Palm Sunday - Our Fickle Hearts

"Blessed is he" will soon become "crucify him!"

Luke 19:37-41  When He reached the place where the road started down the Mount of Olives, all of His followers began to shout and sing as they walked along, praising God for all the wonderful miracles they had seen.

38  "Blessings on the King who comes in the name of the LORD! Peace in heaven, and glory in highest heaven!"

39  But some of the Pharisees among the crowd said, "Teacher, rebuke Your followers for saying things like that!"

40  He replied, "If they kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheers!"  41  But as He came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, He began to weep.

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The crowd that ran out to the city gates to welcome Jesus were praising God for all the wonderful miracles they had seen. The crowds heard the news and they knew what has been going on recently.

It hasn't been very long since Jesus brought Lazarus back to life, just recently Jesus healed ten lepers and on another occasion there was a huge uproar when blind Bartimaeus was healed. There was even some talk that Jesus changed that tax collector Zacchaeus and now he was passing out the first ever tax refunds.

Jesus decision to go to Jerusalem was not a great idea in the minds of the disciples but surely their minds were put at ease with all of this positive attention that Jesus was getting. Did Judas think that the power that he was waiting for was finally going to happen? Did James and John start to think about their moms request to sit next to Jesus on his throne?

They were probably all confused since Jesus has been talking about dying in Jerusalem and now everything seems to be good. That is until the religious leaders showed up and demanded that Jesus reprimand his fan club.

Jesus told them that these people were not wrong to sing praises to him but at the same time he isn't letting this moment of popularity go to his head. It's just like the beginning of Jesus ministry when the crowds were starting to come around but Jesus already knew that the crowds were not sincere. (John 2:23-25)

Psalms 91:4  He will cover you with His feathers. He will shelter you with His wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection.

Just like many of the generations before, these people saw many signs and miracles, they got to experience God close up but they would still reject him. They would taste of God's goodness and delight in him for a season and then they would push him aside.

The people of Israel, on the heels of unthinkable miracles, with their pockets full of Egyptian jewelry, grumble at their less-than-five-star accommodations in the desert. This wasn't just headache-induced grumbling or low-blood-sugar complaining. This was faithlessness.

-John Piper

Just like many of us today. Our pockets are full, we have homes that are more accommodating than most of the world has and our stomachs are full, and just like the Israelites we grumble about the Lord's goodness.

All of us are prone to be like Peter and forget everything that we have experienced. Peter had walked on water, he picked up the leftovers when Jesus fed the crowds and he helped unwrap Lazarus when he walked out of the tomb. He said "I won't deny you!" and yet he turned just as quickly as the rest of the crowd.

Do you realize how unbelieveable that is to those that haven't tasted God's goodness? To those that do not have the hope of future glory that will last for eternity? We are so fickle, we turn on Him so quickly, join in with the crowds and mock him like he hasn't done anything.

How deep the Father's love for us, How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son, To make a wretch His treasure
How great the pain of searing loss, The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the chosen One, Bring many sons to glory
Behold the Man upon a cross, My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice, Call out among the scoffers

Forgive me Lord for choosing to do it my way, help me to be loyal to you instead of giving in to my sin nature, I need your help to stop the rebellion against you in my own life. I want to crown you Lord of my life and allow you to stay in control. I want to be faithful to you and never doubt your goodness.

Who Is Jesus? Here Are Some Witnesses

The decision is yours but don't neglect to look at the evidence that Jesus really is God.

John 5:31-40  "If I were to testify on My own behalf, My testimony would not be valid.  32  But Someone else is also testifying about Me, and I assure you that everything He says about Me is true. 33  In fact, you sent investigators to listen to John the Baptist, and his testimony about Me was true.  34  Of course, I have no need of human witnesses, but I say these things so you might be saved.  35  John was like a burning and shining lamp, and you were excited for a while about his message.

36  But I have a greater witness than John--My teachings and My miracles. The Father gave Me these works to accomplish, and they prove that He sent Me.  37  And the Father who sent Me has testified about Me Himself. You have never heard His voice or seen Him face to face,  38  and you do not have His message in your hearts, because you do not believe Me--the One He sent to you.

39  "You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to Me!  40  Yet you refuse to come to Me to receive this life.

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Who is Jesus? Jesus stated in the previous post that he is God and that he does the work of God. In today's scripture Jesus continues his response to the interrogation that takes place after he healed a man on the Sabbath.

Jesus isn't standing in a courtroom but there are plenty of people standing there judging him, they are deciding who he is, they are trying to answer a question that we all need to deal with.

Who is Jesus? Are there any credible witnesses? As the interrogation continues we see Jesus calling on the prosecution to consider the testimony from a diverse list of witnesses.

John the Baptist

John 1:29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

John was a great man sent as God's messenger and he made it clear that Jesus is God's Son. His entire life focused on the mission that he was given. The response to John was very good for a while but by the this time in Jesus ministry he is already in prison. (Isaiah 40:3; Malachi 3:1, Matthew 11:11)

Jesus Teaching And His Miracles

John 10:37-38 Don't believe Me unless I carry out My Father's work. But if I do His work, believe in the evidence of the miraculous works I have done, even if you don't believe Me. Then you will know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I am in the Father."

The authority that Jesus had when he spoke and the things that he said made the people around him realize that he wasn't an ordinary man. His teaching at the age of twelve was already making people take notice. (Luke 2:47, John 7:15,46)

But Jesus wasn't just a teacher he was also a healer, he took control of nature and the demonic. His miracles were great in number, they were great in size and they were done out in front of everybody so that there wasn't anyway to deny that he had accomplished the impossible.

God the Father

1 John 5:9 Since we believe human testimony, surely we can believe the greater testimony that comes from God. And God has testified about His Son.

Scripture points to Jesus, God has given us plenty of clues throughout the entire Bible, the number of prophecies that were fulfilled through his birth validate his identity. Their Bible Study time didn't accomplish much, Jesus told them that he knows that they spend plenty of time studying but they still don't have a clue who he is.

Besides giving us the Bible, God also testified about Jesus identity at his baptism and at the transfiguration. (Matthew 3:17, 17:5)

Eyewitness Testimony

I have read through the gospels many times and I have marked my Bible each time someone makes a statement about who Jesus is. Here are just a few:

John 6:68-69 Simon Peter replied, "Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life. We believe, and we know You are the Holy One of God. " Luke 8:28 As soon as he saw Jesus, he shrieked and fell down in front of Him. Then he screamed, "Why are You interfering with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Please, I beg You, don't torture me!" Luke 9:35 Then a voice from the cloud said, "This is My Son, My Chosen One. Listen to Him." Mark 15:39 When the Roman officer who stood facing Him [heard His cry and] saw how He had died, he exclaimed, "This man truly was the Son of God!" John 11:25-27 Jesus told her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in Me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in Me and believes in Me will never ever die. Do you believe this, Martha?" "Yes, Lord," she told Him. "I have always believed You are the Messiah, the Son of God, the One who has come into the world from God." John 20:27-28 Then He said to Thomas, "Put your finger here, and look at My hands. Put your hand into the wound in My side. Don't be faithless any longer. Believe!" "My Lord and my God!" Thomas exclaimed.

Over and over again the people that spent time with Jesus came to realize that they were in the presence of God himself. From ordinary people, to the disciples, to demons and Roman guards people from all walks of life and every social status realized the same truth.

Who is Jesus? That is the most important question that you need to answer. There are answers to this question in many different books. Most of these books have a single author who claims to have a revelation that wasn't given to anybody else. (The Quran, the Jehovah's Witness Bible, the Book of Mormon)

The Bible is the only one that has multiple authors with divine inspiration, it is the only historical reference to who Jesus is that was written by the men that lived each day with Jesus during his ministry.

We need to spend time digging the word so that we can believe. The greatest tragedy is that the Bible is so accessible, it has so much evidence to answer this important question yet the evidence is being ignored.

Deuteronomy 29:29 "The LORD our God has secrets known to no one. We are not accountable for them, but we and our children are accountable forever for all that He has revealed to us, so that we may obey all the terms of these instructions.

Why so many witnesses? Jesus said "I say these things so you might be saved."  John told us that he wrote this book for the benefit of his reader that they would believe what he believes about Jesus. God has given us so many witnesses so that we can believe without a doubt that Jesus is his Son and that through him alone we have the ability to spend eternity with him.

Thank you Lord for the overwhelming amount of evidence that Jesus is your son, that he is equal to you and because he is he has the ability to forgive.

Who Is Jesus? Here Is Some Proof

The most important fact that you need to believe.

John 5:17-23  But Jesus replied, "My Father is always working, and so am I."  18  So the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill Him. For He not only broke the Sabbath, He called God His Father, thereby making Himself equal with God.

19  So Jesus explained, "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by Himself. He does only what He sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.  20  For the Father loves the Son and shows Him everything He is doing. In fact, the Father will show Him how to do even greater works than healing this man. Then you will truly be astonished.

21  For just as the Father gives life to those He raises from the dead, so the Son gives life to anyone He wants.

22  In addition, the Father judges no one. Instead, He has given the Son absolute authority to judge,  23  so that everyone will honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son is certainly not honoring the Father who sent Him.

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In the previous post Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath, the man that was healed would like to think that the miracle was all about him and about making his body whole but the healing was probably more of a setup for Jesus to have a conversation with the religious leaders.

Jesus didn't stir things up for no reason, he wanted to speak directly to their greatest sin, he wanted to show them that their abuse of the Sabbath day rules was not pleasing to God. If they are going to get right with God, who they think they are serving, they need to look at the greatest sin in their life.

Healing this man on the Sabbath is only the beginning, Jesus next statement really stirs things up, the next thing that Jesus says is outrageous:

"My Father is always working, and so am I."

These words made them furious, the religious leaders are not willing to acknowledge that healing the man at the pool was proof of who Jesus is and now they are convinced that Jesus is blasphemous.

God and Jesus are always working.

Since the beginning of Jesus' ministry we have seen him at work through circumstances, we have seen him create the right circumstances to force a confrontation, each of these moments gave Him the opportunity to reveal himself to them. Jesus didn't refrain from telling the truth because it would make his life more difficult.

Basically Jesus said to them, "I did something good on the sabbath, something that God would do." So if you have a problem with what Jesus did then you have a problem with God.

Isaiah 40:28-29 Have you never heard? Have you never understood? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of His understanding. He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless.

God created for six days and then he ceased from creating but he never ceased from all of his work. When I was taught the creation story as a child I always pictured God taking a nap at the end of the week. I don't think that it was ever explained to us that God is always at work. Our existence and the existence of everything else in creation depend on God's continuous sustaining work.

God and Jesus are the same.

The most important concept in the Bible is the trinity. If we are going to know God then we need to get to know him for who he really is and we need to know that the only reason that Christianity has any validity is because of the fact that Jesus is God.

John 10:31-33 Once again the people picked up stones to kill Him. Jesus said, "At My Father's direction I have done many good works. For which one are you going to stone Me?" They replied, "We're stoning you not for any good work, but for blasphemy! You, a mere man, claim to be God."

In healing on the Sabbath, Jesus was not acting against the Father’s commands, but doing what the Father wanted him to do. God and Jesus are busy doing the same work, they work in perfect harmony and there are no secrets between them.

God gives Jesus two "God jobs."

Raise the dead and judge the world, those are two jobs that God has transferred over to Jesus, both jobs require that you be just as much God as God is. Neither one of those jobs can be accomplished by a mere human.

John 5:27 And He has given Him authority to judge everyone because He is the Son of Man.

The power of judging the world implies the ability to search the heart to really know somebody and to understand the motives for everything they do.

Who is Jesus?

There are only three choices:

1. Jesus is absolutely correct and he really is God.
2. Jesus is a liar and he knows that he is lying to us to try and deceive us.
3. Jesus is a liar but he is a delusional mad man.

The first option is really the only one that makes any sense. A deceiver will rarely continue his deception to the point of death. A deceiver or a delusional man could not heal the man on the Sabbath, or raise the dead, or take control of both nature and the demons. A delusional man cannot teach with the authority that Jesus had and they couldn't have insight like Jesus had.

Who is Jesus? Don't neglect to find out the best answer to that question.

Mercy Versus Legalism

Mercy is more important than trying harder.

John 5:1-18  Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days.  2  Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches.  3  Crowds of sick people--blind, lame, or paralyzed--lay on the porches [waiting for a certain movement of the water,]

5  One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years.  6  When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, He asked him, "Would you like to get well?"

7  "I can't, sir," the sick man said, "for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me."  8  Jesus told him, "Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!"

9  Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! But this miracle happened on the Sabbath,  10  so the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured, "You can't work on the Sabbath! The law doesn't allow you to carry that sleeping mat!"

11  But he replied, "The man who healed me told me, 'Pick up your mat and walk.'"  12  "Who said such a thing as that?" they demanded.  13  The man didn't know, for Jesus had disappeared into the crowd.  14  But afterward Jesus found him in the Temple and told him, "Now you are well; so stop sinning, or something even worse may happen to you."

15  Then the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had healed him.  16  So the Jewish leaders began harassing Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules.  17  But Jesus replied, "My Father is always working, and so am I."  18  So the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill Him. For He not only broke the Sabbath, He called God His Father, thereby making Himself equal with God.

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People around the world look for help through superstition and religious expressions that don't have any ability to help. In today's verses there are hundreds of people that sit by a pool waiting for the water to move because they believe that the first one in gets a prize. On this day Jesus chooses to meet with just one of them.

It's the same as it was for the woman that was on her way to a well in Samaria, Jesus had a plan to interact with certain people, his plan guided every step that he took. Unlike Nicodemus the woman at the well and this man at the pool were not looking for Jesus and when they first meet him they have no idea who he is.

Jesus Power

Jesus knew how to start a conversation, "Would you like to get well?" The man's response implies that he wants to be well but he is hopeless to be healed at this pool because he is friendless. Nobody is there to help him get in.

Maybe this guy is hoping that Jesus will be nice enough to put him into the pool the next time the water is stirred but instead he received his healing without delay. He was able to walk and he was able to pick up his mat and carry it off with him.

Notice the spiritual condition of this man, he didn't have faith that Jesus could heal him, he still didn't know who was telling him to get up and walk. Jesus choose to work in his life without any prerequisite amount of faith or belief, Jesus choose to work in his life when the man couldn't do anything to earn an intervention from Jesus. It was completely up to Jesus!

If Jesus could stand over this man and speak the recreation of his muscle tissue, then he could easily speak our world into existence.

Jesus Authority

What a shame that this man's story is marred by one fact. It looks like a happy time to us and a celebration is in order but everybody around him probably watched in horror as they saw him pick up his mat. They probably wanted to scream out to him to let it go.

Why couldn't Jesus wait a few hours and heal this man right after the Sabbath ended? Why did Jesus feel that it was necessary to go meet this one particular man and heal him alone? Jesus had a point to make and he would work through this man to make his point.

Jesus wanted to address the area of the religious leaders greatest sin, he wasn't just trying to antagonize them and stir things up for no reason, if Jesus stirs things up it is to show you something that you need to see. It is always disturbing when our sin gets pointed out.

Jesus Knowledge

Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time and besides that he also knew the reason for his illness. Sickness was blamed almost always on somebody making God mad at them. That was a teaching that was true of the pagan gods of ancient times.

We don't know if he straightened up his life and took Jesus advice to stop sinning. We do know that he exhibited some amount of faith when he got up, picked up his mat and started walking. We know that he was in the temple just a few minutes later when Jesus introduced himself to the man. Was he in the temple to praise God for healing him?

The New High Priest
Hebrews 4:15-16  This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for He faced all of the same testings we do, yet He did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive His mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.

The religious leaders in the temple that day were amazed that someone would dare break their rules about keeping the Sabbath. They didn't realize the the person that made the original Sabbath rules was the one that was breaking their man made rules.The original law about the Sabbath had been expanded by the religious establishment, they had made it impossible to do anything but sit in a corner all day.

Are you passionate about your list of rules? Legalism is usually self serving, whoever is in charge of the list of rules is usually the one that is in control of everything and their passion for the rules is usually for their own benefit.

Isaiah 55:7 Let the wicked change their ways and banish the very thought of doing wrong. Let them turn to the LORD that He may have mercy on them. Yes, turn to our God, for He will forgive generously.

The appeal to Christianity is that it teaches mercy and forgiveness. Every other religious system points to their list and pulls out their scales to see how you measure up. Satan wants to get your focus off of grace and onto performance. His strategy is to beat you up with your inability to keep the entire list of rules.

Thank God we have a new High Priest that doesn't want us to live in fear for twenty-four hours. The old high priest was cold and heartless, instead of mercy and instead of rejoicing that someone is healed he points to his list of rules and lets you know which ones you are breaking.

Hosea 6:6 I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know Me more than I want burnt offerings.

Are you passionate for Jesus? Our new High Priest wants a relationship, he sympathizes with us, he knows how it feels to hurt, and he knows how it feels to be tempted. The new High Priest wants genuine worship, he wants our motivation to obey his teaching to come from love for him and hatred for sin.

Help us Lord to follow your example and become more merciful and forgiving.