the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning, you have the dew of your youth.”

That’s a phrase that means the descendants of Jesus Christ are Christians. Jesus never marries, has no child that way, but he has all these youth, all these children, all these offspring that are us. And in Psalm 110, the most frequently quoted psalm in the New Testament, we’re seen as those people processing out into this world.

We’re the family of God here. And this family of God accomplished is the restructuring of the world.

And so the third point of the outline is that in the same way that the officers of the church help prepare you for the visitation of Christ and in the same way the officers of the church help prepare you for your procession into the week—in the same way the officers can be said to help prepare the people of God for their task as living as the family of God as well.

Now on your outlines I have a couple of quotations—very briefly I’ll allude to this. These are from John Piper’s book called Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. We are the family of God, the seed of the Savior, Psalm 110, prepared by the officers of the church, elders and deacons.

Now, what I did here was these are actually definitions that refer to biblical masculinity and biblical femininity. These are sort of the roles of husband and wife in the family in their first citation by Piper. But as I read them, I thought, you know, we’ve made this connection before. If we’re the family of God and the elders are the overseers of the church, they’re sort of like, you know, the dads of the church, and the deacons are the assistants to the dads to help them fulfill their mandate—the preparation of the people for the Lord’s day worship and visitation by Christ—but then for processing into the city.

Well, maybe the same definition will work for the congregants of the church and the deacons of the church as it would for this sense of biblical femininity.

So, let’s just try it. What I’ve rephrased these as is this: The elders—the job of the elders is to have a sense of benevolent responsibility. Jesus makes clear over and over again that leadership that he gives to the church is not as Gentiles do it, but rather a benevolent responsibility to those they guide and govern. To what? To lead—not to just do everything, but to lead you into your procession, to provide for by word and sacrament. In the sense of the church, right? Well, the raw meat we give to you is the word, and then the sacrament of the church, the worship of the church, is how we provide for you through the application of the word to your life. And we protect then the church as well. We have a guarding function to the church.

Well, the congregation seen in this way, the rewording I give is this: Congregants and deacons are to have a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership from their elders. You know, it’s a funny thing again with this whole robe thing and processions. People are worried, you know, that well, the elders and the church will become too powerful an institution in the life of the people. Maybe that’ll be a problem in 100 years. Maybe that’s a problem in scattered little sectarian churches that are off all on their own.

But if we have any problem in American culture today, it is that the church and her officers are irrelevant, or maybe a little relevant for a nice little spiritual experience on Sunday. But you know, the reinvigoration of the church is a vital task for our Christian culture. And this is part of the way it will happen: if congregants, understanding that God has given you these elders to prepare you for the visitation of Christ and to lead you into your triumphal procession into the city, congregants are to have a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership from their elders.

You are to want to follow the lead of your elders. You are to put the best construction on what we do. The same way a wife—you know, biblical submission is not saluting and doing it every time. Biblical submission is offering council, advice, making entreaties when necessary. But biblical submission is having a heart attitude of wanting so very badly to follow the godly lead of one’s husband. And the church should have that same disposition toward these men that God has provided to prepare you for your triumphal procession.

The church and the congregants are to want to affirm: yes, we know that you’re the men that God is using to help prepare us. You are the men that we receive instruction from and nurture. And we want to nurture strength and leadership in you by our joyful attitude toward you. Now, it doesn’t mean you overlook sin. Well, it does mean you overlook some sin. Well, that’s what happens in a marriage, too, right? We don’t go after every little sin that each of us commits. We overlook a lot of sins.

Now, serious things we can’t overlook. We must take each other to account for. And elders, when they sin, are to be rebuked in public because of their greater responsibility to do what’s right. But it does mean that for this all to work right—for you to be best prepared for the day of Christ’s visitation and for your own triumphal visitation to the cities in which we live—then you are going to want to have this heart attitude to be in the corner of the elders. You’re to want to have a freeing disposition.

I’m dealing now with a man in another church and he’s so suspicious. He’s got so many questions about everything the elders are doing. And well, is this right? Is that right? It seems to me this. And you know, there are a million questions I could answer for this man, but ultimately until he decides—and he’s all balled up, you know, he’s all tangled up, he’s unhappy, you know, he’s just kind of always in discontent—you know what he needs is a freeing disposition to submit to the elders that God has placed over him. If he can’t do that, then he needs to find another church where he can do it.

It is a freeing disposition to affirm the men that God has called to prepare you for his visitation and for your procession into the city. It’s freeing to you. And men who are balled up sometimes—this is sometimes why they don’t have this thing going on. And the deacons are the same way. If the deacons are to effectively serve the elders in the preparation of God’s people for worship and work, for the visitation of Christ and for our work in the culture, then the deacons are to have this freeing disposition as well. They should be the leaders of the congregation in the sense of wanting to lead the congregation to be in the corner, to be on the side of the elders in this work they’re called to do.

The Author of Hebrews helps us to understand: “Those who have the rule over you, who have taught you things, submit to them. Have this joyful, freeing disposition.”

You know, you’re going to have a new elder here today. Have a freeing disposition to affirm him and his office of preparing you for the visitation of Christ in your procession into the city. We’re going to have a new deacon here. May God grant that deacon the desire to be in that elder’s corner and affirm this as well. And lead the congregation in rallying to be on the side of the very men who are being used by God to not take things away from you but to give you the gifts of glory, knowledge, life, and ultimately triumph as we go down this hill into the city.

This is the relationship of the officers of the church to the procession of Jesus Christ. This is the wonderful blessing that we have: to come into the presence of God, to see at the middle of our lives this historic week, these eight days, maybe nine if we include the Sabbath before, all this in preparation. We see these days at the center of reality. At the center of these days is the person and work of Jesus Christ, freeing us from our sins, giving us hearts and minds that want to honor and glorify him, his servants, the preparers of his people in the church, and ultimately one another—to minister these gifts of glory, knowledge, and rejoicing life together in the church.

The Lord God has given us a wonderful life. It’s a wonderful life. And that life is made more wonderful when we understand what he’s doing—how he comes to visit us, not to kill us, but to heal us. To give us new eyes to see correctly, to give us restored legs. We get lame during the week, and he brings us into his temple today and says, “I’m not going to kick you out. I’m going to cause you to dwell with me. And I’m going to have to send you out at the end of the day because it’s such a great day together. But you know, there’s people out there down the hill who need help, who need work, and you are my people to do it. And it’s going to be fun. Going to be work. Going to be difficult at times. But it is a joyous fulfillment of our identity as we see the identity of Christ in this bit of history and his centrality to our lives.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for the love you have for us. We thank you for the plan that you’ve got. We thank you that we leave this place today as those who are being sent out as the strength coming from Zion. May we, Lord God, have a proper sense of who we are—the dominion men and women that we are. And may we see, Father, the great gifts you’ve given to us—these two new men, Brian and Doug—as we prepare to install them to help prepare us for that wonderful task.

In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.