When things feel urgent and broken, we want a solution that works right now—and that impatience is exactly what Luke 19 puts on display as the Palm Sunday crowd shouts “Hosanna” at Jesus, certain he’s about to deliver the instant fix they’ve been waiting for.
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Last week I took us to an unpleasant, shall we say, anniversary from five years ago, which was the toilet paper scarcity fear. I want to go to a different, at least for me, happier one. Because before I even realized it was trendy five years ago—I really didn’t—I didn’t know other people were doing this. But five years ago I decided to start a sourdough starter, affectionately named Beastie, Yeastie Beastie. And so five years later, Beastie is still going on just fine and has made—some of you have sampled it—hundreds of pizzas since then, along with some bread and some coffee cake and some brownies, various different things. But fifth anniversary of my sourdough starter.
However, when I started it, I don’t think I really knew what I was getting into. Here was my mindset: if you take yourself back to 2020, and you remember, people didn’t know how long the food supply lines were going to keep going, what to get, everyone stocking up. And I was thinking, okay, so you’re supposed to stock up on bread. And so then everyone rushed out buying yeast. Remember that? There was actually a shortage of yeast for a little bit. So everyone was rushing and buying yeast.
Well, yeast makes, normally, just sort of plain bread. I prefer sourdough. I thought, oh, I’ll just make sourdough, that’s no problem, that won’t be any problem at all. And so I started a sourdough starter. And I think if you’d said to me at the time, Tim, you’re going to start something that needs to be fed every single day, you need to make something with, you need to have all this flour, and then when you make the bread, it’s a multi-day process, I don’t know that I necessarily would have started it. I have no regrets now. I’m so glad to have it. I love having a sourdough starter, and I would never want to give up that particular one. I’m attached now, this little colony of yeast, and we’ve been through a lot together.
Even if I’d known, here’s all that you’re going to do, right? I’m not just going to have a piece of sourdough bread, I am going to go through this process that takes several weeks before you can make anything with it, and then once you make something with it, what happens? Once you decide to make sourdough, it’s a multi-day process. You start your dough, you knead your dough, you go through all this stuff, and you do that, why? So that, at the end, you get this truly, truly delicious bread. Would I have done it? Probably not. Am I glad I did it? Absolutely.
And this is the challenge, I think, for us in so many areas of life, because here’s the thing that’s true throughout life. When we know what’s demanded, and it seems like it’s going to take a while, oh, I’m not going to get a slice of bread tomorrow, I’m not going to get a slice of bread next week, I’m going to do this work right now, why? So that I can have bread several weeks from now, and I can continue to do it and have some bread, I don’t know, a few months from now, I just wouldn’t, I don’t know.
And this, I think, is really the same problem on a big scale that our friends 2,000 years ago were running into. Why? Because they were looking at what Jesus was saying, and they thought they were getting instant yeast. They wanted to see Rome no longer oppress them. They wanted to live in a realm that they could feel safe and comfortable and successful. And they thought that Jesus was that instant yeast. They didn’t think they’d be talking, you know, a number of years from now about how they finally had seen this thing happen.
What did they think? They thought that Jesus was going to ride into the city, and the following week they’d no longer be paying tribute to Caesar. That’s what they thought.
If you’re online, I don’t mean to interrupt. We have a slight issue here that I know many of you have prayed about before, and I’m just saying that. Yes, please. And so, please pray. We have things that happen, right, that are interruptions, that are challenges, and those challenges, those challenges are really, really hard to overcome. I’m just going to ask you to excuse me for one moment, please. We’re calling the police.
[Disturbance off camera.]
Okay, you may have heard that, and if you’re wondering, we have a gentleman who has some mental issues, shall we say, some substance abuse issues that occasionally can be a little disruptive, and so, unfortunately, we have to call the police, but please pray for Eric. Please pray for him. That’s what we should do.
Okay. Let’s pray right now.
Father, we thank you that you are in control of all things, and as we don’t always understand what’s happening and why, Lord, we do pray that you’d be with this man who is made in the image of you. You made him. We don’t understand why he’s going through the things he is, or why sometimes it ends up disrupting his service, but Lord, we know that you are in control, and we pray that you’d be with him, that you’d be with this church, and you’d help us to glorify you and show your love. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Are we clear out there? Okay.
So why don’t we just pray for the sermon, too, we’ll just do it all at once. Sorry, everybody online. This is live. Yeah.
Father, Lord, I pray also that you’d be with the sermon and the study of your word. Lord, you are in control of all things, so we know that this doesn’t surprise you, and Lord, would you guide all of us as we may be a little distracted to come back to your word, to hear your word, and to hear exactly what you want us to hear in it. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Okay, so like I said, we don’t like to be patient, right? And sometimes we’re the disruptive one, and that’s the thing. We might not go in and disrupt a service, but I disrupt all kinds of things, and I’m even more disruptive towards God. I disrupt his plans every single day, and what does he do? He welcomes us with his open arms. That’s what Jesus is doing as he goes into Jerusalem.
It’s hard because we’re short-sighted, and a lot of times when we disrupt God’s plans, why do we do it? Because we want something now. They wanted that instant yeast, that thing that would provide immediate, immediate solutions. We want the benefits now.
And so as they praise God on Palm Sunday, have you ever thought about, this seems like, this seems sort of contradictory. They’re praising him, and then they’re rejecting him. How do we get there? And I think the thing is, they’re doing the same thing that we often do, which is they’re praising God for their own benefit. They’re praising Jesus, but they’re praising Jesus because they think that he is that instant yeast that’s going to come in.
Let’s go ahead and take a look at Luke chapter 19.
As 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.
They’re praising God. They’re saying, wow, look at this King coming. But they’re not ready for God’s actual plan. They’re not ready for what God is actually doing.
So they praise him, but the reason they’re going to turn is because that wasn’t what they thought they were getting into.
The clue was there from the moment that Jesus came into town, even if they’d never heard him before. Because how does he come in? He comes in on a donkey.
Now, was he the only one that ever came in on a donkey? No.
Was it prophesied that the Messiah would come in on a donkey? Yes.
But why was it prophesied? Because the Messiah was going to come in in peace. He wasn’t coming into Jerusalem to be the conquering king who would unleash a bloody rebellion that decimated the Roman army so that God himself would take control and his army would go out and decimate more people and more people and have an army of God that would build an earthly empire.
He was coming into town to offer salvation, both for the Jews who were anticipating him and for the Gentiles who were not.
That wasn’t what they expected.
It’s been noted that what you see here in some degree, you had a certain group of followers of the Lord who were known as the zealots and they wanted to overthrow Rome. And they were willing to use military means to do it.
They were constantly chomping at the bit and they would try and Rome would knock them down and then, not sane people because Rome didn’t knock you down in a way you could try again, but another group would rise up and they’d try.
And so there were people that that’s what they wanted Jesus to be doing here.
And then there were that normal everyday people, not necessarily zealots, but they were followers of the Lord, they were tired of Rome. And as they’ve been hearing about this Jesus who does miracles, part of what I think they’re thinking is, huh. You know, he sounds different than the others. He actually heals people. He’s brought the dead to life. He teaches in a different way.
Maybe the zealots are right this time.
And they said, maybe it’s time for Israel to rise again. We’ve been put down for so long. It’s time that God’s people showed the world where they really were and had control.
And so they see Jesus coming on that donkey, but they’re, whatever he’s riding at that moment, they’re seeing him on a war horse.
Now they are saying that God is bringing peace here, but not the kind of peace that God was actually going to do.
Because notice they say, peace up in heaven.
And I think the interesting thing about that, when you think about it, is they’re saying, yes, someday peace, and peace up in the place where God reigns, but down here, war.
And as we’re going to see as we go through this passage, what was happening is that these people, they understood that some of what the Messiah was going to come to do was in heaven and some of it was on earth, but they’d taken it and flipped it exactly opposite of what God was doing.
And the part they thought was on earth was the blessing of the kingdom. This is going to be our control, our place, our power.
And the part that they thought was going to be in heaven was God’s peace.
Now, of course there’s peace in heaven, but what they were missing, Jesus was coming to bring a different kind of kingdom, a kingdom that didn’t speak the language of military and fighting and force and strength, but a kingdom that spoke of humility and peace.
This is not instant yeast for the problems of the day, but they want it to be.
People are wrestling with who he was.
We look at Matthew’s telling of this event. This question’s recorded.
When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up saying, who is this?
And the crowd said, this is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee.
The Lord your God will raise up a prophet, we read in Deuteronomy.
This is what they have in mind.
The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen.
Then in haste, let’s jump a little bit further, see if these things look familiar. Then in haste, every man of them took his garment and put it under him on the bare steps, and they blew the trumpet and proclaimed, Jehu is king.
Some familiar sounding things there, right?
They say, who is it that’s here?
Moses had foretold of a prophet to come. They’ve been anticipating this prophet. They knew that someone was going to come who finally could get things in order again, sort of like Moses had long ago.
I’ve heard Jesus talk in a way that makes them think of the Messiah. Now he’s coming in like they would expect the Messiah. He’s riding the donkey as foretold, and so what do they do?
They start to do what they did long ago when a new king entered the city. They lay their garments down. Here, come on into this city. Come on in. Thinking he’d never leave, and all the oppressors would.
That’s what they were there for.
You see, the crowd saw a king, and they were right.
The problem was they didn’t see a servant, and there they were wrong.
He wasn’t a king like the kings they knew.
They got part of it right.
But they had a different voice, a voice saying,
Let’s chase after someone who will actually overthrow those scoundrels that oppress us. Let’s overthrow those who have persecuted us. Let’s be the ones on top for once in charge.
Because of that, they couldn’t actually hear the voice of God.
I was reading the story of Linda Rowan the other day.
Fascinating, horrifying story.
She was going about her day, and her telephone rings.
And she answers the phone, and she hears the voice of her daughter saying, Mom, I’ve been kidnapped, and my kidnappers are going to come on the line now.
They won’t let me stay on long. They want you to know that they have me, and you have to do exactly what they’ve said or they’re going to kill me.
Linda’s day obviously just went from a normal everyday day to the worst day of her life.
And they hear what sounds like her daughter being dragged away from the phone.
Someone else comes on and starts telling her how to transfer a large sum of money, several thousand dollars, if she ever wants to see her daughter again.
And as they’re talking and she’s getting details, this man on the line is talking to her, but there’s clearly others with him, and she hears what sounds like her daughter’s screams in the background.
So what does she do?
She gets in her car and goes to Walmart, where she’s told to send a money gram.
And the man says, you’re going to stay on the line with me, because I know exactly how long it’s going to take you to get to Walmart.
If you take an extra minute, and I have any sense that you’ve gone to the police, and I have any sense that you’ve contacted someone else, you’ll never see your daughter again.
So she goes and she sends the money.
At first she runs into trouble because she tries to pay with a credit card, and she can’t pay with a credit card over a wire.
And so the man’s listening to all this and he says, okay, here’s what you need to do.
She has to take out the money, get it from an ATM, send it over the wire.
And then she thinks, finally I’m going to have my daughter.
The man says, I just talked to my boss and you took too long.
It’s cost us too much.
And she witnessed a drug deal we were doing, and it’s cost us that drug deal.
You’re going to have to send more money.
And you’re going to do it online this time.
So she sends that money.
And the man says, okay, he hangs up.
She’s trying to get a hold of her daughter, trying to get a hold of her daughter. She calls, she’s shaking, she calls her daughter’s phone.
And hears her daughter’s sleepy voice on the other side of the line.
Mom, what’s wrong?
It was all a deepfake.
Someone had captured a little bit of Linda’s daughter’s voice and simulated Linda’s daughter screaming for help.
And Linda got part of it.
She knew she needed help.
If her daughter’s in trouble, she wants to help.
But it was all a scam.
To wire that money away.
With nothing that could be done, because no one knew who they were, they’re in a different country, etc.
She knew there was urgency if this were true.
And she knew certain bits.
She knew her daughter’s voice, so she was responding to that, but she didn’t know what to do next.
She didn’t know how to deal with it.
And I think a lot of the people on Palm Sunday, as they’re waving their palms, that’s sort of how they feel.
Because you know what?
Rome had killed their brothers and sisters and sons and daughters.
And Rome had taxed them and taxed them and taxed them.
And as they’re waving their palms, they’re waving palms thinking someone’s finally going to rescue them.
But every moment that Jesus is there, and they’re waving their palms towards him, you know what?
Satan’s also there whispering.
Hey, I see you’re saying this, and let me tell you the rest of the story so you know how to really act.
And not being attuned enough to God’s voice, they knew part of it, and they turned the wrong way.
A lot of times we feel like it’s so urgent to get this resolution, to get this solution, what do we do?
We start wiring off the resources of our life thinking that we’re wiring it to save our loved ones or to save ourselves, and we’re actually wiring it exactly where Satan wants us to.
But it feels like, but I gotta do it right now because what happens if I don’t? I might lose that job. I might lose that friendship. I might not be respected in my community. Something will go wrong.
There’s a question we need to ask ourselves.
Are we sending our treasure to the right place?
And I don’t mean just financial treasure, even mostly financial treasure.
Are we sending the treasure of our hearts? Are we sending the treasure of our time and our energy and our conscious thoughts, what we’re focusing on?
And a lot of times I have to say the answer for me is no.
But are we sending that in the right place? Are we wiring off to where Satan wants us to?
Here’s the one difference that I could see from Linda Rowan’s story.
If they did what Satan did and what Satan wanted them to do, if they did what they in their own hearts wanted themselves to do, they could see a possibility of immediate benefit.
That the things that were broken, that the things that were not working, that they could be right.
What Jesus was proposing, loving your enemies, praying for those who persecute you, that doesn’t sound like immediate benefit.
Doesn’t sound like benefit at all.
Neither was it benefit.
Just like Linda was right on part of it, she was hearing the tones of her daughter’s voice.
It was just a simulated version of it.
They were hearing that they needed something and they were right to know they needed something.
It was just that they were doing the wrong thing in response.
Linda could have known this but the right response at that moment would have been to go back and see if they could have traced something before she sent thousands of dollars.
What are you going to do?
Are you going to risk your daughter’s life? No, she wasn’t.
A lot of times we allow the stakes to feel like they’re that high for us.
If I follow God’s way in this, I might not get a promotion. If I follow God’s way in this and I love my enemies and I pray for those who persecute me, I might not see things around me the way I want them.
I know I need something. I need it now.
I feel like I mentioned that they got it in reverse.
The angels, when Jesus was born, what did they promise?
Peace on earth and goodwill to men.
They got the peace part.
They got what they were supposed to do as part of that in reverse.
That God wasn’t coming to slaughter the people. God was coming to offer them redemption.
The irony of how they miss this is that they’re thinking the blessing that Jesus is bringing to them is the earthly part and that the peace is the heavenly part.
When Jesus was actually coming to bring peace to earth and the blessing is to come in his presence.
So later in the week when it got tough, people abandoned Jesus.
Some of them never wanted to follow him to begin with because they were chasing after their benefit.
Just as those people were praising Jesus not because they actually understood what he was doing but because they thought if they praised him they’d be on the winning victorious side.
The swords would be theirs.
Take a look at verse 39.
And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, rebuke your disciples.
Sometimes we withhold our praise for our own benefit.
Why were the Pharisees saying that? Why did they want Jesus to come up and say you know it’s really nice that you’re praising and waving your palm branches but just stop it all?
They were right on the first point which is that it looked to the Romans rather like an insurrection.
So one who people are calling a king, the long promised Messiah is coming into town and people are laying down their garments like they did for an ancient king. People are talking of the prophet of old that was promised.
It sounds like a revolution.
So the Pharisees were right on that.
Here’s the other thing the Pharisees were right on.
Whatever it was, it didn’t spell good things for their attempt at appeasement of the Romans.
The Romans weren’t friendly. The Romans weren’t big fans of the Jewish people but they had allowed them a few concessions. They allowed them to focus on their own gods rather than the Roman gods. They allowed them to have special coins that could be used in the temple that didn’t have some pagan deity on them like the Roman coins.
They made certain concessions and most of all they allowed the teachers of the law to administer the religion rather than interfering with that.
They said we’re not going to do anything to them.
And these followers of Jesus look like they’re ready to do something to them.
We don’t like that.
Because we’ve seen what happens when Rome thinks that people are conspiring against them and we don’t want to be there.
That’s not a benefit unless you consider it a benefit not to have a head anymore.
They thought they understood the true key to peace.
The key to peace was to make it so that Rome didn’t hate you.
You didn’t have to love Rome.
You didn’t have to go and preach the glories of Caesar but you left him alone.
And so they told Jesus to stop this.
They knew they weren’t.
When you have a crowd in frenzy mode and you decide stop, no one’s going to listen to them.
The only thing we can do is get Jesus to stop.
And what does Jesus say?
That’s not going to work because you know what? If I stopped them from praising God, guess what? The very stones would cry out.
This is not the answer the Pharisees wanted to hear.
You don’t like this? Too bad.
You have one group of people who say we’re going to praise God because we see what he’s doing and we believe in these earthly benefits that are going to come and the Roman Empire is going to crumble and it’s all going to be great.
You have the other people who say we’re not praising God over this because they think that is going to be bad for us.
We have to protect what we believe in.
They’re worried for the stones of the temple that what later on, a few decades later, did indeed happen to those stones would happen that they would get knocked down by an angry Roman government.
Here Jesus says you know those very stones you’re worried about? They would be the ones crying out if I stopped so they could have their temple.
But just like the other group they were focused on the benefit in the world and missing God’s kingdom work that was bigger than that.
Listen to the context of the stones crying out from Habakkuk.
For the stone will cry out from the wall and the beam from the woodwork respond.
Woe to him who builds the Lord of hosts that the people labor merely for fire and the nations weary themselves for nothing for earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Pharisees would have known where Jesus was referencing from.
They knew the prophets and they knew this was a judgment on the wicked leaders.
You see Jesus is not going to cry out because they’re going to have to because these neutral people trying to achieve peace for their time were doing it.
No, the stones are going to cry out because those teachers were wicked.
They’re going to cry out and it’s going to be a judgment.
Because the Pharisees thought that the benefit was keeping peace in this world not in glorifying God.
And so they were willing to withhold praise to God if it wasn’t for their comfortable position.
And you know what?
For a period of time they were right.
That’s the part we overlook.
For a period of time they were right.
Never morally but functionally.
They suppressed the people of God.
They suppressed the Messiah.
They conspired and arranged for him to go to the cross.
And it looks like they were right.
Because for several decades longer things stay relatively even keeled.
But the kind of negotiation they were doing and the kind of negotiation we fall into today when we decide to play by the rules of the world, we won’t be kind to our enemies.
We’ll make sure our enemies know that they’re bad.
We won’t be kind to those who persecute us.
We’ll persecute them.
We won’t offer a loving word to those who offer us an angry word.
For a time it works.
But it’s sort of like calling up the cable company.
Anyone get a bill that’s gone up from the cable company? I know that never happens to most of you right?
But every once in a while maybe, or your internet provider if it’s not the cable company right, anymore you’ve cut the cord but you still have to have internet right?
So you sign up for the internet service, maybe some telephone service, cell phone service, whatever.
You sign up for it and what do you see? You see this incredible deal right?
I’m going to save so much money.
And then you read the small print.
Except when you call up the cable company and renegotiate and then there isn’t a small print because they assure you this is the best deal ever.
It’s going to be great forever.
Never mind the fact that it’s only going to go up, you know, it’s only going to have $50 next year.
Never mind that, you didn’t hear anything.
It’s going to be such a great deal.
And so we signed the deal, right?
I’m going to get peace.
The Pharisees heard that kind of deal.
Just as Satan was calling the crowd to only wave palms for a military leader, to them he was saying, you know who you really should praise?
Those who will give you peace for the next year.
Those who will give you the peace for the next four years or ten years or twenty years.
Those who will make things okay for you in this moment.
Those who will make things okay for you in this moment.
And they signed the deal.
They didn’t read the small print that said how much it was going to cost them.
Because by choosing to turn away from the Lord and His promises, by choosing to play by the rules of the world, they were getting the deal, let’s say, maybe for the rest of many of their lifetimes.
But they weren’t going to be in Jesus’ presence in eternity.
They were rejecting the Messiah.
And so they signed the deal. And so they signed the deal. And so they signed the deal. And so they signed the deal. And so they signed the deal. And so they signed the deal.
You see, we’ve been talking about sneaky snakes.
And the crowd’s sneaky snake of sin that snuck into their lives was the immediate.
They were going to have the immediate peace through revolution.
They would be the ones who set the agenda now.
And for the Pharisees, they were going to get the immediate peace through their own power.
But both those sneaky snakes have the same kinds of small print that every deal we ever sign before has.
And so they signed the deal.
And so they signed the deal.
And so they signed the deal.
And so they signed the deal.
This is like anything you’ve ever signed with a communications provider has, only worse.
They’re wiring away all their funds to try to save the nation, to save the faith, to do this.
And what they weren’t listening to is the fact that God was right there in front of them, offering them the only thing they really needed.
They’re shouting Hosanna, God save us!
They were praying as they cried out, God save us!
And God was saying, I’m right here to save you, and they were saying, no, no, save us from this other stuff that we really think is our problem.
Why do we think that the world is right? And we follow it, and we even win by it, but it won’t last.
Question for us tonight.
Am I going to lay my palm at the feet of the world or the feet of the cross?
Because here’s the thing, the world looks powerful, and in this world, it’s not. It’s not.
And so, I’m going to lay my palm at the feet of the world, and I’m going to lay my palm at the feet of the cross.
Because here’s the thing, the world looks powerful, and in this moment, the world is powerful.
It’s admired now.
If we align ourselves with the ways of the world, we will be admired.
And we might find some people are angry because we’re a very divided world, but we will find people who admire us deeply, and other people maybe that hate us, but we can feed off of that.
That’s something our society likes to do right now, right?
We’ll be powerful, and we’ll seem to be able to set our own agenda, set our own way.
But Jesus’ way doesn’t look very good compared to that.
When we lay the palm at the feet of the cross, what happens instead?
Jesus says, pick up your cross and follow me.
Let the world hate you. Show them love.
Let the world persecute you. Pray for them.
Because here’s the thing, the world offers that really great deal.
They offer us a solution to the urgent need that we hear crying out on the other side of the line in our heads.
And we’re not going to get it.
We’re not going to get it.
But what it doesn’t do is offer anything that lasts.
What Jesus was there to offer them was the very thing they knew they needed but in a way that was far better than anything they actually thought could be.
And they’re crying out the right word.
They’re crying out for God’s salvation.
They’re crying out hosanna but they weren’t willing to hear it.
Tonight we spent some time in confession.
I think probably each of us if we really were reflecting to our hearts, we would have been in a different place.
We would have been in a different place.
If we really were reflecting during that time as I know we were, we probably could think of a whole bunch of things, probably more than the time allotted of things that we’ve trusted and things that we’ve cried out for salvation to or we want God to be provide as the means of our blessing and salvation.
God says I’m here to provide blessing to you.
I’m here to provide a true hosanna to you.
You need to follow me.
So here’s what I want to ask us all to do.
Have you each got a palm branch earlier?
Jamie and Jerry made sure that those were well distributed.
And as you may have noticed over in our little spring woodland forest over there, we’ve had some snakes slithering around in the trees, those sneaky snakes.
But one of those snakes, one of those snakes has been slithering towards the scripture that God so loves the world.
Slithering.
And now there’s several slithering that way.
And I say, well, that’s a good question.
I’m not sure that’s a good question.
And I say, well, why is a snake doing that?
Because in our lives so often we live as snakes.
We live by the ways of those sneaky snakes.
But what we saw as Paul himself was redeemed is that whatever it is that we’ve waved and lowered our palm branches towards that isn’t of God, God will take us even when we’ve done that.
He took Saul even after he’d murdered a man. Murdered and persecuted the very church of God.
He took Saul even after he’d murdered a man.
He took Saul even after he’d murdered a man.
And he called him to himself.
He called Paul to himself.
Wherever you’ve been doing that, wherever I’ve been doing that, we can do the same.
And so what I’m going to ask us to do as we prepare our hearts before we go to communion is to think back on those things we were confessing earlier.
And to take that palm branch you have, and we’re all going to walk over there and lay them, you’ll see there’s a palm branch, and we’re all going towards.
And say, God, I may be snaking, I may be doing those things that are displeasing to you, but I know that your redemption is never too weak to redeem anyone.
And I want to commit those things that I’m holding to and place them before you.
And if you’d like, I’d encourage you to take that palm branch and lay it down right now.
Thank you.
If you’re online, maybe take a little, cut out a little palm branch tonight, and just lay it down on the table and pray, God, this is my palm branch, I’m laying down before you.
I know that we’ve had those snakes we’ve been keeping around, keep that around still because, you know, here’s the thing, and this is why, I didn’t say if you’ve never trusted in Jesus, this is a great way to commit your life.
I said that we all should be invited to do this because those snakes sneak back in.
And some of those people, those crowd members who were crying out for Jesus to come out, they would ultimately turn to Jesus.
Some of them already had, and yet in the moment later on they would turn away for a time.
We see that with the very disciples.
So we need to keep coming back.
But here’s the thing, what we know, that God is faithful to hear those prayers.
And whatever you’ve laid before him tonight, know he’s faithful to hear that prayer.
And when we do that, we really are crying out Havana.
We’re really following that King.
We’re really following that King.
The only King who offers a true Havana answer.
Let’s pray.
Father, we come before you as those who are imperfect and broken.
Things don’t go the way that we expect.
They can happen in all sorts of different ways.
But Lord, we pray that you would offer your forgiving grace to us and also your comfort to those who are in need.
And we pray that you would offer your forgiveness to us and also your comfort to those who are in need.
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