Triumphant King Reigns and Accomplishes His Purposes

6 · The pastor begins to develop the sermon's controlling thesis by introducing the collision between human expectations and divine purposes

And I want you to think about something. I want you to ask yourself what was going on as Jesus rode in to Jerusalem that morning. I want to suggest to you that there was a colliding of conflicting agendas, different expectations, different goals as to what was going on during this week that we call Holy Week or the Passion Week. Notice that on one Sunday, this Sunday, Palm Sunday, and next Sunday, Sunday we call Easter, Resurrection Sunday are times of great rejoicing. Great. We just read about the people calling Hosanna, Hosanna as he rode into Jerusalem, and then great celebration at the Resurrection. But between those two Sundays, there were five days of tremendous sorrow, tremendous confusion, tremendous discouragement and despair. And why was that? Well, it was because the Jewish people were recognizing that their Messiah had finally come.

7 · The pastor reconstructs the Jewish theological context and growing messianic recognition, showing how Jesus' miracles and claims were building momentum toward a political expectation that He would establish His kingdom immediately

If you were a Jewish boy or a Jewish girl, you had been raised up hearing about the Messiah. Generation after generation after generation of Jewish families would teach their children that Messiah was coming. The great deliverer of Israel was coming one day to save our nation, to redeem us. Every generation was taught that. But now this man from Galilee was preaching that the kingdom of God was here. Not only was he preaching, but he was demonstrating that the kingdom was here. He was healing the sick. He was casting out demons. He was giving sight back to blind people. He was restoring hearing to the deaf. The Messiah was here and he was claiming to be the Messiah. He wasn't claiming to be just a good teacher or a prophet pointing people to God. He was pointing people to himself. He said, I am the bread of life. I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. This man was claiming to be God. And people were beginning to understand. Their eyes were beginning to open and they were understanding that our Messiah has finally come. And they were following him. At first by the tens, by twenties, by the hundreds and thousands. Remember he fed the 5000 thousands of people following him. And just a few weeks before this passage, as he's coming into Jerusalem, he had gone to his friend's house, Mary and Martha and Lazarus. Lazarus had died. He'd been dead for four days. And Jesus raised him from the dead. Word was spreading. Not only is he healing the sick, but he has power over death. This is truly God himself. More people were following him.

8 · The pastor highlights the ironic contrast between the crowds' expectations of a warrior king and Jesus' humble entrance on a donkey, suggesting this should have signaled a different kind of messianic mission than they anticipated

So as he comes to Jerusalem, the crowds are just out of their minds. Messiah is here. He's coming to Jerusalem. He's going to set up his kingdom. We're not going to be under Roman bondage anymore. We're going to be our own nation with our Messiah as king. And here he was coming in. But look at how he came. He didn't come on a war horse. Can you put yourself in the disciples shoes? You want us to go get a young donkey? Don't you want us to get a strong stallion? No, go get the donkey. It's prepared. One that's never been ridden. In fact, get the the foal of a donkey, a young donkey. So they go and the donkey's there, just as Jesus had said. They bring it back and he gets on it and he. What a strange sight. The crowds worshiping, shouting out their praises and Jesus is sitting on this little donkey riding into town. That was if they were perceptive, that would have been their first clue that something different was going to happen during these five days.

9 · The pastor maps out three conflicting agendas at work during Holy Week — God's redemptive purpose, the people's hope for political deliverance, and the religious leaders' plot to eliminate Jesus

Now they might have picked it up or not, but that was the first clue. So we have God's purposes, His purpose was being accomplished, starting to be accomplished on that Sunday morning. But then we had the desires of the Jewish people. They wanted their Messiah to come and establish his kingdom, which is not a Bad thing. Remember, Jesus had taught them to pray, saying, our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done. Where on earth he had taught them to pray that. And they thought, it's happening. We've been praying it. It's happening. Jesus is going to establish his kingdom. He's going to set us free. So that was their agenda, to have their Messiah. Then there was the religious leaders, who also had a very sinful, selfish desire. But it was devious and evil, pure evil. Because this Jesus now was capturing the hearts, the religious, the spiritual hearts of their people and drawing them to himself and away from the Jewish traditions. Their very existence was being threatened. They had to do something. They were plotting to kill him. They heard about Lazarus too. And people were talking about, this man now has power over the dead. What are we going to do about this? Well, they were going to destroy the evidence. They set out a plot, the Bible says, to kill Lazarus. Let's just get rid of Lazarus, and then that'll be it. And then we'll get Jesus and that'll really be it. So they had their agenda. So conflicting agendas happening as Jesus comes into the city and then the week starts and it doesn't go like they had planned.

10 · The pastor traces Jesus' actions during Holy Week, showing how they subverted all expectations — He cleansed the temple, condemned the religious leaders through parables, and predicted His own death, leaving the disciples confused as events spiraled away from their hoped-for political victory

Jesus didn't go to Pilate's, to Pilate's place of residence, the residence of government. He goes to the temple and he cleanses the temple. He cursed a fig tree right outside the gates of Jerusalem. He starts engaging the religious leaders and he tells them, you're the ones that are going to crucify me. And he's condemning them. This would be very interesting for you just to look at the parable of the tenants where Jesus is telling this parable about a man who had property and he left it in charge of some tenants. And as he was away, he sent servants to inquire of the tenants as to how his property were doing. But the tenants didn't want the master to know that they were doing dishonest things. So they killed the servants that the Master sent. So Jesus is telling this parable to people that are gathered in. The Jewish leaders are there, and as the story goes, he sends another servant and they kill the second servant. And then the Master says, well, I'll send my son, and surely they'll talk to my son. He sends his son, and the tenants kill the son. And the Bible says the Jewish leaders were very perceptive and thought, we think he's talking about us. And he was talking about them, the servants that had been Sent were pictures of the Old Testament prophets who had been sent to call the nation of Israel to repentance. And many of those prophets weren't heeded. And then the Father sent his son, Jesus, and he's telling the Pharisees that you're going to kill my son. So the disciples are hearing all this, and you can imagine they're thinking, this isn't going the way we thought it was going to go. Jesus isn't establishing offices, religious offices, here to govern by. He's contending with people. He's overturning the money changers. He's cursing fig trees. What's going on?

11 · The pastor declares the sermon's central theological claim: God's purposes were being accomplished precisely through what appeared to be total defeat

Well, God's agenda was going on. Jesus face was set. He knew exactly what, why he was there. He was there to be tortured and killed for the sins of mankind. He'd even told his disciples that, but they didn't understand. Maybe they didn't want to understand. But he told them that he was going to be put to death when he got to Jerusalem. And so at the end of those five days, Jesus ends up being arrested. Not only did he not set up a government there, he was tortured. He was arrested and taken captive. Total discouragement from his people. Total despair. His strongest disciple, Peter, denied him three times. One of his other disciples, Judas, betrayed him. As the torturing got worse, all of his disciples fled. He was totally alone to die a humiliating, terrible, merciless death on a Roman cross. This wasn't the Messiah they had hoped for, but it was God's Messiah that was the Father's Messiah. His purposes were being fulfilled and accomplished.

12 · The pastor pivots from historical narrative to contemporary application by inviting the congregation to identify with the crowd's disillusionment, then posing the diagnostic question that will drive the remainder of the sermon: how do we respond when God's purposes conflict with our expectations?

Put yourself in that picture. Remember when they arrested Jesus, they were given the choice of someone to be released. It was the custom of the day to have a criminal released. And so the offer was, we'll release Jesus or Barabbas. And the crowd said, release Barabbas. What should I do with Jesus? The crowd shouted, crucify him. Crucify him. Probably some of the same people were in both crowds. Probably some of those people who were shouting out hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, were so discouraged, so despondent, that they were now part of the second crowd that cried out, crucify him. Crucify him. What would have you done? Let's not be too harsh in our criticism. They didn't know. They couldn't see God's purposes. Their hopes were dashed. Let me ask you a more difficult question. What do you do when your plans don't work out? What do you do when your relationships start to fall Apart, what do you do when you've been praying to the Lord and asking him to do something in your life or in your family's life and the answer doesn't come? And not only does the answer not come, but all of a sudden, things in your life go tragically wrong. What happens in your heart? It's a tough question, isn't it? We can read things that happened 2,000 years ago and kind of disconnect, but when we bring it to today and how we deal with the trials and suffering of life, what goes on deep inside our hearts?

13 · The pastor structures the sermon's body by identifying three categories of failure where the enemy attacks — personal failure, relational failure, and feeling God has failed — then begins unpacking the first: how personal failure tempts believers to lose sight of God's ongoing purpose for their lives

I want to give you three areas that the enemy attacks us in. And then I want to give you three things that we can apply to our heart. Biblical truths that we can apply to our hearts to keep us from falling into the enemy's snare. All right, the first three things, and this is certainly not all the things, all the types of attacks, but these are three main areas that came to my mind that I wanted to talk about today. And the three things are, what happens in life when we fail, what happens in our life when others fail us, and what happens in our lives when we feel that God has failed us. And I put when God fails us, I put that kind of in quotes in my notes, because God never fails and he doesn't fail his children. But we can feel that. We can feel that God has failed us. So we know. Let's go back. So we know that we fail, right? We all fail. We all make mistakes. And sometimes we make huge mistakes. Sometimes our sin is devastating when we fail. The temptation is to lose sight of God's purpose for our individual lives. Do you know that if you're saved, God has saved you for a purpose? And if you haven't given your heart to the Lord, it's not a coincidence that you're here today because God has a plan for your life to use you for his glory. But when we fail, we can lose the vision, the insight that God has for us. We sit in condemnation and guilt, and we become basically useless.

14 · The pastor uses Peter's denial as a biblical example of personal failure, universalizing it to show that all believers have failed and denied the Lord in some way, then pointing to Christ's blood as the remedy

I want you to think of about the disciple Peter, who committed to the Lord that he would follow him wherever the Lord would lead him. And Jesus said, well, before the cock crows, you're going to deny me three times. Peter said, it'll never happen. And yet when Jesus allowed himself to be arrested and taken away, Peter followed. And Peter understood this is not going where we thought it was going to go. This is getting worse. And. And it's even getting worse. And so when he was confronted about his relationship With Jesus, he said, no, I don't know the man. Weren't you the one that was with him? No, that wasn't me. He denied the Lord. We've all denied the Lord. In our own way, we have failed. We failed ourselves, we failed our friends, and we failed the Lord. So that is an area through our failures where the devil can gain a foothold in our lives if we don't handle it correctly, if we don't handle it scripturally. And there is a remedy for all of our failures, and that's the blood of Jesus that covers our sin.

15 · The pastor asserts God's character as redeemer and restorer, then marshals two scripture texts to show that both failure and success are spiritual traps requiring humility and dependence on Christ moment by moment

Our God is not just a savior. He's a redeemer. He's a restorer. He is the one who gives us fresh mercy and grace every day. A couple scriptures that we can think about in this. Proverbs 24:16 says, the righteous fall seven times and rises again. But the wicked stumble in times of calamity. First Corinthians 10:12 says this. Therefore let anyone who thinks he stands take heed, lest he fall. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. What's this say to us? It tells us that failure is a trap. But also success can be a trap. You can fail and think that, man, it's over. God can't use me anymore. It's fatal. I can't be used. But you can also succeed and think, okay, I'm on top of the world now. But we gotta be humble and realize that we can succeed today and still fail tomorrow. We gotta be humble and trust the Lord. Listen, I don't know about you, but I need a savior every day of my life, every moment of my life, because I can be doing good one minute, and then the next minute, I'm just thinking about myself. I'm not wanting to please the Lord. I'm just wanting to do my own thing from one minute to the next. We need Jesus. We need the Holy Spirit in our hearts to help us.

16 · The pastor moves to the second category of failure — relational failure — and identifies the enemy's strategy: tempting believers to give up on relationships rather than pursuing reconciliation and forgiveness

And what about failing one another? Think about your life. Think about people first. Think about people who have failed you and how that's affected you. But you know what? That's really a selfish thought. Think about how you have affected someone else with your failure. If one person. If I fail, it's going to affect you. If you fail, it's going to affect me. If we're in relationship. So failures between us, the temptation there is to give up on relationships. To give up on relationships. You're in your marriage and you're having a difficult time with your spouse. You've hurt one another. Rather than seeking reconciliation and forgiveness and counsel, godly counsel, you give up on your marriage. Maybe you've had a bad church experience where you've experienced some unkind things that shouldn't happen in a church. And then you just say in your heart, I'm giving up on church. I'm just giving up. Maybe you've had some friends who have hurt you or that you've hurt. And you tell yourself, I'm just, I'm giving up. I'm giving up on my friends. I'm not making friends anymore. I'm just going to live my life to myself, by myself. I've had it with these so called friends. So failures between friends, failures between spouses, failures in families, failures between us open a door for the enemy to attack.

17 · The pastor identifies the third and worst category of attack — feeling God has failed — and traces Satan's core strategy back to Genesis 3 and Jesus' temptation: questioning whether God really said what He promised, thereby attacking God's character and truthfulness

But the third area is when we feel God has failed us. And that is the worst. Because when we get into that mindset, we start believing the lie that God doesn't care, that God doesn't love us, that God's not there, that God has lied to us in some way. Think about the Garden of Eden. God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat from a specific tree. Eve went ahead and ate. The devil comes to her before she does that. And he says to her, has God really said that you can't eat? Has God actually says is the way the ESV says it? Did God actually say that you shouldn't do that? That's the temptation he comes to us with. Did God actually say that you're saved? Did God actually say that he would forgive your sins? Did God actually say he would cleanse you when you ask forgiveness? Did God really say that to you? Do you think that's true? Did God promise to meet you in your heart so that you could know him? Did he really say that to you? Is that something you really believe? Those are the thoughts that can get into our minds. And when we start believing those thoughts, then we start to doubt God's character. We start to doubt who he is. Think about Jesus. Remember when he was baptized and a voice came from heaven saying, this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased? With whom I am well pleased? Right after he was baptized, it says, the spirit of God led him into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And the first thing the devil said to him was, if you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread immediately. Jesus himself was questioned with the question, did God really say that you're his son?

18 · The pastor asserts that doubting God's faithfulness creates a critical vulnerability in the believer's spiritual armor, universalizing the experience across the congregation

So what happens in your life when you start questioning God when you start thinking God has failed me leaves a whole, whole chink in your armor that the devil can just rush into. And this happens to all of us.

19 · The pastor shares his wife Judy's journal entries about feeling God has forsaken her despite knowing He hasn't, providing a transparent contemporary example that doubting God's faithfulness is a universal Christian experience, even among mature believers in difficult seasons

And my dear wife Judy is here today. And I was away for two or three days with some of the men in the church at a pastor's conference. And so she was by herself, and she faced some difficult things. Her mom just died a few months ago. Her sister is battling Alzheimer's. So we have a lot going on in our lives. And so I was going over my notes with her last night, and she's just kind of looking at me. She's being like the one person audience. And sometimes she's smiling, sometimes she's shaking her head like, no, scratch that. Take that out. So I get to this point, we get through it, and she says, just a second. And so she goes and she gets her journal. And Judy has journaled. We've been married for, I think we're in our, what, 53rd year? It's not bad that I don't know exactly, but she went to get her journal, and she's been journaling for most of our married life. And I joked in the first service that we had to get a bigger house just to house all the journals. But she writes what's in her heart. I personally am not humble enough to journal because I don't want my thoughts down on paper. But she's very humble. So she journals. And she handed me her journal when we were talking about when I had gotten to this point in the message, and I read it, and it just broke my heart. But then I asked her, I said, could I read this to the church tomorrow? I think it would be helpful for the folks. And she said, sure. And I just said, she's way more humble than I am. Way more humble. But these are just a couple of the thoughts that she wrote just a few days ago. Now, I asked her if I could read this. So, okay. And she's here. She can verify. She says, my heart aches. I feel like the Lord has forsaken me, but I know that he hasn't. But he seems so far away. I think, lord, I want my heart to be more right. And yet I fall and fail again and again. And then this. She said, this has been such a long and hard season. I know the truth, but I have so many roadblocks. I don't know why I have so many roadblocks. Because the Lord has blessed me so many ways in my life. And I just read that and I thought, you know, it doesn't matter if you're not a Christian. It doesn't matter if you've been a Christian for a month or if you've been a Christian for 55 years like we have. We get discouraged in life. Things happen where we question God's faithfulness. I want to thank you, babe, for letting me read that. She's so open and transparent. She helps me so much in my walk. She is constantly, constantly helping me with my walk with the Lord. So grateful for her. But we all have times when we question, when we doubt, and that's not a good place to be in. Not a good place to be in. So last night we were sharing some of these scriptures back and forth, and she's doing better this morning. I can tell just by looking at her, God is faithful.

20 · The pastor pivots from diagnosing the three categories of enemy attack to presenting three biblical remedies, beginning with learning God's ways as the foundation for spiritual resilience

So we fail ourselves, we fail one another, and we feel that God has failed us, which is a lie. He never fails, and he doesn't fail his children. So those are areas that the enemy can attack. Now let's look at three areas that we can shore up our lives. To help us. To help us, I want you to Turn to Isaiah 55. Isaiah 55. The first thing we can do is realize that God wants to teach us his ways, the ways of the Lord.

21 · The pastor expounds Isaiah 55:8-9 to establish that God's ways are categorically different from human ways, then marshals Psalm 25 to show believers can and must ask God to teach them His ways

One of the problems we get into is we try to conform God to us. The Bible says that when he created Adam and Eve, he created men, man and woman in his image. There's a mysterious thing where God has placed some of Himself into human beings. Our problem is the way sin distorts. That is, we want to create God in our image, meaning that we want to set the guidelines and boundaries of what we think and hope God should do. And then when God doesn't do that, we get crossways with Him. We start doubting him, we start charging Him. The Bible says that God has ways that he goes about things and that they're completely different from our ways. And one of these passages is Isaiah 55. And look at verse 8. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Psalm 26 says this. Make me to know your ways, O Lord. We can actually ask God to teach us his ways. And we need to do this. Psalm 26, 4, 5. Make me to know your ways, O Lord. Teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me. For you are the God of my salvation, and I wait for you all the day long. All the day long.

22 · The pastor uses Paul's thorn in the flesh as a concrete example of God's counterintuitive ways — God's refusal to remove weakness so His strength can be perfected in it, directly opposing natural human desire for comfort and strength

So what's an example of God's ways that you might not be familiar with? Do you remember the apostle Paul when he was praying to the Lord, and he said, satan sent a thorn in the flesh to me. A messenger of Satan was sent to buffet me. Now, we don't know if those were the constant persecutions and tortures that Paul went through as a minister of the Gospel. His ships were always wrecking. He was constantly beaten, he was stoned. He was left for dead. He was constantly suffering because of his testimony for Christ. That might have been his thorn in the flesh. Or he might have had a physical ailment that made him less effective than he thought he could be if he didn't have it. So he said, I asked the Lord three times to take this away from me. And the Lord spoke to him, he says, and said, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to take it away from you. I'm going to leave it because my grace will be sufficient for you. And the Lord said to him, the Lord's strength will be made perfect in your weakness. That's a beautiful example of one of the ways of the Lord. He is not interested in taking all of our weaknesses away from us. We are. We want him to come and take all of our suffering away, all of our weaknesses away.

23 · The pastor uses a humorous contemporary illustration comparing himself to younger men in the congregation to make the doctrine of God's perfection in weakness relatable and personal, showing how the principle applies to all believers

Let me give you an example. Steve, would you stand up? Steve Prescott. So when I look in the mirror every morning. Oh, Zach, Zach, you stand up, too. Look at these. Zach, stand up. So when I look in the mirror in the morning, I want to look like these guys. You know, I want to be like them. I mean, let's just behold them for a second. But when I look in the mirror, I see all these weaknesses. I not only see my physical weaknesses, I see my. All of my weaknesses. I'm not just looking at a physical reflection in the mirror. I'm looking at my heart. I'm looking at my doubts, my fears, my shortcomings. And somewhere in my heart, I'm saying, lord, couldn't you make me like Steve or Zach? Couldn't you just take all these weaknesses away from me? And the Lord says, no, I'll help you. I'll definitely help you with the sin in your life. But the weakness is I'm going to leave. I'm going to leave those there so that my strength can be perfected. So let me encourage you. Ask the Lord to teach you his ways.

24 · Direct imperative instructing the congregation to pray for God to teach them His ways, making the doctrinal exposition actionable

Ask the Lord to teach you his ways.