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We can say all the right things about Jesus and still expect the wrong things from him. In Luke 19, the crowd welcomes its King with praise, peace, and glory—but what happens when the Savior we celebrate does not pursue the earthly victory, security, or power we wanted?
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The sermon suggests that we often come to Jesus with “correct theology but wrong expectations”—we say the right things while secretly hoping for earthly gain. Where do you see this pattern in your own life, and how does recognizing it change the way you pray or seek God’s help?
C.S. Lewis wrote, “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.” How does this challenge the way you typically think about pursuing earthly success, security, or influence as a Christian?
The preacher uses the watermelon illustration to show how earthly beauty and success will eventually rot. What “beautiful watermelons” are you tempted to set on the table and admire rather than enjoying them as God provides them—and how might that be keeping you from something better?
The sermon contrasts the crowd’s misunderstanding of Jesus with how the angels understood his coming (Luke 2 vs. Luke 19). What would it look like for you to encounter Jesus more like the angels did—with clarity about who he actually is and what he actually came to do?
When faced with a choice between compromising on God’s Word for the sake of earthly power or influence (as the Pharisees did), how do you typically respond? What might change if you truly believed that “nothing that is wrong is expedient for the cause of God”?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
So, last week, Jason was still here, and now he’s not. And that seems like a cause for sadness, doesn’t it? We had a celebration last week, we celebrated the time that we had him here over the summer, and those sorts of celebrations are always a bit on the bittersweet side, because we’re celebrating the end of something. On other times, we have celebrations that are just meant to be joyful.
And for example, we find ourselves here in the end of July, and we’ve entered into those last ten days of July, where I think we can officially say it is time to celebrate Christmas in July. And, yes, yes, isn’t it wonderful? Merry Christmas, everybody. Merry Christmas. Isn’t it just great, we have so much in this world that can be somewhat sad or uncertain, but then we can say we’re only six months away from Christmas, and of course it’s Christmas in July, we’ll be at the 25th of July in just a few days.
And so I hope you have all your Christmas in July shopping done already. I know it sneaks up on all of us, trying to get ready for those big Christmas in July celebrations. Hopefully you have your Christmas in July ham ordered. Everyone ready for Christmas in July? Yeah, a few of you, okay. Let me know, I’ll come over and have Christmas ham with you, I’m looking forward to that this week. Yeah, you can have, oh, no, no, with a ham I thought you meant, no, no, how’s that, pretty good? Okay. Yeah, yeah, okay, now I’m ready. I’m ready. Nothing like trying, oh, thank you, Kathy.
So now we are ready for Christmas in July, and so I’m coming over to Kathy and Jeff’s house for Christmas ham this week. I think that’s how that was arranged. And so I’m sure we’ll all exchange Christmas in July presents, right? Is that how this all goes? No? Sure, yeah.
If someone wished you a Merry Christmas in July or a Happy Christmas in July, and really, if anything, it seems like primarily Christmas in July serves two purposes. One, there are certain stores that will have a sale on Christmas stuff that you might want to buy way ahead of time because it’s hot outside and you’re just looking forward to some relief from the heat. Not really right now here in St. Louis, but some Julys at least, we’re looking forward to that. And so there’s that. It’s an excuse to have a sale. And then maybe for the rest of us, it’s sort of a fun thing just to think, oh, six months until Christmas. Six months until Christmas, hey, we’re almost there.
But if I showed up at Landis’ house this week and I thought we were going to have a great big Christmas in July gift exchange and a Christmas in July ham and Christmas in July potato casserole and green bean casserole and all that, I probably would find out that I had missed the point, right? Because that’s not what we do. I don’t know of anyone that actually does that. Maybe we should start that as a church, but I don’t know anyone that does that. So I’d arrive with a bag of gifts and some rolls to go with the ham, and I’d walk in and they’d say, well, we couldn’t even find a ham at the store right now. It’s not holiday season. And I thought this was a pool party we invite you over to, which we’re going to have in a few weeks incidentally, but not this week. I would have missed the point.
Today as we come to the next part of Luke 19, we come to the passage that we read every year for Palm Sunday, and we’re not going to read the whole thing. We’re going to look at the very last part of it because we get all into the pomp and circumstance and it’s happy Palm Sunday. Let’s celebrate as people sing hosanna and we then sing songs that have hosanna in it and we sing about the King and we get right all into it and we think we have it down and the people then thought they had it down.
But in celebrating Jesus’s victory on that day, we should celebrate every week, but we sometimes miss the point that the people there at that time didn’t really understand what they were celebrating and were profoundly missing the point. They were showing up on July 25th at someone’s house thinking there was going to be a full Christmas spread there and not realizing, no, Christmas in July doesn’t mean we do the whole thing six months early.
Well, the people, they were kind of expecting it to come early too. They were expecting not Christmas to come early, but the solution to all the problems in the world to come early. And as they watched Jesus come into the city of Jerusalem, they thought, here, finally, everything is going to be made right on this earth. And that’s really what we’re about. We’re about anticipating a Messiah who’s going to make everything on this earth right and now it’s going to happen.
They were missing what Jesus was actually going to do for them. A lot has changed in 2,000 years, but in that key way, things remain perfectly the same because as God works in this world today, more often than not, we come before him and we’re missing what it is that he’s doing. And let’s prepare our hearts by coming to the Lord in prayer, and then as we look at this passage, say, God, help me to see those places where I’m just not coming with the right expectations. Would you pray with me, please?
Lord, we come before you as those who want to do your will, who want to come before you with the right expectations and the right joys, the right things that we hold as important. But Lord, too often we hold on to the things that aren’t important. Too often we celebrate the wrong things. Too often we’re focused in the wrong places. Lord, would you help us to focus on you? Would you help us to be a people who draw closer to you each and every day? We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Let’s take a look at verse 38. Again, we’re skipping through part of the triumphal entry. I encourage you to go back and read it once again, but we’re just looking at these last three verses. And we’re going to start with verse 38. The people are celebrating, and they’re saying, blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.
As I just mentioned, the people, as they’re saying that, they mean it, and they’re profoundly theologically correct in what they say. As they say the profoundly theologically correct thing, their hearts are profoundly raw. Because a lot of those people, I can’t speak to all of them, and I’m sure there were some that got it. We know that some got it. But there were a lot of people in that crowd as they’re saying that, they’re thinking, here comes the one who’s going to overthrow Rome.
And in that, they’re coming to the first error that we do when we approach Jesus. We come to praise Jesus, not simply for his glory, and not for what he’s going to do in the future, but for the earthly gain we believe we can receive in the immediate present. Nonetheless, we use the right words as we say it, just like this crowd did.
Just as a reminder, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard this sort of language in the Gospel of Luke. In chapter two, verse 13, and suddenly there was a, with the angel, see it’s perfect for Christmas in July, with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace among those with whom he is pleased.
The angels knew exactly what they were saying, and they said it correctly. They got it. They weren’t confused about why Jesus was coming. They were looking at God coming to earth, making things right, and they were celebrating the peace of heaven coming to those whom God favored, whom were called to be part of his people. The angels got it. The crowd, as they say that though, is thinking a little differently. The people, the people of that time weren’t thinking the way the angels were.
There’s been this disconnect between heaven and earth in which we can’t really approach God properly because God is the great and holy one, and we are sinful, and we need someone to reconcile us. We need someone to correct that gap caused by sin. We need someone to go and live the life we can’t live so that we can approach God and be in his presence.
They’re thinking we need someone to come down here and straighten out those other people that don’t see things the right way. We need someone to come down here and straighten out the other party, all those people that are wearing the wrong animal on their shirt and the wrong color shirt, and they’re going to go, and they’re going to vote, and they’re going to vote for the wrong candidate, and they’re going to send the wrong electors to the electoral college. Well, not exactly, right? They didn’t get a vote, but basically the same thing that we do, right? Because they’re saying, well, we’ve been stuck with Caesar, but finally someone is going to come and get rid of Caesar.
Finally that evil, no good, dirty, rotten Caesar is going to be thrown out of Rome, and someone who’s actually good and right is going to come in and rule our land. That’s what they’re thinking. How can we know that?
Well, the telltale sign is what happens over the course of Holy Week. The telltale sign is that the people praise Jesus when he comes in looking like the triumphant king with momentum behind him, but as soon as the tide turns, as soon as it goes from Here comes peace for all of us, because Jesus is strong enough to defeat our enemies. Our enemies just killed Jesus. Our enemies are about to kill Jesus. They say, we don’t want anything to do with that no good, dirty, rotten, not Caesar, but pretend Messiah that went to a cross, because as they looked at him, they weren’t seeing the Messiah as the scriptures actually told them they would see the Messiah.
They saw a Messiah who was a political Messiah, a Messiah who was going to make things right in Israel. And because of that, when Jesus looked like he could possibly do that, that he might finally be the one who could challenge Rome, he was great, but the moment it looked like Rome had the upper hand on him, he was worthless.
If we evaluate someone by a measure, we’re saying that’s what’s really important about them, aren’t we? When you think about Jesus here, and they’ve heard him teach, they’ve seen him do miracles, they’ve seen all that, but what they really want to know is can you defeat Rome, or at least defeat enough of Rome that we’re independent again? We’re no longer beholden to Caesar. And when that isn’t what’s happening, he’s not valuable.
Comes apart over the course of the week. They see him coming into Jerusalem, and they’re probably thinking he’s going to march to where the governor is, and he’s going to give them what for, and things are going to get exactly how they should be. What does he do instead? Well, as we’re going to see in a couple of weeks, Jesus goes to the temple, and instead of overturning the seat of power of Rome, he goes and overturns the money changers’ tables and insults the teachers of the law and talks about how they’re all wicked.
Hey, Jesus, did you not get the memo? Rome is the enemy. These guys are on our side, generally speaking, at least. I thought you were bringing peace, but you seem to be actually overturning the peace for us.
Kind of hard for us to get completely in that mindset, but imagine today that there’s this superstar rising political figure, and you get on board. You volunteer for the campaign. You give the donations. You’re sharing the social media, and you’re so excited because this person is finally going to straighten out the state or the country. And then, instead of going to the state or the country, he shows up at the church and starts pointing out all the things we’re doing incorrectly according to God’s word. How do we feel about that?
Well, I hope it’s not necessary. I hope that if Jesus were to walk into these doors today, he would be pleased with what we’re doing here at this church. But here’s the thing that we know. We’re fallen, sinful human beings, and so whatever church he walked into, he would find things that were problematic, things that maybe we already know. We’re going to be talking tonight on a subject that we don’t all agree on when we get to Sunday School Express. I’m hoping it’s going to be a really helpful discussion. But there are things that we know. We already know there are certain things we don’t all agree on.
You look at different churches, and if you study them all, you know there are certain different points. On the other hand, there are things that we think we’ve already figured out, and we have it down. Sometimes I think those are the things that Jesus would come in and start with, because he’d say, these are the things you’re all filled with pride on because you think you have this down.
But these people, they see Jesus doing all this, and they see him hurtling towards becoming an enemy of Rome. Make no mistake, at the end of the week, that’s exactly what Jesus is known as to anyone watching, because Rome is the one who sends him to the cross. Now theologically, theologically, we all send him to the cross, but if you don’t understand the theology, if you’re just looking at what’s happened, yes, you know the Jewish leaders don’t like Jesus, but what you really know is that Rome’s the one who crucifies people.
Rome only crucifies enemies of the state, and Rome is crucifying Jesus. So you say, well, maybe he was what we thought he was, but he didn’t know what he was doing. Because if you go in and you’re going to overthrow Rome, yes, you’re an enemy of the state, but it didn’t work. And so the people that were hailing him, praising him, repeating the very words that the angels had sung as Jesus was born in this world, they say, well, that was nice. Next, let’s try something else.
Sort of striking, does anyone here a political junkie and you have to watch the political conventions? I think I’ve watched every political convention since 1988, I’m pretty certain. That’s as far back as I can remember political conventions, at least, and I have watched the Democratic and Republican conventions every year, well, every four years, I wish they were every year. I enjoy this stuff, right? I mean, I really do. And it’s fascinating to see the pomp and the circumstance, and how are they going to present the candidate, and what are the other people going to say, and what are the people that ran against the guy or the gal in the primaries going to say? How’s that all going to come together?
Another show of hands, has anyone here been to a rally for a presidential candidate? A number of you. And if you’ve been to one, it can be a totally electric experience. I’m sure the conventions are triple, quadruple beyond that, but going to a political rally, I went to one years ago, I’ve been to a number of presidential rallies, but I went to one years ago out in the middle of Newtown, nice, quiet community, right, it’s just nice and peaceful. It wasn’t quiet and peaceful in that moment, it was electric, right?
And inevitably, you have in the midst of all this political electricity, you have these different people parade up, whether it’s at the convention or at the rally, and they parade up and they talk about why the person that they’ve endorsed is the only person who can save America. I imagine that we would hear similar speeches if we went and listened to a political rally somewhere else in the world. As much as I am a political junkie, I haven’t listened to a lot of international political rallies, but that’s the kind of language we use to rally people, right?
But here’s the other thing that you’ll see inevitably, and I do know this is true in the governments all around the world, inevitably, someone rises to the top, and a lot of other people were competing for that spot, and before that one person rose to the top, those other people competing for the spot were talking about why that person would be an utter disaster, and why they needed to be it instead. Once that’s all clear and you’re at the rally, you’re at the convention, it’s just electric, we’re talking about how great this person is. And then that person loses the election.
You know what’s really interesting? All those people that you thought, well, maybe they had a change of heart, I thought they hated the guts of this person. They were just talking like this person had been their best friend for life, suddenly you’re talking about him or her, like the worst possible people you’ll ever meet once again. Why? Because they didn’t really have a change of heart. They wanted power. They wanted an earthly gain, and they knew for their own earthly gain, here’s what would work. If they could take whatever power they had and toss it in to help their chosen candidate that they unfortunately aren’t, that then when that person rose to power, they would come with those other people that come with. And so it’s all really about just obtaining earthly gain. It’s not really about truth. It’s not really about making things better. It’s about getting some kind of gain in this moment.
We accept that in politics, but here’s the thing. We do that in everything, and a lot of times we approach God like he’s the current leading candidate for the office. And we come to him and say, God, I’m praising you, I’m praising you, and what are we doing? We’re hoping, well, God, don’t forget when you’re writing the next bill to put a little graft in for me. Of course, God doesn’t have to because he can just do whatever he wants, right? He doesn’t need to gain power, but that’s actually, ironically, how we often treat our approach to God.
And that’s what these people are doing as they’re approaching Jesus. They’re saying, maybe if I get on the right side here, and Jesus is rising to power, and I show a willingness to go along, what’s going to happen when he comes into his kingdom here on earth, and he sits where David once sat in Jerusalem? He’s going to remember that I was standing there, and he’s going to favor me.
All that electricity on Palm Sunday, an awful lot of it is trying to get an advantage with Jesus because they don’t get who he is. They’re looking at what they want on this earth, and they’re saying, maybe I can get that. And the sad thing is, there’s something so much better that Jesus has for them, and they can’t even see it because they’re so busy trying to manipulate themselves into the right spot with the person they think Jesus is.
Notice what happens when Jesus challenges people who are thinking that way. John chapter six, he’s been talking about the difficulties of following him, and the challenges that are going to come. And they’re starting to get this idea that maybe he actually thinks that he is more than just a mere human being, and the people, here’s what they do. Verse 66, after this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the 12, do you want to go away as well?
Let’s listen very carefully to what Peter says. Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.
Notice the crucial difference between the 12 and the others who continue to follow Jesus and the disciples that walk away. They’re called disciples. They’ve been following him. They’ve been listening to him. But it gets a little too uncomfortable. Jesus, I thought you had a platform for reform in Jerusalem, and now what are you doing? You’re talking about us eating your flesh and blood? About the suffering that comes if we follow you? You’re talking about stuff like that? I have enough suffering already. I don’t need that, Jesus. I think I’ll just go. Is that a little like you’re unhinged? Why don’t you go and disappear for a few years and find yourself and come back? Maybe then we can talk about me following you.
Well, if you’re here tonight, maybe you tuned in online and you’ve never been to church before and you are actually weighing that, but for an awful lot of us as we’re here, we are generally comfortable with the language we use about Jesus, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. But even if that’s the appearance, if you are wrestling with whom it is that Jesus is tonight and how to make sense of him, know that a lot of us functionally still are, because we confess the right things, but a lot of times that can come out a lot like these people where they’re saying the right thing, it’s correct, but what we’re doing in our hearts is still not in sync with that.
And I think all of us, as long as we live on this earth at times, are going to be completely out of sync with what we confess, because we confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God himself incarnate in the flesh, that we will come up in a moment and have the Lord’s Supper, and as we do, that we are nourished by the body and blood of our Savior given for us, and yet when it comes to trying to figure out what we’re going to do tomorrow, what we’re going to do this month or this year, as we wrestle with how our country is being run or will be run, what do we do? We revert back to the very same impulses that we find here. How can I get benefit for myself and how can I secure things for myself with the means of earth?
You might say, well, I can hold on to both, because we need earthly benefit. We are human beings, and Tim, you talk at times, I’ve heard you say this, and I’m sick of you even saying this, about how God made us with flesh and blood, and it’s actually good to have a physical body and so on, and you know, now you’re trying to have it both ways, because you’re saying we should just be focused on heaven, and you’re saying it doesn’t really matter, but don’t you realize, if I don’t worry about earthly things, I’m going to starve to death, I’m not going to have a body any longer. How can it be both?
Well, it’s not that we don’t care about earthly things, it’s about what do we care about most. Not that we don’t care about our daily needs here on earth. We went through the Lord’s Prayer this spring, and we were reminded, once again, that it’s okay to come to God and ask for his help with earthly things, that we can pray for the daily bread that we need, yet we don’t start there.
That’s often the problem. We start with earthly things, and we think, I’ll get to heavenly things once those are resolved, but the problem is they never get resolved, and so we keep coming to more and more and more earthly things.
I like what C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity, he says, if you have read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The apostles themselves who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the greatest men who built up the Middle Ages, the English evangelicals who abolished the slave trade, all left their mark on earth precisely because their minds were occupied with heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
And friends, Lewis wrote that the better part of a hundred years ago, but here is the thing that’s confronting us today. We do the same thing. We aim as Christians too often for the earth. We aim too often for what will get us ahead in this moment or in this life, and we forget the fact that our priority isn’t this earth. God did not place us here to fix things for him. God placed us here, yes, and God placed us here with the intent to restore this earth, but that restoration comes from him. Where do we look? We don’t look to ourselves, we look to God, and when we look to God to be the one who does the restoration, when we look to him and we say, Lord, I just want to do whatever glorifies you, I want to do what shows people you, the thing that we need to understand is that’s what’s going to empower us to make a difference here as well.
Was it good, for example, in Lewis’s examples, he mentioned the abolition of the slave trade. Was it good that Christians in England, confronted by the evil of slavery and how it was clearly not in keeping with what they were learning as they studied God’s word, that as they wrestled with those two, they said, we need to stop this thing. Absolutely, it was great that they said that, but notably, they came to God’s word first. They were not going to get ahead in any earthly sense by fighting the slave trade. As they fought it, what was going to happen, they were going to become political enemies of a lot of powerful people, and as they fought it, what were they doing? They were shutting down something that England and the United States were using as a major economic engine, labor that didn’t have to be paid, that could just be forced to work.
They weren’t doing it for earthly gain or earthly power for themselves, they were doing it because they were confronting the kingdom of heaven, they were looking at God’s word and they said, it doesn’t matter if we ruin ourselves on this, because this earth is not the price for us, and so we can go and chase after what’s actually good, including on this earth, because what we’re really doing is we’re chasing after Jesus.
Too often, and I hear this over and over today, I could go on to X right now and pull up a bunch of Christian thinkers and show you them talking about our country and our world and how we need to make sure that Christians can get ahead and how Christians can have power, and I could show this to you on both sides of the political aisle, and you know what? That’s an earthward focus. They’re not focusing on how can we be faithful and see more people be faithful, they’re focusing on how can we be more powerful, and that’s not of God.
And we see the result of that in the second era that happens here, in the next two verses, because as we start to do that, as we turn our focus earthward, what do we do? We start to treat Jesus as a merely earthly man. That’s exactly what the Pharisees did. Verse 39 of Luke 19, 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.
You see, the Pharisees, they were guilty of the same mistake that the rest of the crowd was making, but they went a step further. They said, Jesus is just some ordinary man, and he’s an ordinary, inconvenient man now. Because what had they done? The various leaders in Jerusalem, they’d brokered a peace of sorts with Rome. They paid off Rome, they buckled under the abusive corruption of Rome and some of the lack of freedom, but they would do it, and they would do it for the sake of being able to lead themselves. They made a deal with the devil, so to speak.
And in doing that, they looked at Jesus as someone who was going to upset that, because here Jesus was talking about that they weren’t the ones that were actually teaching God’s word faithfully, and trying to disrupt everything they’d set up, and he’s going to do that more again. We’re going to get to the turning of the tables in a couple of weeks. He was going to go and just try and succeed at disrupting them. And they said, we can’t have that. Because see, they too had sought after earthly prizes, and in seeking after earthly prizes, they couldn’t see the heavenly glow upon Jesus.
And because they couldn’t see that, when they looked at him, what did they see? They saw only someone who was getting in the way of their earthly pursuits. And that’s the danger when we start to keep our gaze earth-focused. It’s exactly what C.S. Lewis pointed out in that quote. As we seek after the things of earth, thinking somehow we’re going to advance the cause of heaven, we actually lose heaven. That’s what the Pharisees did. They were ostensibly seeking after the kingdom of heaven, right? They were teaching God’s word. They were securing the place of God’s word being taught, because they, by getting along with Rome in the way that they had, for example, they could use coinage that didn’t have an idolatrous picture of Caesar on it. Rome had conceded to them they could use other coins that were specially made for Jerusalem. Things like that. Rome would respect them.
And they were so focused on how they were advancing the cause of God, that when God actually came face-to-face with them, they couldn’t see him. It’s the path we go down when we keep our gaze earthward, because the longer we look at it, it’s like staring out on a bright day and then coming inside and you can’t really see anything. They couldn’t see anything. They heard the theological claim that the other people didn’t. The other people, maybe they’d heard what the angels had said, but they were thinking, this was a campaign slogan for them. But the Pharisees listened, and as the Pharisees listened, they heard the implications and they didn’t like them.
And so, John 1150, if we were to turn over there, we’d see exactly the ironic reckoning that they have with Jesus. They say, it’s better for one man to die for the sake of a whole nation. Now, they had no idea how profoundly right they were. He was going to die for them, but not in the way they thought. They weren’t thinking of him going to the cross to bury their sins. They were thinking of him going to the cross so he wouldn’t mess up the system they had. And thankfully today, we don’t have the opportunity even to take Jesus and re-crucify him. But at the same time, we trade Jesus and his gospel an awful lot of times saying, it’d be better if part of God’s word just were not spoken. It’d be better if a part of God’s word were tweaked a little bit for the sake of a whole nation or a whole world. We can compromise a little.
It’d be okay if we don’t act in a way that’s Christ-like. Because if we act in a way that’s not Christ-like, we can advance the kingdom of Christ. And here’s the thing we need to know. That will never be the case.
Now, I’m not necessarily speaking into our current political moment as much in this particular section. We’ve been talking about politics. I want to be clear about something here. I’m not talking about how politicians inevitably, even when they have good intent go and they have to negotiate out a compromise because they don’t have complete power and they have to find some way to advance the cause. We can get into a whole discussion of the ethics of how you decide what you can compromise on and what you can’t. The ideal of going and fighting for the perfect cause that will never pass versus the one that’s less perfect but improves the situation. We can talk about all that and that’s a worthy discussion. What I’m really talking about is how do we act as Christians as we approach a step back? How do we act towards our neighbors? How do we act when we’re trying to decide how we should get someone elected or change out government? Or if at some point someone here at Little Hills actually runs for elective office, how should we live not in the sense of trying to negotiate out a bill, but how should we live in the sense of are we behaving ethically towards the people around us? Or do we think, well, maybe a little mudslinging that isn’t quite true would be worth it to accomplish a goal. Maybe passing along lies about somebody because that person doesn’t stand for what’s right would be useful.
We do that on every level, not just the political. We do that in our workplace. We want a promotion someone else does and we think, if the boss just thinks that person is a little lazier than he or she really is, maybe I’ll get the promotion. It won’t really do that much harm, will it? We see someone step out because a coworker was getting lightheaded and went and ran and got something for the person to eat to help a coworker, and we let the boss think that the person’s just being lazy and slacking off. We do that because we think, well, it won’t hurt that much, and I know I can, if I get that raise, I can give more money to missions at the church, and that’s going to advance the gospel. If I get that promotion, I’ll be more influential, and maybe I can allow Bible studies before work, and that’s going to be a good thing. It’ll be worth it. That’s what the Pharisees were thinking. It was wrong.
Here’s what we sometimes miss as Jesus says that the stones will cry out, because it’s a beautiful, powerful phrase, right? And in itself, it’s profound and true. If God didn’t have a single person who would praise him, he could take inanimate objects and make them praise him, and they would. The praise of God can’t be contained.
But here’s something else that we often don’t realize. It’s a reference back to Habakkuk chapter 2. It’s an oracle of judgment. You’ve devised to shame your house by cutting off many peoples. You have forfeited life, for the stone will cry out from the wall, and the beam from the woodwork will respond.
You see, as Jesus is referencing this, and the people, they memorized these verses. They were used to the rabbis referring to a key phrase and thinking back to the passage. They didn’t have a paper Bible they could hold onto or an electronic Bible. They memorized it, and then they could reference it by keyword. So they hear that. They know where Jesus is referring to.
And here’s what we see if we look at the overall context of Habakkuk 2. First, there are people who are doing wrong before the Lord for their own gain. They have that earthly focus. And then we have people who are doing the wrong for their own power and for the elevation of their nation. And they have that earthly focus. And that’s the context where we have this oracle. The stones will cry out.
So yes, it’s true. Just at a superficial level, is it true that God’s created world, the inanimate objects in it would praise Him if no one else were praising Him? Yes, absolutely. But it’s so much more than that. As Jesus says that to them, you’re trying to silence people who are giving glory to God, and you’re the ones who’ve made these deals and acted in these immoral ways. And you think that overlooking that is somehow politically expedient. What you need to know is it’s not. Because nothing that is wrong is expedient for the cause of God.
But it looks so good. When the teaching of God’s Word can happen, it looks so good. We’ll just compromise a little so we can do it. I got a watermelon earlier this week. I actually have had two over the last couple of weeks. And the second one was pretty. But the first one, it was a beautiful watermelon. I should have taken a picture. I mean, it was big, and it was heavy, and you could knock on it. It was hollow-sounding, just like you want it to sound. It was just the perfect watermelon. So beautiful, you kind of hated to cut into it. It was just a beautiful watermelon.
Now imagine I look at that watermelon, and I see, here’s a prize. I mean, this is just, I enjoy looking at a beautiful watermelon. I’m just going to set this watermelon on the table, and I’m going to look at it. How long do you think that’d last? Well, a week or two, maybe a little longer. And then I think, it doesn’t smell right around here. And I’d look, and why is the floor sticky and wet? I’d pick up that watermelon, and I’d see the rotten juices running out of it. And I’d realize, yeah, it was beautiful for a moment, but it won’t last that way. And it didn’t actually get me to the goal of why I wanted to have a watermelon, which is that watermelon’s delicious to eat. It is the melon, incidentally. I mean, there is no other melon. It’s just watermelon. That’s the way it is. And it’s so good, and yet, captured by this momentary beauty of this melon, I could miss out on something so much better.
And so often, when we keep our eyes earthward, what are we doing? We see the momentary beauty of power, of success, of God providing the things that we want that are not just maybe for mere survival, but for success, for glory, for ourselves. And we sit on the table, and we say, this is great. And then sometimes it actually works, and we achieve it. And so we put that beautiful watermelon on the table, but the thing is, no matter how beautiful the watermelon of earthly success is, it’s going to rot. And we’re going to start smelling the rotten juices dripping down, and we’re going to have all that stickiness. It’s not only sticky, it’s smelly and awful all over the place. I thought this was a beautiful watermelon. No, we don’t do that here, right? We don’t do that as we focus on our Lord, right? We don’t look at Jesus and just say He’s a mere human being, and He’s not. We know the prize is with Jesus in heaven, right? Isn’t that what we know?
But are we living it? Am I living it? How many times do I know that, and yet still I want to set the watermelon of earthly success on the table because it’s so beautiful?
Error one leads to error two. We seek after the earthly, and we start to think of Jesus almost like He’s earthly, even if theologically we know He’s not. And that means that we can trade Him for the things of this world because He’s just another earthly thing. But when we actually understand whom it is that we are coming here to hear about and to worship, and we recognize that this is the man of heaven, this is the King of heaven who came to earth, who lived, suffered, and died for us on this earth, but He came here as the one who made this earth, then we see that all these beautiful things on earth are just rotting in comparison to Him.
We can go earthward an awful lot. In fact, we do. But God calls us to a heavenward destination. Yes, we’re going to bring that heavenly kingdom down to earth when we’re serving Him, and we’re doing what He’s calling us to do, but not in the way we often think. Not in the way that we’re going to go in and act all earthly and somehow make it look more like heaven. The piece of heaven that was declared by the angels wasn’t the piece where heaven said, oh, earth is good now, the way it is, and we’ll just leave it that way. No, what it was is God was saying, all you broken, sinful people, I’m inviting you to come up and be restored by me in my heavenly presence. It’s a profoundly, profoundly different thing.
Here the people were called to encounter Jesus in His true nature, and every single day we are invited to the same. Are we encountering Jesus as He really is? Let’s pray tonight that we are. Will you join me in prayer?
Lord, too often the allure of the momentary beauty of that earthly power and success watermelon is just too great to pass up. Lord, would you help us to be reminded that if we just leave it there, if we don’t see the fact that even as we enter into the things of this earth, that what we’re really called to do is to enjoy them only in as much as they’re moving us closer to You, to serve in this world in ways that point heavenward to You because the things of this earth are rotting and will pass away. Lord, would you help us to remember that? Would you help us to hold on to that? Would you help us to be directed more towards You and to remember whom it is that we serve that as we come before our Lord and Savior Jesus, that we’re coming before the King who came from heaven and brings heaven to earth. The last thing we need to do is keep our eyes on earthly prizes, and the last thing we need to do is somehow try to make heaven more earthly. But rather pray for the day that You indeed will restore this earth and that everything that is broken in it will be made right, not by the means of this earth, but by the grace that You give us. Lord, we pray that You would help us to trust and to hold on to You this day, and we ask this in the precious name of Jesus.
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