Palm Sunday and the Kingdom of God
Transcript
Good morning. Happy Palm Sunday. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We are going to take a break from Genesis to prepare for this week. Today is Palm Sunday, as Matt said, as we've been celebrating this morning, which is the week, the day that Jesus entered into the city of Jerusalem on the week that he was crucified.
So we're going to walk through this in Luke 19, which is on page 512 in your Blue Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, please take one of those home. That is our gift to you, but we'll be on page 512 in the Blue Bibles, Luke 19. This week is called Holy Week or Passion Week because this is when the global church collectively, with the exception of Eastern Orthodoxy, but the rest of the global church pauses to celebrate the week of Easter. The week that we celebrate Jesus' climactic work, everything that has gone into his coming, we celebrate this week. That on Palm Sunday, Jesus enters into the city as we will walk through in the text today.
And then on Thursday, the church celebrates something called Maundy Thursday, which is when we celebrate the Lord's Supper that was practiced, was first instituted on that day, also foot washing. So in groups this week, we're going to celebrate the Lord's Supper and take communion. I know some of you just freaked out. We're not going to do foot washing. We're not going to do that. It has its place.
It has its meaning, but we're just not going to do it in our groups this week. So if you're scared of feet, rest easy. But we are going to take the Lord's Supper in groups this week. And then on Friday, we're going to celebrate Good Friday. And we'd love to do that here, but this space gets rented out every year. So we're going to join Midtown Fellowship downtown to celebrate Good Friday with them.
And then on Sunday, we'll celebrate the resurrection here on Easter Sunday. So go ahead and go to Luke. We'll get to that in a moment. Have you ever been so, you put so much hope in something. You so looked forward to something, and it didn't work out, and you were crushed. Like your hopes, you were left sad and dismayed.
Like I got to see this vividly on display a few weeks ago. If you aren't on Facebook and we're not friends or haven't had this conversation with you yet, I have some exciting news we're expecting. My wife is 17 weeks pregnant, and it was a surprise. But we are very excited about this blessing. This pregnancy in particular has been very, very difficult for her. All of the first trimesters of her pregnancies have been terrible.
She's been sick in all of them. But this one, this one was especially bad. She was sick multiple times a day throughout the first trimester. And there was one food that really got her through, one food that she didn't see again when she ate it, and that was Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A was a godsend to our family that got us through the first trimester. Unfortunately, in Lexington, we live in West Lexington, so we live right near Lexington High School on the back end towards Gilbert.
Unfortunately, the Chick-fil-A in the middle of Lexington, up until a few weeks ago, had been closed down for renovations. So that means that she wanted something that she could eat that she wouldn't be sick again. She had to travel all the way to the other side of Lexington, to where the one is over at Saluda Point, the one by River Bluff. She had to travel that far just to get something that she wouldn't see again. And she was very agitated by this. She was so upset that she wrote Chick-fil-A, a strongly worded email, telling them, you need to build a Chick-fil-A on our side of town.
You will make money. This is foolish. Please, please, please build a Chick-fil-A over here. And then a couple weeks ago, she saw on Facebook. Someone had taken a picture of a sign from a green field across from Lexington High School and said, the sign said, Chick-fil-A coming soon. And she was so excited.
A lot of people were. This went viral for the people that live on this side of Lexington. She got so excited that finally her hopes, her prayers had been answered. She got the kids loaded up in the car. She ran an errand. And then she went over to the field to see the sign in all of its glory.
And it was not there. It was April 1st. It was a mean, cruel April Fool's joke. And she had gotten her hopes up so much and just crushed. I called her. I was like, are you okay?
And she's like, I'm not okay. She was very, very angry. We do this. We put hope in things. Small things like this. But throughout our lives, we put hope in things.
Maybe you really hoped to get in a specific college, a specific grad school. And you were waiting for the letter to come. And you were waiting for the big package to arrive. And all of a sudden, the small letter came. And you didn't get in. Maybe it was a job that you were putting hope in, that you interviewed for, that you thought you were going to get, or a promotion that you thought that you were going to land and you got passed over.
Maybe it was a boy or a girl, someone that you were hoping that you might have a chance with. And then finally, you put yourself out there. And they rejected you and your hopes were crushed. And we do this. We do this every four years at election cycle. Some candidate stands up, makes a bunch of promises.
People get their hopes up. And they never live up to it. We do this because we are people made in the image of God, which means we bear his image. And we are people created with longing and hope. To hope in God. And what we do is, is we hope and long in other things.
We find replacements for that. And when they don't work out, we're crushed. We're going to see this on display today as we walk through this story. We're going to see this with the disciples as they are so hopeful and the people as they're so hopeful as Jesus enters into the city. So we're going to be in Luke 19.
Let me pray. And then we'll drive in. God, thank you so much that we get to celebrate this time every year that you came and the work that you did for us. God, I pray that you would help us see this story for what it is and what it points to for us. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so before we jump into the text, I want to do a little bit of background.
We haven't, we've been in Genesis, so I want to do some background of how we got to this story. But also, it's important to understand the cultural expectations that the people have when Jesus entered into the city. So for three years leading up to this, Jesus has been ministering to the whole nation of Israel. He is a celebrity. Everybody knows who Jesus is. He has his disciples.
He has crowds and followers that follow him. Everyone, he's a celebrity. He can't go anywhere without crowds coming out. He's healed hundreds. He's raised the dead. He's fed thousands with just five loaves and two fish.
He's done all these great miracles. And everyone knows who he is. There's this big expectation. And as he's doing his work, there are some promises from the Old Testament that people are looking at and saying, I think this might be the one. There are messianic promises, promises that point to the Messiah. Messiah.
And the Messiah in the Old Testament was someone who was going to come and save the people. A hero. Even a king who would come and rescue the people. And the people are looking at Jesus and his work. And they're looking at these Old Testament promises. And they're thinking, this I think is the one.
These promises were vivid. They believed in them. They hoped in them. So much so that in the decades leading up to Jesus, there were other people that claimed to be the Messiah that they put hope in. These false messiahs would come up. They would have disciples just like Jesus would.
They'd have crowds. They'd teach people. But their goal was to overthrow the Roman government. You see, in their context, the Roman government controlled the land of Israel. And the people of God hated this. They hated it.
I mean, we've spent some time in Genesis. We've seen all that went into the promise of them getting the promised land. And to see that this was controlled, this land that was promised to their ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to see this promised land controlled by a pagan nation like the Romans, they hated it. And these messiahs would raise up and they would get the people excited and they would attempt to overthrow the Roman government. And then they would fail. And they would end up on crosses, which is the punishment for a rebel, an insurrectionist, someone who is treasonous.
And there's this longing that a messiah is going to come. But they're looking at Jesus and Jesus feels different. He's reforming all these miracles. He's doing things like Elijah the prophet, like Elisha, like Moses did in the Old Testament. He seems to be the one that is going to come and free the people. So when Jesus shows up to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, here's a little bit of what they were expecting.
That he would ride into the city triumphantly. He would come down and he would start to perform signs and miracles like he's done throughout the land. And then he would start to overthrow the Roman government. He would take Jerusalem. And then almost like Braveheart, village by village, they'd start to take the whole land of Israel, town by town, village by village, from south of Jerusalem to the north in Galilee. Jesus, the hope was, he would take the land back.
He would kick the Romans out. And it wasn't just that he was going to get the land back. The hope, if you look at the promises of the Old Testament, if this was going to be global, that Jesus was going to take over the whole world, which to them was the whole Roman Empire that spread across the globe, and that Jesus would rule and reign from Jerusalem over all of the world. All of this hope and expectation was built in to this Palm Sunday 2,000 years ago. It is the reason, as we're going to look at this, that he was so celebrated like a king on Sunday. And it's part of the reason why he was crucified like a rebel on a Friday.
They wanted Jesus to be someone he was not. They had a hope for redemption that was not his plan. But ultimately, God is going to use all of this to bring about his rescue plan. So that is all the expectation that was built in to Palm Sunday. Let's jump into verse 28.
And when he had said these things, he went on ahead going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near Bethphage and Bethany at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of his disciples. All right, so Jesus has been teaching in village to village, getting closer to the city. And now he's right before the city. Geographically, here's Jerusalem. Here's the Mount of Olives.
On the other side is Bethphage and Bethany. So he's getting closer. The people in the city are starting to get excited. They're starting to get stirred up at his arrival. So Jesus is going to prepare for his arrival.
He says, go ahead. And he sends his disciples. And this is what he says. He says, he sent two of his disciples, verse 30, saying, Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied up, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, why are you untying it?
You shall say this, the Lord has need of it. So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. So he says, go to the village and bring me a colt, a colt that no one has ridden. Now we know a colt is either a baby horse or it's a baby young donkey. And we know from the context of the other gospels that what he is referring to is a young donkey. He says, go, bring me this young donkey.
And as Isaac alluded to in his reading, why wouldn't you choose a horse? If you were going to be a king that rides into a city, they were thinking he was going to come in and overthrow the Romans. Why wouldn't you choose a horse? Like a king who is on top of the hill looking down into the city, rears the horse up, rides in. That's a power play. That would really demonstrate military force.
But he doesn't. No, he chooses a humble donkey, which is so picturesque of Jesus' entire life. He came into this world humble as a babe and a stable. His whole ministry has been one of humility and that is how he is going to end this. So, he tells him to choose a humble donkey. What we're going to see as we work through this is that as he's doing these things, he's also fulfilling prophecies in the Old Testament.
He fulfills Zechariah 9.9 that says, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you. Righteous and having salvation is he. Humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt the full of a donkey. So, he fulfills this.
He tells them to go. And it goes down exactly how he predicted. Verse 33. And it says, And as they were untying the colt, its owner said to them, Why are you untying the colt? And they said, The Lord has need of it. And they brought it to Jesus.
And throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. So, it goes down like he said it would. They bring the young donkey. They throw their cloaks on it. This is a sign of submission. They're submitting to Jesus.
They're saying, We are following you into the city. We've got your back. And then it begins. Verse 36. And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. And he was drawing near.
Already on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. All right. So, I really want us to picture this scene together. Years ago, I got to go on a Maymester to Israel. I got to do like three weeks there, going throughout the land, doing some studies.
And I got to spend five days in Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem, it's important to understand the geography of what this would look like. So, I got a picture. This is Jerusalem. This is taken from the city. That is the Mount of Olives that sits behind Jerusalem.
So, it was a little bit bigger back in the day. That mountain has been slowly starting to erode. But you see how it sits above the city. All right. So, second picture. I took this picture from top of the Mount of Olives.
And it's looking down into the city. You see that golden dome. That is called the Dome of the Rock. That is the third holiest site in Islam. When the Islamic expansion happened and they took Jerusalem, they built that mosque right on top of where the temple used to be. So, I want you to look at that and picture a much bigger temple would have been sitting there.
The entrance to the temple would have been there. And this is why this is important. Jesus is sitting on top of the Mount of Olives. The people are at the base of this valley. They're right before the temple. And they are celebrating His coming.
They're celebrating His entry. And Jesus is looking down into the temple. That's important because to the people, He's getting ready to... He's riding directly into the temple. We know He goes into the temple. And that's where He turns over tables.
But they're seeing this. And there's this expectation that Jesus is coming into the city. He's coming into the temple. This is the place of religious power. This is the place where He's going to set up His throne. Where He's going to rule.
Where He's going to reign from. They were expecting this military victory to come in. They are missing it. They're missing it because they're not seeing it. It is symbolic. He's looking down in the temple.
The place where sacrifices are offered day and night for the sins of the people. He is going to be the final sacrifice that fulfills that entire system. There's this entire expectation. But there's this disconnect. They see Him triumphant like a king. But they fail to see what's really happening here.
But they're celebrating Him like a king. One of the things we learn from the other Gospels while we call it Palm Sunday. Is they break off palm branches. And they set them before Jesus. And palm branches are a national Jewish symbol. It's picturesque of when David would come into the city on a military victory.
And they'd have palm branches. This is all a picture of He is coming into the city. He's going to overthrow the Romans. They shout, Hosanna! Hosanna! Which is a joyous celebration.
A joyous exclamation. We know from the Messianic Psalms what Hosanna means literally is save us. Save us now. They are joyously declaring, This is the king. Come into the city and save us. This fulfills Psalm 118 that says, Save us, we pray, O Lord.
O Lord, we pray, give us success. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord. That is the picture that is happening here as the Savior King rides into the city. They just can't see the other part of the prophecies. The Messianic Prophesis pointed to a Savior King, but it also pointed to one who would suffer.
That suffering was the path to kingship. But all they can see is king. All they can see is save us. They can't see the full picture. They have their minds set, hear this, on an earthly kingdom. That's what their hope is.
It's an earthly kingdom. And on Palm Sunday, they have rightfully declared, Jesus is the king of the Jews. The disciples, the people, are excited. But then we get a foretaste of what's to come. Verse 39, And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.
So the Pharisees are part of the religious leadership that helps rule the country. They are priests that help rule the country along with another group that makes up a council called the Sanhedrin. It's a council of religious leaders. And the Pharisees represent a big portion of the Sanhedrin. They're the ones that keep the country in order. They're the religious leaders.
And it's long before this, they'd already began to plot to kill Jesus. When Jesus comes on the scene and starts teaching and starts performing his miracles, it's not how they expected. It's not how they wanted. They do not like him. They are looking for an opportunity to kill him. And they just got a picture.
They just got something they can cling to as people are shouting, Hosanna, Hosanna. As they are declaring his kingship, they're finding some ammunition. And they look at him. And I want you to feel the venom and the arrogance of what they say to him. They say, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. Don't just silence the worship, the praise that is due to you because you are the God of the universe.
Don't just silence that praise. You need to correct your disciples. They are wrong. They need to be corrected. It's ridiculous. Part of me, when I look at this, I'm like, Jesus could easily just rightfully and justifiably so just do a Thanos snap in a minute and then the Pharisees just evaporate off screen.
Like that, that, he'd be justified in doing so. But he doesn't. This is how he responds. He says, Yeah, the disciples, these people, they could be silent. But if they're silent, the very rocks will sing my praises.
And what he just said was, is that, yes, the people could stop. But creation, that praises the Creator, will still praise me. He just said, I'm going to get my praise because I am God. And you had to know, the Pharisees' jaws just hit the floor. Because what he just said to them was crazy. I mean, see it a little bit from their perspective.
He just said something. Crazy. He just said he was God. I mean, if Matt came up here and led worship, and he started playing, and all of a sudden, he started belting out words. All the songs we sing to Jesus, he started, he like rudely pasted his name on the PowerPoint, and tried to get us to all sing praises to Matt. We would yank him off stage.
He's a big guy. It would take three of us. But we'd get him off. Because that's crazy. It would be crazy to say that if you're not God. But Jesus is God.
And he's fulfilling Psalm 66, 4 that says, All the earth worships you and sings praises to you. They sing praises to your name. And this is why when people say that Jesus doesn't believe that he's God, doesn't say that he's God, it's like you aren't reading the same Bible. Over and over, he's making declarations that he is God. C.S. Lewis says he's either a liar, a lunatic, crazy, or he sings he's God.
You can't say he's just a good teacher. He is saying he is God. And it is that truth that makes the rest of this week so baffling. That Jesus is God. If he wanted to, he could take the city in a moment. He could overturn the entire establishment.
But he doesn't. No, he does. He goes into the city. And he teaches his disciples. He teaches the crowds. As the wolves start to close in on him.
And then on Thursday night, they come from, like cowards in the night, they arrest Jesus and drag him before the Sanhedrin, before this religious council. And he lets them. The God of the universe lets them. And they drag him before this council. And they need a charge to bring him before, to bring him before Pontius Pilate, to have him executed. And you know what charge they charge Jesus with?
Blasphemy. Using, defaming the name of the Lord. Let that irony sink in. They charge the God of the universe with blasphemy. And Jesus doesn't defend himself. They let him take him before Pontius Pilate.
They bring him before Pontius Pilate. He's the Roman governor at the time. He's the one that can really carry out this execution. They can kind of wash their hands and give them to him. And they tell him about this charge of blasphemy. But Pontius Pilate doesn't care.
That's a religious matter. It's a religious dispute. The Roman government doesn't believe in your God. We don't care what you are saying. So they need to say something else.
And they take what was so celebrated on Sunday. His kingship. And they come to Pontius Pilate and they say, He says that he's the king. He's trying to undermine the rule of Caesar. Are you going to let this play? And what's happening here is a political play.
The Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, needs the religious leaders, needs the Sanhedrin to keep the people in check. We know from history his governorship is being questioned at this point. That he can't keep this nation under control. So when they make this claim, he's got a really tough decision to make. And while all of this is happening, you have to wonder, where are all the people that so celebrated his kingship on Sunday? Where are the people that shouted, Hosanna!
Hosanna! Who brought palm branches out? Where are the disciples who have abandoned him? All but one. And the one who's there, we don't see anywhere where he's offering a defense. Where are they?
As Jesus is left before this kangaroo court, this disgrace of justice. And Pontius Pilate gives in. As the Pharisees change the city's chant of Hosanna! Hosanna! To crucify him! Crucify him!
And they take Jesus, and I want you to see some of the pictures here of how they mock his kingship. They take a crown of thorns, of long desert thorns, they force it on his head to mock him. The king of the universe to mock him. They take a purple robe, which is a robe of royalty, and they put it on his back that has been torn to bits, and they rip it off to cause further pain, and they put it on him to mock him. They bow down, and they mock his kingship as he suffers the most brutal punishment that the Roman government could ever devise. And they get up the hill, and they nail him to a cross, and they put a sign above his head that says, King of the Jews.
They mock the king of the universe, and like a lamb being silently led to the slaughter, as Isaiah says, he is silent. He offers no defense. And on the cross, the Savior King aspect of who he is starts to fully come into play. That on the cross, the debt of sin that the whole world accumulates, that each of us rack up, all of that is paid for by Jesus. For those of us that have trusted in him, our sin is paid for on the cross. We start to see this Savior King.
That in that moment, sinners have the opportunity to be washed clean. Those of us who are dirty in sin, Jesus, through faith, presents us as righteous and clean before God. That the full cup of God's wrath that is being poured out on Jesus in this moment, for those of us who have trusted in him, that wrath that was meant for us because of our sin gets poured out on him. He takes our place. And then this prophecy that we started in Genesis, that one day a seed would come from Eve, Jesus, and the serpent Satan would strike his heel, but ultimately Jesus would crush his head. That's happening right now.
His heel is being crushed. He is suffering for us on the cross. But right now, Jesus is crushing the head of Satan. He is crushing the work of evil and hindering the work of Satan, our Savior King on display on the cross. suffering is the path to this eternal kingdom as it comes to fruition with his death. And in the aftermath of all of this, in the aftermath of his death, Jesus' followers are crushed. Their hopes were so much tied up in Jesus.
They are dismayed. They are mourning. And you've got to ask the question, why? Why are they so dismayed? Why are they in mourning? And that is because they had a misplaced hope.
Their hope was in Jesus and his kingdom and a temporary earthly kingdom. They failed to hear what Jesus was teaching those three years, that this was bigger than that. They heard the prophecies that spoke about him as king, but they ignored the parts that said suffering was the path. And like all the false messiahs who came before Jesus, seeking to establish an earthly kingdom, they don't. They die. And the people are crushed because of it.
They are left in mourning. And here's the deal. They were right to celebrate Jesus as king. Those shouts of Hosanna, those palm branches were worthy of Jesus. They were correct. They just failed to realize that suffering was the path to an eternal kingdom, not a temporary one.
And in their staggering, in their hopelessness, Easter comes. Jesus rises and he does the one thing that all the other false messiahs failed to do before him. He conquers death and he comes back. And when he does that, he opens their eyes to the bigger kingdom that was always in plan. The eternal kingdom that was always going to come, much bigger than this temporary hope that they had so hoped in. we are just like the disciples because so much of us has so much hope in a temporary kingdom. You know how I know this is true?
Is that we can sing on Sunday Hosanna like we just did. And we can celebrate Jesus as king. We can amen all of it. and then on a Friday in the middle of the week when life hits us we are left hopeless. When the things, when the temporary things, the temporary kingdom that we hope in, that we place stock in, when that crumbles, when that fails, we are left hopeless because we are not trusting in the eternal kingdom that Jesus actually bled and died for. So the question that we are left with are left with is what kingdom are we putting hope in?
Because the reality is there's two kingdoms in this world. There's the kingdom of eternity, the kingdom of God expanding across the globe into eternity and there's this temporary kingdom of this world, of this present age. Which kingdom are we hoping in? Are we building in? Are we longing for? That's the question we're left with.
And if we're honest, some of us see Jesus as king, but really it's on our terms. It's for our kingdoms. It's for the hopes that we put in in this life. I want to walk through a few different ways I think that we do this. And as I do this, I want you to ask yourself, if I don't get blessed in these ways, am I okay? If I don't get blessings here from Jesus, am I really honestly okay?
And the first one is your wallet. is money. I mean, we as Christians, we know that we're not supposed to worship money. We'll say absolutely, no, I don't worship money. But what about the things that money gets us? What about the comforts of this world? Are you really okay if you don't get the things that you've been longing for?
Maybe it's the big truck, maybe it's the second house, maybe it's fill in the blank of what comforts are for you. Am I really okay if I make it to the end of this life and I don't have those comforts? Maybe for you it's status. I feel this myself. I don't like to think of myself as a status person. But I do real estate and I drive a really lame car.
I drive a Prius. And there are times, it's to save money. It's economical and I'm not driving the Prius I can drive my wife's awesome minivan. And I'll go and do some of these showings and I like to think of myself if someone doesn't care about status and certainly doesn't care about cars. I grew up in a family that sold them for a living. But there are moments, y'all, when I get before a client and I have this Prius and they've got a really nice truck and I go, you know what, it'd be really nice to have the status of having a bigger truck.
It'd be fun to drive but it'd be really nice to have that kind of respect. Fill in the blank for you of what money gets you. Are you really okay at the end of the day if you never actually get that level of status? Maybe for you it's not riches but it's not comfort, it's not status but it's security. It's like, am I really going to be okay if I never actually have enough savings? If I never have enough retirement?
Not saying that any of that's wrong but at the end of the day, are you going to be okay if Jesus doesn't blesses this? Because if you are not, you are asking Jesus to bless a temporary kingdom and not putting hope in the eternal kingdom of God. Maybe for you it's not necessarily money, maybe it's work. Like I said in the beginning, some of us put so much identity and hope in a job, in a promotion. When you don't get it, when we get passed over, are you really okay? If you never get your career to the place that you want it to be, are you going to be okay?
Are you going to be left hopeless and crushed? If you never get the validation from an employer, if you never get the validation from clients, are you going to be okay at the end of the day? Is the kingdom of God enough? Are you hoping that Jesus blesses a temporary kingdom? Maybe it's not work, maybe it's relationships. We do this with spouses. that we are doing okay if our spouse is operating in this way, if they are meeting these needs, if they are talking to us like this.
Everything's okay, but when it doesn't happen, we get frustrated. We get entitled. We get angry and we get upset. Are we hoping that Jesus blesses that temporary kingdom? Maybe you're not married, maybe you're thinking about finding someone to marry. Is it possible that you are frustrated, angry, bitter with God because you have not found the quote unquote one?
We do this in relationships, we do this with our own kids. Children are so easy to elevate than the tiny little kings that we worship. that education becomes so important, that how they're raised becomes so important, that following all the correct methods becomes so important. And if this doesn't happen in the way that we hope it is going to play out, we are crushed. We do this with their sports and with their activities that eventually they start doing sports and activities and the schedule that was once centered on on Sundays and community groups and mission and the kingdom of God gets replaced with a whole bunch of other stuff.
And we buy into the kingdom of this world and we sell it to our own kids. We do this with our children, we do this, I'll give you one more, we do this just with standing. Another way of saying standing is power. Two of the disciples did this with Jesus. James and John, there's a story where they come to Jesus and they say, when you set up your kingdom, and when they mean kingdom, they think the temporary kingdom that's going to happen in Jerusalem, when you set up your kingdom, can we set your left and your right? And what they're saying is, can we have positions of power?
And maybe for you that's winning. That life isn't good if I'm not winning. If I'm not being successful. That so much hope is bound up in success that when I'm not having success, what's the point? If I don't have the kind of influence that I need, what is the point of all of this? I could keep going through a long list of things, but ultimately I want you to ask yourself, if you are 75 years old and you don't have blank, fill in the blank for you, are you going to be okay?
Is Jesus really enough? If you don't have that, are you going to be crushed? Are you going to be hopeless like the disciples were when they put so much hope in a temporary kingdom of this world? We kill ourselves for a kingdom that never brings contentment. We serve false kings and idols that were never meant to bring comfort or joy. Church family, we were designed for so much more.
We are just like the disciples. And today for us who are in that spot, that is good news because when Jesus rises on Easter, it changes everything. He opens their eyes to the actual kingdom, the beauty of the kingdom that He had been so, He had been teaching them, He had been calling them to. And you know what I love about Resurrection Sunday? In the Gospel of John, the first words that Jesus says to His disciples, the disciples who abandoned Him, who denied Him, He doesn't come to them and scold them. And the first thing He says to them is, peace be with you.
That is the hope of the Gospel. Yes, we trust in idols. We trust in a temporary kingdom. We fall short. But the good news of the Gospel is that we live this side of the resurrection.
That means we live on this side of hope. That our hope is bound up in the eternal kingdom of God, which is so much better than the temporary kingdom of this world. And we have a so much better King. A King who conquered death, who rode into the city, who became our sacrifice, and on Easter Sunday conquered death with the resurrection so that we could experience the eternal kingdom of God forever. That's the good news of the Gospel, and that's the good news that we get to celebrate as we take the Lord's Supper. The band is going to come up, and we're going to take the Lord's Supper right now.
We're going to take communion and be reminded of what we get to celebrate this week in our groups that on this Thursday, years ago, we celebrate that on the night that Jesus was betrayed, He looked at His disciples, and He took the bread, and He broke it. He said, this is my body that was broken for you. This is going to happen. I'm going to be crushed for you. He took the cup, which is the cup of the new covenant. He said, this is my blood that is going to be shed for you, that as often as you gather, as often as you meet, take this bread, take this wine, and remember my death until I return.
We get to celebrate the good news of the Gospel that Jesus came on a good Friday and died in our place. And as we do that collectively as a church, may we reflect on the tiny kingdoms that we put hope in, coming repentant to the table, repenting of sin, joyously celebrating that we're part of an eternal kingdom. And if you have not trusted in Jesus, our hope for you this week is that you would be confronted by Him. That this Gospel that we so celebrate would become so real to you, that you would see your need of Him. Our hope is that you wouldn't take part in this, but you would take part in the risen Christ.
Let me pray. God, I am thankful that 2,000 years ago you didn't leave us in sin. You came and you bled and you died for us and we get to take that promise right now. God, I pray that you would help those of us who have trusted completely in you repent of believing that temporary kingdoms bring hope when they don't. They bring hopelessness.