April 5, 2009
Palm Sunday
Zechariah 9:9-10
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 foal of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth” (ESV)Maybe you can remember. The headline read, “Slain Americans Hung from Bridge.” On March 31, 2004, jubilant jihadists brutally killed four American civilians in Fallujah. They took their charred remains, dismembered them, and hung them from a bridge. Their ecstasy seemed incomprehensible and barbaric to me.1 My instantaneous reaction was sheer anger. I know it’s not very Christ-like to say it, but a part of me wanted to wipe them off the face of the earth!
This incident highlights the way that a fallen world typically responds to its enemies. Yes, in the kingdoms of this world, enemies must be defeated, conquered, and, if necessary, humiliated. And then when the dust of war finally settles, one side lays down its arms. When all is over peace, of sorts, prevails.
For millennia, this has been the way of the world. Peace is won only after bombs and bloodshed.
- On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. So America, to defend itself, settled the matter when it dropped bigger bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The result: Peace.
- On September 11, 2001, terrorists committed acts of war when they steered planes into the World Trade Center towers and into the Pentagon. In response, our nation is still fighting the war against terrorism.
- The Israeli/Palestinian war is another case in point. If peace ever comes, the victory will come to the last man standing!
Such is the way things are in what Martin Luther called the kingdom of the left, i.e., the affairs of men, of families, of states, and of nations. And God gives a country the right to defend itself. And the bigger the atrocity, the more resolutely a nation will defend its citizens.
The point I want to drive home is a simple one: In the kingdoms of this world, when diplomacy fails, conflict is settled by brute force. A winner is declared only when one side says it’s had enough, surrenders, and lays down its weapons. That’s how peace is established in the kingdoms of this world. It’s a nasty business!
All that I have said so far is to help us see that God establishes peace in an altogether different way. Although we are not inclined to think so, the greatest atrocity that ever went down took place in the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve rebelled against God, they made themselves enemies of the Lord God Almighty. And since Adam’s sin is imputed to (or charged to) all humanity, we are also, by birth and nature, enemies of God.2
To have God as an enemy means certain death. But it means more than physical death. It means eternal death and damnation. And God doesn’t need arms and armaments to wage war against us. All he has to do is to say, “Begone,” and we are toast. He doesn’t need to send a cataclysmic flood to wipe us out. He doesn’t need to rain down fire and brimstone on us to send us to hell. All he has to do is speak the word, to say, “To hell with you!” and it is done.
But God doesn’t want the hostility between himself and sinners to end this way. So he establishes peace between himself and humanity in an unprecedented and unheard of way.
That is to say, he had all the firepower. He could have sent down fire from heaven, roasted our bodies, and desecrated them before throwing us into the eternal flames. And we surely would have deserved such a fate. But divine love would not allow him to even conceive of such a thing. He would settle this war by the self-sacrifice of his Son. Yes, God willed to pay the price for peace by the death of the “Prince of Peace.”3 What a staggering cost! St. Paul says in Colossians 1, “And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He [God] has now reconciled you in His [Christ’s] fleshly body through death.”4
In our text, we have before us the prophecy of Palm Sunday. Writing in about 520 B.C., the prophet Zechariah foretells our Savior’s triumphant death march into Jerusalem. I want you to consider the three words “triumphant death march.” If ever there were a seeming oxymoron, this would be it. At least the world would think it so, for who would consider death a triumph or victory? But, you see, the world can’t understand how Christ’s death means triumph for anybody. If anything death means defeat or failure.
But the Scriptures insist that the words “triumphant death march” are not a self-contradiction but the sober truth. Of Palm Sunday, Zechariah writes, “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”5
The prophet tells us to rejoice and shout because our great king is going to win a great victory for us. He shall win peace for us. He tells us that the implements of war, the chariot, the horse, and the bow will be cut off, that is, laid aside for they will no longer be needed. Significantly, this King “will speak peace to the nations.”6 This peace shall reach from sea to shining sea.
We now fast forward history from the days of Zechariah to the first Palm Sunday. Behold your King! St. Luke says, “And as he went, they spread their clothes in the way. And when he was drawing near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the 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!’”7
Matthew, Mark, and John also add that they sang, “Hosanna in the highest!”8 Yes, Hosanna. Hosanna is an Aramaic word which means literally, “save now.” Here, at the royal entry of Christ into Jerusalem, it is clearly a triumphant call wherein God’s people greet the coming Messiah, and, in this greeting, ask the blessing of God upon his work.
Jesus moves toward Jerusalem riding on a donkey. Just think of it: The Creator of the world is mounted on a beast of burden. God on a donkey! What utter self-abasement! He looks to be anything but God! But appearances are often deceiving. The eyes see only a commoner, but beneath that lowly exterior of human flesh is the Son of God.
Our text says of Jesus that he is gentle. That is, he is humble or meek. He lets evil men have their way with him, that he might die to win our salvation. Constantly in the Gospels, we see Jesus setting aside his divine power and majesty to serve sinners like you and me. He washes his disciples' feet. He does not exercise his omnipotence by striking his enemies dead. No, he insists on so loving his enemies that he permits them to strike him dead. He dies for us in time that we might live with him forever.
See our King in battle. For a helmet, he wears a crown of thorns, exquisitely woven to inflict piercing pain upon his brow. For his royal robe, he wears the robe of humanity's sins for which he willingly dies. For a throne, he is lifted high upon a cross, affixed to it by means of 5 to 7 inch nails driven through his wrists and feet.9 From his wounds flow the most precious thing in all the world, his holy blood that alone washes all sins away. Simply trust that he alone has earned your salvation for you, and behold, God declares you righteous, forgives all your sins, and promises you everlasting life. You now belong to the family of God and the kingdom of glory.
On that first Palm Sunday, Jesus wept. He did not weep for himself but because he saw that Jerusalem, hardened in unbelief, would reject him and his saving work. Knowing this, he cried out to the city and said, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”10
The Jews of Jerusalem did to Jesus what the jihadists of Fallujah did to the four American civilians--they viciously put him to death. My prayer today is that the men of Fallujah would come to trust in the “Prince of Peace.” Maybe you think my prayer odd.
- Maybe you think I’m un-American.
- Maybe you think I should pray for vengeance; you know, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”11
- Maybe you think I should pray for God to give them what they deserve, namely, a ghastly death and residence in hell’s hottest fires.
The problem is this, that if I hate these murderers, I make myself a murderer, too, for the Bible says, “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”12 Moreover, Jesus says to those who want to even the score themselves, “I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”13 So no, I will pray that these murderers come to know the peace that you and I have.
Peace! That's what Jesus came for, that he might reconcile man (in all of his sinfulness) to God (in all of his holiness). And he did just that 5 days later by the shedding of his blood on the cross. His death means our life. The Good News is that Jesus, by his death, has atoned for all sins, so that “whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”14
And so we see that in the kingdom of God, peace does not come to the last man standing, but to all who stand on the death and resurrection of God’s only-begotten Son. May God grant such a faith to us all, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!
Endnotes
1 See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3585765.stm. A photograph may be seen at http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2006/07/so_says_the_nyt.html and a video stream at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwrF4eZHgfo. The desecration of American bodies is 50-60 seconds from the beginning of the video.
2 Romans 5:10 reads, “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” The Epitome of the Formula of Concord also says,
“Likewise we believe, teach, and confess that the unregenerate will of man is not only turned away from God, but also has become an enemy of God, so that it only has an inclination and desire for that which is evil and contrary to God, as it is written Gen. 8, 21: The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Also Rom. 8, 7: The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the Law of God, neither, indeed, can be. Yea, as little as a dead body can quicken itself to bodily, earthly life, so little can man, who by sin is spiritually dead, raise himself to spiritual life, as it is written Eph. 2, 5: Even when we were dead in sins, He hath quickened us together with Christ; 2 Cor. 3, 5: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything good as of ourselves, but that we are sufficient is of God.” FC, Ep. II:2.3 See Isaiah 9:6.
4 See Colossians 1:21-22.
5 See Zechariah 9:9.
6 See Zechariah 9:10. Emphasis mine.
7 See Luke 19:36-38, NKJV.
8 See Matthew 21:9.
9 For nailing through the wrists see http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/deathjesus.pdf, p. 1459.
10 See Luke 19:42, ESV
11 See Exodus 21:23-25. But Jesus interpreted that Old Testament injunction when he said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” Matthew 5:38-39, ESV).
12 See 1John 3:15, ESV.
13 See Matthew 5:22, ESV.
14 See John 3:16.
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