Here is yet one more Palm Sunday sermon. For a Palm Sunday sermon, it devotes what may seem an inordinate amount of space to events following Palm Sunday, i.e., the Crucifixion (as if one could ever devote an “inordinate” amount of space to the Crucifixion...). But the intention behind this is twofold: 1) to drive home to the listeners’ the amazingly consistent prophetic theme running through all the events of Holy Week, beginning with the Entry, as foreshadowed in Psalm 118; for example, have you ever noticed that Jesus cites the same psalm to the Jewish leaders as the crowd quoted to him the day before? - it all seems to be a single, unfolding story already “told”, in a veiled way, in the psalm; 2) to “crystallize”, in light of this permeating motif, the way in which the Atonement truly consummates, in ways only God (“...the Lord has done this”) could have designed, what the crowds on Palm Sunday were really talking about... even if they didn’t know it. In short, this sermons tries (how successfully, I will not venture to say) to be a portrait of the divine hand actualizing the divine will, no matter what people thought they were accomplishing.
Read Isaiah 63:1-6, then Matthew 21:1-5, then Philippians 2:6-8
Even in his humility, Jesus’ greatness shone. It shone through his love, through the truth that he spoke, through the power that he demonstrated. Jesus healed people of their sicknesses. Most of all, he healed them of the sickness of heart, which comes from sin. He healed them from anger and envy, from fear and hatred. He showed them that the most important liberation is not political liberation, or economic liberation, but liberation of the heart. He brought them the fresh, clean water which is called new life. Many tasted this water, and they sensed the great power which brought them this new life.
And so, when Jesus rode into the city they shouted “Hosanna!” “Hosanna” means “Save!” In Hebrew it sounds like “hoshiyana”. Actually, the root of this word is the same as the root of Jesus’ Hebrew name Yeshua. And we know why Jesus received his name: because the angel told Joseph, “You will call him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins”. And so it comes about that the crowds now cry out to the Savior, “Save! Save!” And they call him Son of David. That shows how great their hope was for a Messiah, a son of David who would establish the true kingdom of God. Just as the prophet Zechariah prophesied, their king really was coming to them. The prophecy was fulfilled on that day.
The people greeted Jesus not only as Son of David, but also with the words of Psalm 118. In Psalm 118:26, it says, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” In Hebrew it sounds like, “Baruch ha-ba b’shem Yahveh.” Let’s look at that passage, starting at verse 25; we’ll read verses 25 to 29 (read).
These verses speak of joy; they speak of salvation. They speak of God’s mercy. They praise God who is our light. But they speak also of sacrifice (v. 27). Without sacrifice for sin there is no forgiveness because the debt of sin must be paid. Interestingly, in this psalm where it talks about joy and light and thanksgiving and mercy, it talks also about sacrifice. This is inescapable, because we live in a fallen, sinful world. And when we look again at Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, what do we see? Immediately after he came into the city, where did he go? Into the temple. He went to the place of sacrifice. The Lamb of God came into the city with one purpose: to present himself to the Father as the perfect redeeming sacrifice. The crowds who shouted for Jesus didn’t know that. When they shouted joyfully “Save! Save!”, they didn’t know he was really going to do it, or how. But Jesus knew, and was ready.
And yet, the Lamb of God did not die in this temple. All the lambs which the people offered in sacrifice had to die in the temple. But not God’s lamb. Jesus was rejected by the priests. The true Lamb was sent to die outside the walls of the holy city. Jesus knew about this, too. The day after his triumphal entry, Jesus was again in the temple, the temple he had cleansed, just as he came to cleanse our hearts, and he saw the chief priests and elders and... (read Matthew 21:42). Jesus quoted psalm 118, the very same psalm the people quoted when they shouted the day before, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” The same psalm that talks about the Messiah’s glory speaks also about his rejection and suffering. Jesus was the only one there who saw the whole picture, the glorious and the terrible sides.
It is most probable that the place where they crucified Jesus was an abandoned stone quarry, a place where there was no more stone of good quality. Jesus literally died in the place where the builders rejected the stones. And dying there, Jesus became like one of the stones rejected by the builders. And who were the builders, the supposed constructors of the nation, the chosen people? They were the priests and elders, the Pharisees and scribes, the ones who claimed the authority and had to answer for it. They should have recognized the nation’s cornerstone, Jesus Christ, when he appeared, and welcomed him as Savior of the world. But they rejected him and sent him to the cross, to die outside of the city where all the other rejected stones lay, in an old, worthless quarry.
It is quite possible, too, that when Jesus worked as a young man, he didn’t work with wood but with stone. The word in the Bible that we translate as “carpenter” could just as easily refer to a stonemason, and given the lay of the land in Nazareth, it seems to make more sense. If so, then the spectacle of Jesus, who humbly worked in his youth with stone under the blazing sun, building walls and homes, now cast outside the walls of Jerusalem and his Father’s house, thrown away like a broken, useless piece of rock to die in an abandoned stone quarry, nailed to a wooden cross built just to torture him to death under the blazing sun, becomes, if possible, even more shattering. But if it is more shattering, it is also, hard as it is to conceive it this way, even more glorious. Because the actual, ultimate reality which we must see in this terrible, terrible spectacle is the fact of the stone which the builders rejected turning out to be the cornerstone of God’s eternal salvation and kingdom. “The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous [that means “miraculous”!] in our eyes.” You see, the psalmist isn’t saying, “We think it’s really swell”; he’s prophetically saying, “we recognize this is actually a miracle” – no one could have pulled something like this off except God Almighty. And in the final event, Jesus’ rejection by the world was so final, so absolute that no one but God Almighty could have made that terrible, lonely cross into the triumph of atonement and everlasting glory.
Remember, Psalm 118 is a psalm of salvation. It’s about God’s stupendous miracle of salvation. And precisely this terrible death – the Lamb’s death outside the city – is the actual thing itself, really happening before the world’s eyes. Here on the cross, and here preaching in the temple, and here riding into Jerusalem, is the Rejected Stone whom the Father is making the Cornerstone of His true temple, of the spiritual house He will dwell in, His living temple the Church.
And that is how this man, Jesus, the Lamb, did what the people cried out for him to do, “Hoshiyana – Save! Save!” That is how he accomplished his only desire: to complete his Father’s will.
When Jesus entered the city, many people asked, “Who is this?” (verse 11). He came in the name of the Lord, but they asked what his name was. One day, though, no one will ever need to ask his name (Philippians 2:9-11)... “for the Father has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name (vv. 10-11).
We began in the book of Isaiah, and we will finish there also, with Isaiah 65:17-19 (read).
On the day when the true king, Jesus Christ, appears, there will be rejoicing in the new Jerusalem and the Son of David will sit on the throne of God, and "we will be glad and rejoice" in what He has done.
