Sermon: Obedience

2005

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Sermon: "Obedience"

Sixth in the "Nomads and Pilgrims" Series,
Delivered March 20, 2005 (Palm Sunday) by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7

See the study guides that go along with this sermon series.

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Sermon Text: Psalm 132 and Luke 19:28-44

Today we have two scripture verses that are in front of us. I am going to read the New Testament passage right now and then refer to the Psalm later in the sermon. Let's go to Luke, Chapter 19 right now. I am going to begin on the 28th verse and read through verse 44. This is called the triumphal entry when Jesus is going in to Jerusalem and as he is going in to Jerusalem he is recognized as being king.

"After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, " Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' tell him, ' The Lord needs it.'" Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owner asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" They replied, "The Lord needs it." They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.

When he came near the place where the road goes down to the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all of the miracles they had seen: "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" "Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!" Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, " Teacher, rebuke your disciples!" "I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, " If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace-but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you."

Let pray: Lord God, we thank you for this your word and we pray now that what you want us to hear will stick in our minds and be fresh and alive and anything else Lord we pray you will erase away. For we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

From Jericho to Jerusalem is only about 17 miles. Now Jesus has just about reached the end of his pilgrimage. He has been moving toward Jerusalem for a time and Jesus is about to do something that's very much like what the Old Testament prophets did. An Old Testament prophet, if their words didn't seem to land on open ears, they would often do something that would demonstrate, it would paint a picture of the reality that they were trying to tell the people about and so maybe one prophet would tear their clothes and show what it would be like to be bound up and to go in to captivity and be a sort of picture of the future. And so, here Jesus is about to paint a picture for the people in Israel and so what he does as he comes into the city of Jerusalem is not on the spur of the moment. It's not something that hasn't been thought out. Jesus prepares in advance. He sends his disciples out to go and get a colt, a donkey, a young donkey and he gets on it and enters the city as a demonstration of a particular prophecy in the Old Testament. Jesus is now living out, painting out, in front of the people the fact that he really is the Messiah, the anointed king promised to Israel. This is what is says in the Old Testament in Zechariah 9:9.

"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on the donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey."

In this moment Jesus underlined the fact that he was king and he underlined also the kind of king he was coming to be. Because instead of riding on a horse, which would have told them of war, in fulfillment of the Old Testament prophet he comes in riding on a donkey which talks to them visually of it being in peace and in love.

It's a courageous moment for Jesus too because there is a bounty out for Jesus. He's got a price on his head. And so people are actually looking for him to kill him and even so he plans this very public event of coming in to Jerusalem. People line the street as he arrives. Now this in and of itself isn't that unusual, because at a festival time like this people would line the streets and welcome the pilgrims in, but this is unusual because as Jesus comes in, his disciples and some of the other people begin to shout, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" In some of the other passages it talks about the fact that they say this is the son of David coming in to the city. "Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!" In one week after this Jesus will be crucified. What happened? All the people shouting on the street and a week later Jesus is crucified. What's happened? In a nutshell, Jesus obeyed God and the people didn't.

I love driving back roads up here in Maryland. One of the joys of being up here is the fact that this church is in Baltimore. This is a great place. Having lived in Louisiana where there are no hills, to go out and drive in the hills on these back roads and see the streams and all it's just a great time. I find myself in Pennsylvania and oh okay I got to turn around and come back. One day I will be late for something because I will be in New Jersey you know. Every once in a while you get on a road and it's sort of an interesting thing, you cross railroad tracks. Now crossing railroad tracks is not that interesting. What I find interesting is you cross the railroad tracks and a little while later on the same road you cross the same tracks again. And that's because the tracks more or less go straight. But these old country roads are winding back and forth and so sometimes you cross for a moment and you go your own way and then you cross again later.

Well, this day that Jesus comes into Jerusalem is one of those moments when the people's expectation and Jesus' path crosses, but the people are wandering like this. One minute wanted what God wants and the next minute wanting something else entirely, but Jesus is walking straight on his pilgrimage in obedience to God and obedience that is going to lead him to the cross. Sometimes Jesus' path and the path of the people crossed. Sometimes for just a moment the people thought that they were getting just what they wanted, but Jesus never let the expectation of the people determine what he was going to do next. His next step was always going to be obedience. He was going to do what God had sent him to do. Now, we have been talking over the last several weeks about what it means to be a pilgrim and perhaps one of the biggest lessons that the pilgrim needs to learn is the necessity for obedience to God, that there is no successful pilgrimage without learning obedience. We don't like this idea of obedience. You know a two-year-old does not like to obey, let's face it. Seventy-year-olds don't like to obey. We would much rather have a sermon on how much God forgives us when we disobey than a sermon like today where I am going to talk about how God expects us to obey. It's very close to the heart of what sin is. And so no matter what age we are, sin is not a popular topic for me or for anybody else. But obedience is of vital importance. There are some good things, wonderful things that will never happen in your life if you don't learn to obey God. There are some promises that God makes to you that you will never experience unless you obey God. There are some bad things that you will never have to face, that you will face if you disobey. Obedience and disobedience has enormous impact on our lives and we've got to recognize that.

This issue of obedience and disobedience shapes what happens in the passage in front of us as Jesus goes in to Jerusalem. This whole moment of Jesus coming in to Jerusalem as king would have never happened if Israel would have obeyed God. If we had the capacity to obey God, God would have never had to come as he came in Jesus and, indeed, they would have never had to have a king come in from outside in to Jerusalem to be then rejected. It would have never happened if Israel would have obeyed in the first place. Back in Psalm 132 there is a promise that God makes to Israel. Psalm 132 begins with an oath that David makes to God. That's the first half of Psalm 132. The second half of Psalm 132 is an oath that God makes back to David. So God is swearing that he will be faithful to what he is now going to say and this is what he says in Psalm 132. I am going to begin on Verse 11.

"The Lord swore an oath to David, a sure oath that he will not revoke: "One of your own descendants I will place on your throne- if you sons keep my covenant and statutes I teach them, then their sons will sit on your throne forever and ever." For the Lord has chosen Zion, he has desired it for his dwelling: "This is my resting place forever and ever; here I will sit enthroned, for I have desired it- I will bless her with abundant provisions; her poor I will satisfy with food. I will clothe her priests with salvation, and her saints will ever sing for joy. "Here I will make a horn grown for David and set up a lamp for my anointed one. I will clothe his enemies with shame, but the crown on his head will be resplendent."

Here is a promise that God makes, a very serious promise that he will bless Israel abundantly. He will bless them materially. He will take David's sons and his grandchildren and keep them on the throne. This will be a lineage, a dynasty, and their enemies will be conquered and there will be this sense that God is present here, and there will be blessing that bubbles up and overflows because of God's promise. But here there is a big if, and it comes in Verse 12. "If your sons keep my covenant and statutes I teach them, then their sons will sit on your throne forever and ever." David you've been faithful, your son is going to sit on the throne and then if he is faithful and his sons are faithful then that will continue out there and what is not absolutely said, but is clearly said in other places of scriptures is that if they don't do that the blessing won't come. And indeed, that's what happened. By the second generation after David disobedience had become so significant that the nation began to fracture and within generations they were taken over by their enemies and they were in exile. It's all because of an if; if they obey. And so Jesus now comes in to a city. They have a king, but he's not of David's line. He's not legitimate. He is not accepted by the people and he's not accepted by God. He's a person that is bringing more suffering than good so Jesus then comes in to the city and he is recognized as king but all of this mess, all of this chaos that surrounds him is because the leaders in Israel in generations past didn't obey God. Disobedience and obedience matter.

Then we come in this passage to Jesus' words in Verse 41 to 44. From the descent from the Mount of Olives which is along the road that Jesus came in on, there is a magnificent view where you can see the whole city of Jerusalem and as Jesus came along this part of the road most likely, when he can see the whole city in front of him, he weeps over the city.

"If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace-but now it is hidden from your eyes. The day will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God'scoming to you."

Jesus knew what was going to happen in the city. He knew that as he entered the city ultimately the people were going to reject him. And he knew that as a consequence that soon the temple and much of the city was going to be destroyed. People would die. And the tragedy of it all is that this could have been avoided if people would have when they crossed paths with Jesus on their wanderings, if they would have just at that point turned and followed him, but instead even though their paths cross, they continue to go their own way. They don't want the kind of Messiah that Jesus is, they want a political power that right now is going to set things straight and make no demands on their lives that they are not already willing to give. So in the middle of all of these people yelling and screaming, just like a St. Patrick's Day parade, in the middle of all of this festivity Jesus is sitting there weeping. He weeps because of the cost of disobedience.

Obeying God is not optional in the Christian life. There are good things that won't happen in our lives and in the lives of people around us if we don't learn how to obey. This is not because God is willing to slap us down every time we disobey, that God is somehow getting some kind of joy out of this, it's because obedience is set up to help us live in harmony with the world the way it really is. So if we walk to a second story window in our house, open it up, push the screen up, force our body through and then jump from the second floor, and we happen to break a leg, nobody is going to say, "See, God punished you for this." You might say that, but it's not going to be your first thought. Your first thought is, "No, you jump out of a second floor window and gravity is going to accelerate your body and you are going to hit with such force that everybody, even if you jump out for good reasons, everybody is in danger of getting hurt." It's a law of nature. You do something like that and there is an inevitable result and in the whole part of what we call morality, that's what's happening. There is an inevitable result. We break a certain part of the moral law and just as sure as you hit the ground when you jump out of a window, you will hit the consequences of disobedience.

So, if we cheat on a spouse it brings guilt. It brings lies. It brings secretiveness and whether we are caught or not, at some point it brings all kinds of suffering. It brings the possibility of divorce, depression, loneliness and anger. Inevitably disobedience brings these sorts of things and that kind of disobedience brings these results. It's like gravity. The same is true in all of life. If we hurt someone in anger, then there will always be a relational cost to that, something that is lost, something that is hard to regain. If we lie as a habit in life, then eventually people will find out and trust will be broken and intimacy won't be what is should be and life won't open out the way it should open out to us because we are not trusted. It's like that if we abuse drugs. Inevitably it will have effects on our minds and on our bodies. There is certain things that just describe the way it is and obedience means we live in harmony with that and that's why God says don't do it, because he knows that you will hit the pavement if you do.

It's not just moral things. Sometimes something isn't explicitly moral, but even there obedience will have effects and disobedience will eliminate opportunities. There are times we don't see how God wonderfully provides for us because we have never given to God first. We have never stretched ourselves out to what it means to be generous and so we can never see God be generous back. Or maybe we have never ever ever taken a risk for God and so we can never see how God protects us and so we read these stories about the amazing things that God has done in someone else's life, but maybe it's because they first took a step of obedience, of risk that opened up that opportunity for God to respond.

Obedience and disobedience has consequences and obedience is an essential part of our experience with God on the pilgrim journey. But the fact is, we all fail. And that's why it is so important that we see that grace has the final word in this passage that we are looking at today. Even though in the past Israel disobeyed and lost her blessings from God; even though Israel disobeys now and rejects Jesus, and Jesus predicts dire consequences to that, even though that happens, even though in the next passage Jesus walks in to the temple and clears it out, because they are misusing the temple; despite all of these things, grace, which is God's unmerited goodness to us, grace is the last word and that's because despite all of those things Jesus enters Jerusalem to die; despite the disobedience. And so grace has the last word.

Jesus goes to the cross, that's what we will be remembering this week. Jesus will now enter Jerusalem and take the most serious part of the penalty of sin upon himself. The penalties we see in this life are minor in comparison to the eternal penalty that comes on us because of sin. And so Jesus walks in knowing the cost, knowing that the people who shout "Praise God, here is the king" knowing that these people next week will be saying "crucify him." Knowing that we are not a whole lot better, Jesus goes in to Jerusalem anyway.

Obedience is important. It is so important that Jesus has to die because of disobedience, our disobedience. Despite our disobedience, since grace is the last word, despite our own disobedience, despite the hardheadedness we have in life, despite what we are suffering now because of our disobedience in the past, despite all of these things, Jesus provides a way out. He provides forgiveness. He provides a restoration to our relationship with God and he provides us with the grace and tools to deal with life as we find it right now and to begin to change.

This is true no matter where we are in the journey with God. Maybe we don't even think of ourselves as a follower of Christ. Even so, Jesus right now gives you an opportunity, a moment to respond to begin to follow him. Or maybe we already consider ourselves to be Christian, but we have this huge issue between God and us. Jesus provides right now a way for you to deal with that. And maybe the issue is not so large, but it lingers week after week, year after year, even then Jesus makes you an offer and it's an offer that we would be very very unwise to refuse, because there is a cost to refusing. The offer is there. Things can be different. We can be different. Jesus has come to change it all, to deal with the penalty of sin and to begin to give us a foundation in a walk with God that will change us and make us into the people that God wants us to be. A part of that journey if we are serious about being pilgrims, part of that journey will be to turn and to begin to follow Jesus because an indispensable part of the pilgrim journey is learning how to obey.

Let's pray. God, as we face the cost of Holy Week, as we face our own guilt in being part of the reason that Jesus had to face the cross, as we face our own current disobedience, as we face our past disobedience and the disobedience in the lives of other people, we want to turn from that and focus on the incredible good news that because of Jesus we can now walk in obedience and we can receive forgiveness and receive the power to live a new life. So, wherever we are in our journey Lord help us to take seriously the offer you give us in Jesus Christ, for we ask these things in his name. Amen.