Week commencing Sunday 3rd April 2022

Devotional Materials. Week Commencing Sunday 3^rd April 2022

Call to worship

“Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (Mark11:9)

“Shout for joy you people of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you- triumphant and victorious, but humble and riding on a donkey” (Zech.9:9)

‘Palm Sunday is next Sunday. However, next Sunday we have a guest service where we will be looking at the significance of Easter in general- of Jesus’ death and Resurrection and showing a DVD presentation ‘Three days that changed the world.’ So today I want us to look at the events of Palm Sunday- yes Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem, but primarily His weeping over Jerusalem.

Well joy and praise filled the air as Jesus entered Jerusalem the crowds welcomed Him as king.

Let’s begin our service by welcoming Him into our midst and worship Him.’

Hymn

“Make way, make way…” 457 MP (Piano)

Graham Kendrick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMCVNrz58yw

Prayer

Lord Jesus we do worship You as King. With the crowds praising God for you we too give You our praise. We praise You for your wonderful works- liberating the prisoners, causing the deaf to hear, the lame to dance, the blind to see. You are a servant king indeed, who truly loves His people.

We thank you for the greatest act of humble service shown to mankind. Something the crowds that day did not appreciate. You resolutely entered Jerusalem, knowing this would lead to the cross. This is where your mission was truly fulfilled. There you served us in bringing us a salvation we could not merit. Through your death we have life, so we gladly have you rule over us, our Lord and Saviour.

Be pleased to lead us by Your Holy Spirit this morning. Hear our prayers, receive our praise, encourage and challenge us through Your word.

You have shown us the way of humble service, the way of true greatness. Lord Jesus help us to follow” Amen

Reading. Luke 19:28-44.

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 tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘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 owners 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 the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all 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.”

Prayers

Lord Jesus, we greet your coming, pilgrim messiah, servant king, rejected saviour.

You trod the way of a pilgrim and ascended the hill of the Lord; you followed the path of your calling even though Mount Zion gave way to the hill of Calvary.

You rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, symbol of humility and lowliness, mocking our dream of pomp and glory, demonstrating the foolishness of God before the eyes of the world.

You have shown us the way of humble service, the way of true greatness.

The cries of ‘Hosanna’ soon turned to ‘crucify’. The acclamation of the crowds gave way to fear and contempt.

You have shown us the cost of love and you have called us to follow in your way: pilgrims of the kingdom, living out the foolishness of God, and trusting only in your forgiving faithfulness.

Lord Jesus, help us to follow.

Heavenly Father, hear our prayers for our brothers and sisters in Ukraine.

 Lord we ask for peace for those who need peace, reconciliation for those who need reconciliation and comfort for all who don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Lord may your Kingdom come, and Your will be done. 

 Lord God, we ask for you to be with all – especially children who are suffering as the crisis in Ukraine deteriorates. Lord for those who are anxious and fearful. For those who are bereaved, injured or who have lost their lives. And for those who have lost loved ones. Lord hear our prayers. Amen (World Vision)

Hymns.

“You are the King of glory” MP790 (Piano)

Mavis Ford

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fhxKGalLI4

“Lift up your heads” MP 418 (Piano)

Stephen. L. Fry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nZ_g9IQzAY

Reading. Jeremiah 8:4-7, 18-22, 9:1-6

We will be thinking about Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. Jesus’ words and actions parallel Jeremiah’s weeping over Jerusalem centuries earlier.

“‘When people fall down, do they not get up?
    When someone turns away, do they not return?
⁵ Why then have these people turned away?
    Why does Jerusalem always turn away?
They cling to deceit;
    they refuse to return.
⁶ I have listened attentively,
    but they do not say what is right.
None of them repent of their wickedness,
    saying, “What have I done?”

Each pursues their own course
    like a horse charging into battle.
⁷ Even the stork in the sky
    knows her appointed seasons,
and the dove, the swift and the thrush
    observe the time of their migration.
But my people do not know
    the requirements of the Lord.

You who are my Comforter in sorrow,
    my heart is faint within me.
¹⁹ Listen to the cry of my people
    from a land far away:
“Is the Lord not in Zion?
    Is her King no longer there?”

“Why have they aroused my anger with their images,
    with their worthless foreign idols?”

²⁰ “The harvest is past,
    the summer has ended,
    and we are not saved.”

Since my people are crushed, I am crushed;
    I mourn, and horror grips me.
²² Is there no balm in Gilead?
    Is there no physician there?
Why then is there no healing
    for the wound of my people?

9¹Oh, that my head were a spring of water
    and my eyes a fountain of tears!
I would weep day and night
    for the slain of my people.
² Oh, that I had in the desert
    a lodging place for travellers,
so that I might leave my people
    and go away from them;
for they are all adulterers,
    a crowd of unfaithful people.

³ “They make ready their tongue
    like a bow, to shoot lies;

it is not by truth
    that they triumph in the land.
They go from one sin to another;
    they do not acknowledge me,”
declares the Lord.
⁴ “Beware of your friends;
    do not trust anyone in your clan.
For every one of them is a deceiver,
    and every friend a slanderer.
⁵ Friend deceives friend,
    and no one speaks the truth.
They have taught their tongues to lie;
    they weary themselves with sinning.
⁶ You live in the midst of deception;
    in their deceit they refuse to acknowledge me,”
declares the Lord.

Hymn

One of the first references to Jesus Christ was in the wise men’s question ‘Where is he that is born King of the Jews?’ The last reference to Jesus was written on a rough and weathered sign hung over his head on the cross. It read ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. There are many more of these references in between these two that speak of Jesus as King:

In his temptation experience Jesus was offered the kingdoms of this world on the devil’s terms, but He rejected Kingship on this basis. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus described the nature of His Kingdom and the qualities that should mark the citizens of His Kingdom:

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven’ (Matt.5:3)

‘Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth’ (Matt.5:5)

Throughout his ministry Jesus demonstrated Kingly authority over the demonic, over disease, and over death. There were times when the crowds wanted to make him king.

The crowds who welcomed him as He made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, were thinking of him as a nationalistic and political king. A king who would re -establish the sovereignty of the nation of Israel. A king who would make her a political force in the world again, as she once enjoyed under King David’s rule.

The triumphal entry is recorded in all four of the Gospels. Jesus was a powerful Messiah. However, He entered Jerusalem not to assert his sovereign rights to the throne of David. Instead he showed himself to be the servant king, riding on a colt, serving us in our need of salvation. Easter shows us true salvation only lies in His giving up His life for our sakes in His atoning sacrifice for our sins.

God has come looking for us in the person of His Son. In a story by Scottish writer George McDonald, he describes a young woman finding a child alone and lost in the woods. She gathered him up in her arms and carried him home to the father, at which point she gained an insight that was never to leave her: ’Now she understood the heart of the Son of Man, who came to find and carry back the stray children to their Father and His’

I want you to know the heart of Jesus, the Son of Man, who came to find and carry back His straying children to their Father, “for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). This is the message of Easter. He came seeking and saving the lost. Each of us are lost, but He saved us through His death on the cross. No matter how far you may have strayed and how lost you may be, He came to seek and save you.

Christ is not ruler of a State or Country, rather He declares His kingship in the hearts of all who put their trust in Him. And yet it is a global kingdom that has extended from small beginnings in the hearts of a just a few believers- now grown through 2000 years with myriads upon myriads entering His gentle kingly rule, from every generation, tribe and nation. And His Kingdom will continue to grow until it is fully established on the day of his return. A powerful King and a global King, but a Kingdom established and marked by the one who is pre-eminently the Servant King:

William Barclay writes ‘He came lowly and riding upon a donkey. We must be careful to see the real meaning of that. In western lands the donkey is a despised beast; but in eastern lands, the donkey would be a noble animal. Often a King came riding on a donkey: but when he came upon a donkey, it was the sign he came in peace. The horse was the mount of war! The donkey was the mount of peace. So when Jesus claimed to be King. He claimed to be the King of Peace. He showed that that he came, not to destroy, but to love: not to condemn, but to help; not in the might of arms, but in the strength of love.’

Today I want us to look at another experience recorded in Luke’s account of what happened that day which is not recorded by the other Apostles: ‘As (Jesus) 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’ (Luke 19:41-42). Here we see the tears of the King. Jesus weeping over the city. The King was not weeping for Himself. These were not tears of self- pity, remorse, or personal failure. They were tears of a King suffering for His people.

Why was the King weeping?

The King was weeping because of His perfect knowledge.

Jesus’ heart was filled with compassion for his people. He knew that the crowds’ acceptance of Him was for the wrong reasons. Jesus could see into people’s hearts, he knew what was in a man. He knew that they were not citizens of His Kingdom. They wanted Him to act upon their terms and expectations. He knew they were fickle- like sheep easily led astray, or indeed worst still- like obstinate goats.

The Lord has intimate, personal knowledge of each one of us. And this is for our comfort. David wrote ‘O Lord you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely Lord… where can I go from Your Spirit Where can I flee from Your presence?...If I rise on the wings of the dawn if I settle on the far side of the sea even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. (Ps 139:1-4, 7, 9, 10).

The Lord Jesus said, ‘Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows’ (Mt.10: 30, 31).

That the Lord loves us and knows us so intimately is of great encouragement. We can trust and rely on Him. At the same time His knowledge of our hearts and minds should cause us to withdraw from anything that would give Him pain

Jesus had a perfect knowledge of the thoughts and attitudes of the crowds that praise Him, and this knowledge caused His heart to break.

The King was weeping because of the blindness and deafness of the people

Throughout his earthly ministry Jesus restored sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf on many occasions. He did that to help the people see their need for really using their eyes for seeing and their ears for hearing. He wanted them to see by His miracles who he was:

He wanted them to see that He was God in the flesh and that He could do what he saw His Father do- that’s why Jesus could provide bread from Heaven for the feedings of the 4000 and the 5000. He was copying what He saw His Father did. His Father had fed the Israelites in the desert with manna. God the Father sustains His people, so does God the Son.

The same theme is at work in the greatest miracle of all. Just as the Father raises the dead to life, so the Son copies the Father and raises the widow’s son, Jairus’ daughter and Lazarus from the grave.

He wanted them to see that He was the Son of God, and further that this is what God is like- He is love, He has compassion on those in need- the outcasts, He forgives those who repent. But the people were blind and deaf to all of this. They were filled with pride. They thought they knew better than God. They were unwilling to learn from Him. It wasn’t a question of not understanding rationally. Rather their thinking had become tainted with their pride, man centred and therefore limited because man is finite. Paul refers to this degeneration of the thought process in Romans chapter 2:

‘For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were hardened’ (vs 21). Paul goes on to describe how they worshipped idols instead of God, and so God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity. The passage also describes the resulting depravity of mind, so the natural man always justifies- or finds reasons to try and justify his sin (28). So the ability to reason is not as pure and objective as we would like to believe. Rather it too easily is used to justify pride and other sins in rebellion against God.

The position is different for us as believers. As believers our minds are renewed (Romans 12:2) and we worship God with ‘all our mind’, we practise what Christian thinkers called ‘right reason’ which is in accord with worship of God and His revealed will as we have it in the Scriptures.

So it wasn’t their rational integrity which explained why people refused the Lord. Many claim today: they can’t believe because they do not have enough reasons to believe. Rather unbelief stems from wilfulness. Hard heartedness. They were spiritually and morally blind and deaf and would not permit themselves to see and hear. Their stumbling block was not really reason, their stumbling was prejudice and wilfulness and hard heartedness- none of which is reasonable.

The truth is they wanted to be King they wanted to hold to their sin and they would not have this king rule over us! It was this attitude that caused the King to weep then as it causes him to weep where he meets the same attitude today. The tears of the King were shed because of the self- inflicted blindness and deafness of the people. The very ones He had come to save.

The King was weeping because the city was passing up its opportunity forever

Once opportunity comes to us, if it is ignored rather than seized, we miss it and it is gone forever. Jesus knew that His people would never know what they were missing because of their unwillingness to believe and respond to Him.

The Scriptures themselves declare the startling truth ‘Now is the day of salvation’ (2 Corinthians 6:2). Jesus tells a series of parables about the urgency required of all who would enter the Kingdom. Don’t pass up the opportunity of eternal life- life to the full under the Lordship of Christ! Here is one of those parables: the Parable of the foolish virgins

Read MATTHEW 25:1-13

This sense of urgency is increased when we realise…

The King was weeping because the city was on a collision course with disaster.

Jesus foresaw that the nation was veering towards disaster. He describes this in Matthew 24 in which he foretells the destruction of the temple and the calamity that would befall the city. His predictions became reality by AD70 when the Roman General Titus captured and destroyed the city.

Jeremiah had warned the people in his day of impending judgement because of their hard heartedness. The judgment was exercised through Israel’s enemies. Jesus takes Jeremiah’s words and similarly warns the people of his own day. The judgment that follows the deliberate holding on to sin and subsequent rejection of God.

The New Testament, however adds more urgency to the invitation to enter Christ’s Kingdom. It is not just the missed opportunity of sharing in Heaven which is at stake. But also suffering the consequences of God’s wrath which leads to eternal punishment:

Jesus said: ‘He who believes in the Son has life, he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him.’ (John 3:36) The holding on to sin and rebellion against God cannot be allowed to continue in heaven. For those who persist in this way their destination is hell (See Appendix ¹ at the end of these materials). Jesus himself warns most of hell’s reality. Indeed it explains in part His determination to go to the cross so that we might be saved from it. The Scriptures teach that one day Christ shall return and the New Testament attests to a Final Judgment where one is acquitted or condemned.

The king weeps for those who stubbornly refuse Him and who are therefore on a collision course with danger.

Finally, the tears of the King give us essential insight into His Mercy

I said Jesus reveals God to us. He shows us that God is Holy and this means His wrath and judgment is fixed against sin. At the same time God is love. He is full of compassion and mercy. He is not first in the Judgment business but the forgiveness business:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16, 17).

In Philippians 2 Paul describes the compassion of the King who, though He existed in the form of God, did not hold on to the prerogatives of that position, but instead poured himself out into the form of a man so that he might come and rescue humans from sin

And as we shall see over this Easter time, this God- appointed King submitted Himself to the humiliation and pain of crucifixion so that He might reveal God’s love for His people (Matt. 27:32-44).

The tears of the King reveal the heart break and love of God for us. The whole point of His mission was that we be rescued from our sin and sin’s consequences, and instead, discover salvation in Him. This is why he enters Jerusalem and heads for the cross; to provide salvation and forgiveness for sinners.

I’m going to finish with this prayer by Bonaventure (a Franciscan Monk of the thirteenth Century.) It speaks of the love, compassion and mercy shown to us by our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. So how can we not surrender ourselves to Jesus, trust Him and Praise Him when we consider he went through all He did to rescue sinners like you and me:

‘O Lord, Holy Father, show us what kind of man it is who is hanging for our sakes on the cross, whose suffering causes the rocks themselves to crack and crumble at the sight of Him. Let my soul break apart with compassion, whose death brings the dead back to life

Let my heart crack and crumble at the sight of Him. Let my soul break apart with compassion for his suffering. Let it be shattered with grief at my sins for which He dies. And finally let it be softened with devoted love for Him’

Hymn.

“Jesus is King” MP 366 (Piano)

Wendy Churchill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEq0PFA-LuQ

Blessing