We’ve always been better at hailing the leader who delivers what we want than trusting the one God has actually sent. Way back in Numbers 12 and 16, even Moses’ own family turns on him for not being the kind of leader they expected. Can we see God’s working any more clearly than they did?
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The sermon contrasts what we think we want in a leader with what God actually provides. Can you think of a time when you were disappointed by a leader or decision because it didn’t match your expectations—and later realized God was working in a way you hadn’t anticipated?
Miriam, Aaron, and Korah used seemingly spiritual arguments to challenge Moses. How can we distinguish faithful correction from criticism driven by impatience, envy, or a desire for importance—and how do we recognize that pattern in ourselves?
Moses lost focus after years of the people’s complaints, striking the rock in a moment of frustration rather than obeying what God had actually said. What are the “drive-throughs” in your own life—small compromises or detours you take when you’re tired or discouraged—that pull you away from what God has called you to do?
Palm Sunday shows the same crowds moving from “Hosanna!” to “Crucify him!” in days. What does this rapid reversal reveal about how easily our allegiance shifts when reality doesn’t match what we were hoping for—and how does that pattern show up in your own faith?
Jesus comes as a suffering servant rather than a conquering king, and the cross looks nothing like the “big box” the crowds expected. How does it actually accomplish what they—and we—were really looking for?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Well, here we are, and we are at Palm Sunday. Can you believe it? I find myself, I can’t believe we’re already here. And I wonder, on that first Palm Sunday, what was going through the disciples’ heads. They knew that Jesus had been preparing them for where the ministry was going, but they didn’t always get that. And they also knew that Jesus was sort of eschewing the normal route that you’d expect someone trying to become king. He already was king, but as far as they could see, I mean, he’s the Messiah, right? So becoming king would take, because he had taken a very low-key route. He often asked people not to tell what he’s done, all these sorts of things.
And so, you have that on the one hand, and on the other hand, you have Palm Sunday, and you have the crowds that are just ready for this Messiah and waving palm branches, lowering them down on the ground so that he can actually go over them and laying their coats on the ground. And you have all this going on, and you think about that, and it feels like, whoa, finally it looks like Jesus is on track with the whole Messiah program, right? He was taking his time to get there, but now we’re doing it. We’ve got it here. He’s coming into the city. This is what you do when you’re a conquering king. But the rest of the week doesn’t go that way, does it?
And Jim just got done reading part of the text about Palm Sunday and then part of Good Friday’s text together because what we see is that shocking contrast in a few days that you can go from the people hailing the conquering king on Sunday to calling for him to be put to death on Friday. What a shocking turn of events. That is a quick turnaround, even in today’s world, where we often have very quick turnaround. Someone is the hero of the moment, someone digs up some old tweets about them, and boom, they’re now the bad guy, and no one wants to touch them. Even that seems to take longer. I mean, this is shocking.
But it really comes down to, I believe, something that we see all the way back in the story that we’ve been looking through in the Exodus—that time and again we struggle as people to know what we should look for in a leader. And so tonight we’re going to actually rewind back there again and think about that because as we think about Palm Sunday, we really need to get into the problem of what does our human heart look for? What’s it looking for for ourselves and for those who lead? And I think those are two very important questions, and they’re intertwined deeply.
So let’s go ahead and come before our God, ask that he would guide us, and then we’ll dig in. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for your word and thank you for sending your son, our Savior, Jesus into the world to rescue us, even when we don’t know what we really need rescue from, even when we’re confused and lost. Lord, you are the one who guides us to where we need to be. Would you help us to see that today, Lord? Because we need it just as much today. We need your guidance just as much in this moment as any other time. Pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
So you may have noticed I have a box here. Nice box, right? And this box here, we didn’t forget to put away the boxes as the Palm Sunday decorations were coming out. This box is here intentionally because what kind of box is it? It’s one of the happiest boxes in the world. Here is a box from the Everything Store, right? We have an Amazon box here. That means it could have all kinds of good things inside, right? It’s, you know, a weighty box here. Lots of good stuff, right? We see a box like this appear on our porch, and you think, “Oh, boy, what’s in it?” Or maybe you know exactly what’s in it, depending on if you were late-night shopping or not, right? And sometimes I’ll go on, and it’ll be the deal of the day, and it’s like, “Ah, hmm.” But anyway, so the box comes, right? Nice-sized box, and you open up your box and you think, “Wow, what I ordered was bigger than I even thought. This is great. I got such a great deal on it.”
And you open up the box because that indicates that this is going to be something good, right? And then we start pulling out and… all this shipping material. Oh. Have you had this happen? I’ve had this happen to me before. I guess this is smaller than I even thought it was, right? It went from, “Wow, this is great,” to, “This isn’t anything at all.” This is just, “Ah, boy, I probably should fill out a return right now.” This is disappointing because we look at it, and this looks so good, and we’re all in on what this is taking us to. And then we realize we just have this little box. I’m disappointed. Again.
Because we have certain attributes in mind that we’re thinking about as far as if something is of value or not. “Oh, it came in a big box. This looks good,” right? Maybe it’s a Christmas or a birthday package. You open up, “Wow, this is great.” Oh. And that’s what the problem for the Israelites would be, too, throughout their time in the wilderness. And it’s the problem that we have today, and it’s the problem that the people hailing Jesus coming into the city have. They see the big box. “Ah, here’s that teacher. He’s been building up anticipation. This is a weird campaign he’s been doing. He’s been going for years, healing people very quietly, but now the big box is here.” And then what does he do? He goes into the city. He starts teaching about all the problems with what the teachers of the law and the religious leaders have been doing, and it looks like one of these little boxes because he’s not overthrowing the Romans.
So the people go way up and then they go down. The people were surely excited when Moses takes them out of Egypt. “Oh, we’re no longer slaves,” but we see over and over again they get tired of his leadership because what’s he doing? Well, he’s leading them the way that God’s called them to go, but that involves time and patience and trust in God and not just the immediate benefits that they think that they should have. And that’s what we see if we turn to Numbers 12 because there we find none other than Moses’ own brother and sister find themselves disappointed. Why? Well, they’ve been doing this for a while now. They’ve been supporting Moses. They’ve been the faithful brother and sister that go along with this crazy harebrained scheme of Moses to bring these whiny people out into the wilderness, and yet things are still just wilderness time, and they’re sick of it.
What do we read? “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman. And they said, ‘Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?’ And the Lord heard it. Now the man Moses was very meek more than all people who were on the face of the earth. And suddenly the Lord said to Moses and to Aaron and Miriam, ‘Come out, you three, to the tent of meeting.’ And the three of them came out. And the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the tent and called Aaron and Miriam, and they both came forward. And he said, ‘Hear my words. If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make myself known to him in a vision. I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house.’ With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?’ And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them and he departed. And when the cloud removed from over the tent, behold, Miriam was leprous like snow, and Aaron turned towards Miriam, and behold, she was leprous. And Aaron said to Moses, ‘Oh, my Lord, do not punish us because we have done foolishly and have sinned. Let her not be as one dead, whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes out of his mother’s womb.’ And Moses cried to the Lord, ‘Oh, God, please heal her, please.’”
So we have quite the turn of events there. You have the faithful siblings of Moses decide they’re fed up because they want more authority. And they have authority. They clearly have an important role, but they look at Moses, and Moses seems to be, well, maybe not king, but he certainly is in charge. And they say, “Well, you know, it was fine and dandy for a little while, but how about we do some power-sharing arrangement? Maybe we could have a rotating chair of the month of who’s in charge of the people or something, Moses, because we didn’t really sign on to be your brother and sister that have to look to you as the leader. We signed on as your brother and sister that, you know, we’re family, we put up with each other, we help each other out. And we’re just tired of this, you being Mr. Boss Man. This just isn’t what we thought we were getting into.”
If you look at that first verse, it does say that they spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he’d married a Cushite woman. And that’s caused some consternation on exactly what’s going on here. We don’t have any other details about Moses being married to a Cushite woman. There’s some speculation that perhaps this is referring to his wife that we already know about, Zipporah, that even though she’s a Midianite, that maybe there’s some connection to Cush as well. It’s also possible whether she’s passed and Moses is remarried or he’s taken a second wife that Moses has married someone from the land we normally think of as Cush or Ethiopia. Whatever the case, it says they grumbled because he’s married a Cushite.
Now, is it that Miriam and Aaron are such faithful interpreters of the law that they say, “Moses has married outside the people of God and we are upset about that”? Is that the issue? It seems highly unlikely. It seems what’s happening here is something much simpler than that. They’re tired of having to put up with Moses being in charge. They’re tired of Moses always being the one that says, “Here’s what the Lord says.” They want to be the person or the people that say that, at least part of the time, and they’re looking for an excuse to be angry at Moses and they say, “Oh, well, Mr. Leader, important guy, you married a Cushite and we’re upset about that, and so we’re going to bring that to you and say, now that you’ve done that, you can’t be in charge all the time anymore.” They’re looking for a reason to be upset. And so they formulate one.
And I think that’s why we get so little detail here. It’s not really important that Moses has married a Cushite woman. It’s not important to anything about the progression of the people of God other than that Miriam and Aaron are upset. That’s it. So it doesn’t seem like Moses has sinned here. He hasn’t done something horrible. We don’t really even need to get into exactly why this marriage took place or anything like that. It’s just an excuse.
And so often today when we want to grumble about something that God is doing or someone that the Lord is working through, what do we do? We look for an excuse. We don’t have a legitimate reason, so what do we do? We say, “Ah, let me see. I don’t like the way that person dresses. They shouldn’t be in charge. They shouldn’t be speaking God’s word. They don’t dress properly.” They don’t put on a coat and tie. They do put on a coat and tie. Here’s the funny thing. This is sort of whiplash in the grand scheme of history. 20, 30 years ago, you come up and you preach God’s word and you’re not wearing a suit and tie. Oh, how disrespectful. And now you come up and you preach God’s word and you’re wearing a suit and tie. Oh, how sturdy. I mean, isn’t it amazing how that’s changed? But the point is, what do we do? We say, “Ah, I’m going to judge this box here and I don’t like the way the box looks.” Or better yet, I thought it looked really good because it’s just the way I think it should be. And what we’re doing is we’re looking at this giant box and we’re not really evaluating what’s inside of it and we’re going to be disappointed. And that’s what’s going to happen time and time again when we see God’s plans being unfurled before us and we judge it on some excuse to push for what we think is going to be a better way for ourselves. It’s going to elevate ourselves.
That’s what Miriam and Aaron are doing here. I don’t want to get too far off into the weeds on why the Lord chooses to make Miriam leprous and not Aaron. There is speculation on that as well. I think it could be as simple as this, that Aaron is the chief priest. The priesthood is just being established. And even though God is going to heal Miriam, he doesn’t even want to bring a disruption to the sacrificial system. And it could be much more problematic to take Aaron out of commission for ultimately a week is what it takes before Miriam is allowed to reintegrate. God heals her, but he’s going to have her go out of the community for a week. I think it’s really just that simple. But again, that’s not really important either. The important thing is we see them, Aaron and Miriam, picking a fight because they’re just agitated. They want to be more important themselves. They’re done waiting for all this to come out the way that they thought it was going to. They pick a fight, and God makes it clear he’s not interested in their fight picking. It’s just not anything to do with God’s concern.
They can couch it in holy language, and we couch it in holy language. We find ways to criticize those whom we want to criticize that sound sanctified. And boy, if we’re in a church for a while, we get pretty good at this. We know how to criticize other people in a way that sounds like we’re really, really holy. We need to be really careful to make sure that we’re actually bringing helpful encouragement to faithfulness to a person and not using it as a way to try to elevate ourselves. Because God may not normally break out our skin in leprosy when we do that, but we need to understand that God’s appreciation for such things is just as low today as it was then. He doesn’t want us to do that.
Another example, we could go to a bunch of examples in the Exodus story of the people of Israel opposing God’s plan because they’re impatient and they want more importance and so on. But perhaps the perfect example of that is Korah’s rebellion. That comes just a few chapters later. And it says, “Now Korah, the son of Ishar, son of Kohath, son of Levi, and Dathan, and Abiram, the son of Eliab, and On, the son of Peleth, son of Reuben, took men. And they rose up before Moses with a number of the people of Israel, 250 chiefs of the congregation, chosen from the assembly, well-known men. And they assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, ‘You’ve gone too far for all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?’”
Well, now Aaron gets a taste of this medicine too, doesn’t he? So same basic argument when you really think about it. Korah and those surrounding him say, “You inner circle, you siblings of Moses, you hand-picked leaders that feel so important. You’ve tried to make yourselves out as the holy ones that get to do all the important stuff. Now it’s time that we get to be part of that.” Why? They go on, they complain, “You’ve let us out into this land. You promised us. You promised us that we were going to be in a land of milk and honey, plenty of fields that just grow like no one’s ever seen before, better than in all the infomercials we saw on Egyptian television. And now what do we find? We’re out in the wilderness. We’re basically starving to death, eating. God delivers food every day like grubhub will do someday, but we’re sick of it because it’s always the same thing. The button’s stuck. It doesn’t ever bring anything different.”
And all it seems like that’s been accomplished when we really get down to it is that you guys have made yourself important, and we’re sick of it. That’s basically what they’re saying here. And so they actually put in that argument the very thing that God’s promised, the promised land, and what it’s going to be, a land flowing with milk and honey, and they say, “But it’s not here. It’s as absent as swampland that’s going to turn into a beautiful vacation home in Florida. It’s not here.” And here’s the thing that they say, “We’re confident it’s never going to be here. This was just a big scheme to make yourself important.”
Do we say that to God sometimes? I think we do. We don’t maybe go quite that far. We, again, sanctify it. We baptize it with some really nice language and so on, or sometimes we just do it by pure silence. We simply start to ignore what God’s called us to because we say, “God, you’re not doing it fast enough. You’re not doing it just in the way I want, at the level I want. So I’m just going to go distract myself with other things.” See if there’s something that can make myself feel more important.
And that’s basically what Korah and his colleagues are doing here. They say, “We want to be more important. If we’re going to be out here in the wilderness, we might at least be able to offer sacrifices like Aaron. I mean, Aaron’s getting a cut of all this. I mean, what in the world is going on here? This looks like it looks like just keeping it all in the family here once again. And all the rest of us, we’re not getting anything out of this.”
Here’s the irony. As they complain about that and they even bring up what God’s promised, they’re missing out on God’s good plans for them. Numbers 16:12, “And Moses sent to call Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and they said, ‘We will not come up.’” Let’s know what they say, how they phrase this. “Is it a small thing that you have brought us up out of the land, flowing with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness, you must also make yourself a prince over us.” So see, they have that promise there, but they say, “The promise isn’t coming. You brought us out here so we can all die. And while we’re dying, as we’re slowly just withering down to skin and bones and waving farewell to this cruel world, what have you done? You’ve made yourself important. And someday when we’re all dead, you and your descendants are going to have whatever’s left of whatever we had.”
And ironically, as they complain, they miss that God’s actually been working through this time in the wilderness, that it’s a preparation for what is to come, that here they are on the cusp of experiencing what God intends for them. You can’t even see it because they’re too busy thinking, “But I’m not important enough.” It makes me think of an old episode of “I Love Lucy” and “I Love I Love Lucy.” It’s just the greatest show of all time. You can’t beat “I Love Lucy.” But here, in this one particular episode, you know, they’re never able to succeed too much in that show, but they think they’re about to make their big break because if you’ve seen the show, you know that Lucy and her husband, Ricky, live in a building that’s owned by their best friends, Fred and Ethel. And Fred and Ethel rent the apartment nearby to this mysterious couple from Texas.
And they show up and they happened over here because Ethel and Lucy are incorrigible in their nosiness. They happened over here that this couple from Texas are oil tycoons, and they’re constantly drilling for oil. And the plants start to spin in their heads. If we could get part of this new oil well that they’re drilling, we’ll make it big. And so they go and they beg the couple, “Would you please tell us a share in your new oil well that you’re digging because we know it’s going to be big.” And so the couple says, “Well, we weren’t trying to do that, but okay, if you would like to buy into that, that’s fine.” So Fred and Ethel and Ricky and Lucy take all their savings. They put that in that, “Oh boy, we’re going to make it big on this gusher and it’s going to make us filthy rich and it’s going to be great.”
And then they start to think, “Maybe we’ve been conned into this.” Maybe while that couple seemed reluctant to sell us that access to that oil well, maybe that was all part of the scheme so we’d feel like we needed even more. And then now they have our money and they’re just going to disappear and we’re not going to have anything. So Ethel and Lucy concoct a scheme, or I should say Lucy is the one concocts a scheme, Ethel goes along with it as usually is the case, to bug Lucy so she can go in with this long wire on her and get them to confess that they’ve scammed the amount of the money.
Long story short, they agree, this couple’s terribly hurt to hand the money back. They say, “But you’re going to miss out on something. You have us all wrong. We didn’t want to sell this to you, but you’re going to miss out on this gusher.” And Lucy feels so vindicated, “Just give me that money back.” They get the money back and they’re celebrating the two couples in the Ricardo’s apartment just as a man comes by so excited he had just managed to get the last share of this oil well that was going to be big, and as he’s standing there, they strike it huge with this oil gusher, and they realize they’d given back the promise to that oil gusher. It really was there.
They got buyer’s remorse. We know that phrase. I think all of us have probably experienced that we bought something, we save up our money, and whether it’s we have a lot of money and we buy something really big or we have just a little money to buy something that’s not quite so big but it feels big to us, whatever it is, we buy it and then we think, “Did I get tricked into this?” And Korah and his followers, I think, sort of feel that way. They feel like they have buyer’s remorse. They bought into this gusher of this land of milk and honey. It’s just going to gush out with them. Moses knows how to drill the well. The Lord has told them and they’re all in, and then they think, “But maybe Moses is just a con man, just in it for his own power.” And they say, “Well, how about you hand over that power to us? We want our power back. This isn’t working, Moses.” And just like the Ricardo’s and the Mertz’s, they’re going to miss out on the promise that God had for them.
You see, God brings judgment down on Korah and all of his followers. The earth opens up and swallows the families. Fire comes down on those who are insisting they should be able to offer sacrifices to the Lord but are unauthorized. That makes it clear. You think that Moses was just in this for his power, but he wasn’t. “I have said I’m going to work through Moses. I have said I’m going to work through Aaron.” You need to keep your eye on what I promised you. I didn’t promise you to become a priest. I didn’t promise you to become the leader of the people and the prophet. I promised you that I was going to take you to a land of milk and honey. You should have kept your eyes on what I promised.
It’s really easy to look at them and think, “How could they be so foolish?” Because God’s working in our lives. And as we reflect even today on Palm Sunday about Jesus coming into the world, the promised Messiah, the one who would make all things right, the problem is he looks like he’s coming in an itty-bitty box. A little box of salvation here. And we say, “But other leaders come in this kind of box.” Other leaders promise all kinds of things rather than just a little box. And we say, “I don’t want this. I want to return this for this instead.” Because it feels like this is going to elevate us.
What is it that’s going to elevate you? What’s going to elevate me? What’s going to make me feel important? And too often, the things that make us feel important in the moment are the very things that are pulling us away from God working. They’re pulling us away from God’s plan for our lives in this moment. Not even Moses is immune to this. Because here’s where Moses ends up ultimately failing. Moses wants to be vindicated. I don’t blame him. He’s had years of these people grumbling over and over and over again. But what do we see in Numbers, Chapter 20? “Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock.” The people are grumbling about the water, or lack thereof.
“And Moses said to them, ‘Here now, you rebels. Shall we bring water for you out of this rock?’” And Moses lifted his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, and water came out abundantly. And the congregation drank, and their livestock drank. And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe in me to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.”
Moses was told, it looks like Moses is doing okay here, but the problem is, well, there’s several problems. One, that’s not what God told him to do. Yes, at times God had told Moses, “Strike a rock and I’ll bring water out of it.” But here God wanted to do something different. God said, “Moses, speak to the rock.” And so the first thing is, Moses in his frustration isn’t listening to God. He’s just tired of the people grumbling and tired of all this, and he just says, “I need to let out some aggression. I’m going to strike that rock.”
Second problem is, notice what he says, “Shall we bring water out for you?” And you see there in this moment, faithful Moses, Moses who has wanted to just encourage the people to follow the Lord, Moses who, when challenged by his own brother and sister, doesn’t even respond because he’s too humble to defend himself. Moses at this point has had enough. Moses takes his eye off the prize himself because he thinks in this moment it would seem, “I need to make these people look like fools. They made me look like fools, like a fool for way, way, way too long, and I’m done with this, and I am going to be vindicated.”
And in that, he overlooks what God has said, that vengeance is his. God hadn’t fallen short on the promise that he’d given to Moses. God hadn’t forgotten what he promised Moses in the least. Moses got to go into God’s presence on a regular basis. And yet in this moment, all he can see is, “I’m tired of these rebellious people always complaining.” And it breaks down the symbolism. We’re told later on that rock, what does the rock that water springs out of represent? It represents Jesus. And the Lord didn’t want Moses to look like he was forcing water out of it. And he certainly didn’t want him to turn everyone’s attention to Moses bringing water out of it, because it causes people to trust in Moses when he was called to point people to the Lord.
And friends, I think this is often where we get ourselves in trouble because what we do, what I do, is I get tired of people thinking something and I want to correct the record for myself. I want people to know that I have my ducks in a row. It was incredibly tempting to set the record straight, not because I’m so worried about defending the Lord’s record but because I just wanted to defend my own. And I baptize it with all that nice sanctified language so it sounds like it’s about defending the Lord’s reputation when I’m really looking for vengeance for myself.
And so here even Moses loses focus. He becomes frustrated, and in his rash words and actions, he actually goes to this rock that the Lord has made holy, and this man who had taken off his shoes and come before the burning bush because the Lord said so went and in some sense that we’re not fully told exactly how it works here but in some sense violates the very holiness of God. He lost his focus.
I read that this week an emergency crew in California, an ambulance team had been sitting there waiting—there weren’t any calls at the moment so they were hungry. We all get hungry. That’s a perfectly legitimate thing and they phoned in on their Chick-fil-A app and ordered Chick-fil-A. Now I understand the pull of the delicious chicken sandwich and those waffle fries and their fantastic iced tea. I get it. They were thinking about it. They were imagining dipping that waffle fry into that Chick-fil-A sauce and the just explosion of joy on their tongues as they relieved their hunger. They were imagining all that. But in that, they lost their focus on what they presumably had done faithfully for years and years, which is that they’re sitting there waiting because they’re there to rescue people in need.
And so a call came in after they’d placed the order and in their lack of focus what did they do? They didn’t go straight to answer the call. Someone’s life support system was acting up and they were called to go try to rescue this person. They went through the drive-through to pick up their order first. Now, it hasn’t been determined what’s exactly going to happen to them yet, but I’m pretty certain it’s not going to be good because they lost their focus. And it seems like a little thing in the moment. They just wanted to quench their hunger.
And so often, what we do when we turn away from God, we just think that I really need those waffle fries right now. I need them, Lord. I’m just pulling over for a moment. As soon as he strikes that rock thinks, “I’m still doing what God wanted. I’m going to instruct the people. I’m going to bring out the water. I just need to pull over for a moment because I’m starving for some vengeance and I need to feed myself.” I really need that.
But just like it shows a disregard for rescuing whoever it was that his life support system was failing—I mean, if you’re on some kind of medical machinery to stay alive, this is a really big deal—just as they disregarded that, Moses disregards his calling. Korah disregards his calling. Aaron and Miriam disregard their calling. And so often so do we. Maybe I can just do things my own way for a little bit. I’ll feel better and then I’ll get back on track. I can get the big box.
And you see, when people see Jesus coming in on the donkey and they see the possibility, they think, “Here comes the big box that’s going to overthrow the Roman Empire. Our days are over of suffering and groveling at the feet of this evil empire. We have the big box of freedom here.” And then he takes out what he is. He’s not overthrowing the Roman authorities. He’s critiquing theology. He’s talking about how do you get closer to the Lord? And people said, “Well, you know, we want to be close to the Lord, but we want the big box of freedom.”
And how often is it today that we say today, ask Christians, “Yes, I know what the Lord wants. Yes, I know how a Christian should act, but I want the big box of whatever thing I feel like the world is impinging on my freedom. And so I’m not going to act like that for just a little while. I’m going to pull into the drive-through, pick up my order of freedom, pick up my order of vindication, pick up my order of importance.” And then I’ll get back on the Lord’s track. I’ll go do what he’s called me to do.
And those people, too many of them, as they called out for Jesus to be crucified, were completely missing that the thing that they really needed, yes, the box wasn’t all that impressive, but it was even better than that. You see, as they waved the palm branches, and this cross is made out of a palm branch. And each of you, I want you to take one of these. You see, this doesn’t look like much. The cross, when you really boil it down, doesn’t look like much compared to hailing the victorious king. But the palm branch that we have on Palm Sunday and the cross are one and the same. Because Jesus doesn’t enter as the worldly king in the way that people thought he would. They thought that there was one kind of king entering that day, but he was the king coming in humility to be crucified.
When they were waving those palm branches, celebrating the Lord’s deliverance, they were right, but they didn’t understand that the cross was completely, totally bound to those palms they were waving. Maybe hang this up somewhere in your house or place it on your desk and look at it, because in this we see the glory that we think is going on, the palm branch waving it, and we see the humiliation that Jesus takes on for us. The glorious end that is foretold is completely wrapped in the humility that Jesus shows in that moment.
They didn’t get that and so often we don’t get that. We want the immediate big box that’s going to fix everything, but Jesus instead offers us the cross. Just like what we read in Philippians 2 that Jesus came into the world entitled to the biggest box of glory and royalty ever built, ever filled. He should have been unpacking it for eternity. Yet he emptied himself, took the form of a servant that would go to the cross.
As we celebrate the triumph of Palm Sunday, maybe remember that the triumph of his kingdom is in his humility and in his love. That’s a love for you and a love for me. Would you pray with me, please? Lord, so often we get focused on what we want to put in as an order for our lives, the fries and the sandwich and the big box of goodies that’s delivered to our porch, that we forget that as we look to the cross, as we look to your salvation, that as humble as it is, as terrifying as it is, as much by every worldly standard of peers like failure that it is, and indeed the very success of your mission.
Lord tonight, whatever we’re chasing after that’s distracting us from your calling in our lives, from our focus on your cross, would you help us to empty out those boxes, to realize that the big box that looks so promising is really empty. As we look to your cross and as we look to this holy week and remember what your Son and our Savior Jesus has done for us, that we would see in that the ultimate glory promise, that the true glory, the true hope, the true promised land is ahead. May we not be like Korah and say it’s not coming because we’re tired of waiting for it. May we not be like Miriam and Aaron and say the same. May we not even be like Moses and just in our weariness lose sight. Would you help us to have our eyes fixed on your promises and recognize that there is indeed a day when our Savior will return as the victorious King, with glory unimaginable.
And yet in the love that we find in our Savior will invite us, adopted sons and daughters, into the royal throne room, into the heavenly banquet, to dine and to rejoice in fellowship with you forever. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Start the Conversation