Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday
Light of Christ Anglican Church
The Rev. Michael Moffitt April 13th, 2025
Blessed Is He Who Comes In The Name Of The Lord
Text: Luke 19:28–40
This season of the church always changes me. Sometimes it helps me focus on the fact that my sins are the reason that Jesus, God in the flesh, went to the cross. He came to pay the price of our sins that I we’re unable to pay.
Of course that’s the story of the season of Lent and the celebration of Easter morning pointing us to the amazing fact that the Father accepted the sacrifice of His Son and because of that we are now free from the curse of sin and death. Not that we’re now sinless or won’t face death, but we will no longer be judged for our sins, because Jesus already paid for them.
However, we must embrace the offer, this gift of God through repentance and faith. We are to invite Jesus to be our Savior and Lord and must understand that we are to follow Him in faithful obedience.
It’s a wonderful story, Jesus won! Death is defeated and the grave is conquered. Someday Jesus will return but in the meantime we are living the Christian life now, as members of the family of God, through Jesus Christ. That’s part of the Good News but for now this brings us into the cross hairs of the enemy.
It’s also good to remember that this is the same enemy who confronted Jesus Christ here on earth and Jesus defeated him. It’s good to know that and that’s why we have been given God’s word and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That’s how we fight and that’s why we ultimately win. But in the meantime this is war—spiritual warfare.
This past week I was reminded once again that we are at war. I’m not referring to war with any nation on the earth but with the kingdom of darkness and Satan, it’s ruler. I failed to listen to the Lord’s warning, and I was reminded of those
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who gathered in celebration as Jesus entered Jerusalem as their King, but not like they assumed.
This past week as I was considering this sermon I got sidetracked by something else. Earlier in the week I had several discussions with friends about the economy and the unstableness of the stock market and investment portfolios. One of the people that I spoke with commented that they had lost a great deal because of the volatile ups and downs as of late. Later, as I sat down to prayerfully consider this weeks message, I thought that I would check my retirement account first.
Now let me stop for a moment to offer a disclaimer. There is nothing sinful about checking investments or portfolio’s to see how they are doing.
In my case I felt the Lord challenging me on that, but I thought it can’t hurt to look. Of course I wasn’t that happy about my findings, but I knew that there wasn’t much I could do about that. As I went back to my sermon preparation 1 Chronicles 21 came to my mind. Listen to the opening of the story in verses 1–4; 7–8.
Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel. So David said to Joab and the commanders of the army, “Go, number Israel, from Beersheba to Dan, and bring me a report, that I may know their number.” But Joab said, “May the Lord add to his people a hundred times as many as they are! Are they not, my lord the king, all of them my lord’s servants? Why then should my lord require this? Why should it be a cause of guilt for Israel? But the king’s word prevailed against Joab. So Joab departed and went throughout all Israel and came back to Jerusalem.
But God was displeased with this thing, and he struck Israel. And David said to God, “I have sinned greatly in that I have done this thing. But now, please take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have acted very foolishly.”
This same story is also in 2 Samuel 24:1–9. In both scripture readings God brings punishment on Israel because David wanted to know how many able-bodied warriors that he had.
Why is that a problem? Because instead of trusting in God’s ability and willingness to go before the children of God in battle, David decided that he needed to know if he had enough warriors.
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There were so many examples of God giving Israel military victories even when outnumbered. Even Joab, who wasn’t a particularly godly man knew that this was an insult to the Lord.
I quickly repented for my sin of failing to trust in God’s provision even though He has been so faithful in taking care of Teresa and me. Had I forgotten? How could I worry about the state of our economy when God has always provided.
Again, the act itself was not sinful but taking my eyes off of the Lord’s provision was, in light of His continued faithfulness.
I wanted to share this with you because I suspect this is a common problem for many of us, and it certainly was for those who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem. They had a preconceived notion as to why Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem, especially at Passover when the population of those within the city swelled. The normal population was between 20,000 to 30,000 but on Passover there would be between 150,000 to 180,000.
Today we’ll consider the story from Luke’s account in Luke 19:28–40. Many of the people of Israel saw Jesus as the King who would defeat their enemies and once again Israel would be the ruler of all nations as the people of God. There were three major problems with their expectation.
1. They believed that it was their nationally that made them worthy of God’s blessings and favor. They misunderstood their heritage as the children of Abraham. Their nationally was not their strength, following after the example of Father Abraham who was faithful in believing the promises of God even when he couldn’t see how they could be fulfilled. Genesis 15:6, “And he (Abraham) believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” Faith in God’s promises was the basis of his blessings.
2. They failed to understand the absolute holiness of God and the depth of their sinfulness. It had been their story from the beginning, and it made them unworthy of God’s favor.
3. What Jesus came to do for them and for all the other nations was far greater than anything they could conceive of and it would come at a greater cost than they knew. They were not able to understand that God had come to them to pay the price of their ungodliness.
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I decided to focus on this passage as a reminder that this beginning on Holy week points us to the reality of the cross. This story had always been the plan of the Father and even though everything seems to fall apart, in reality everything is going according to the plan. We should never look at any portion of Scripture without assuming that it is a part of the whole of Scripture.
If you’re like me it’s hard to hear Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12 read because it’s a graphic reminder of what it was going to be like for the promised Messiah. Listen again to Isaiah 53:3–6,
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
It’s one of those prophecies that should stun us as we hear the story of the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem through the lens of Isaiah’s prophecy and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ upon the cross.
Of course, the hardest part to hear is in Isaiah 53:10,
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
The prophecy reveals that Christ was delivered up to death by God’s set purpose. The guilt offering made restitution for damage done against God (5:14–6:7). We can see that the seed is spiritual, for it was planted and germinated after Christ’ death.
No one wanted to hear that as Jesus entered Jerusalem, but He knew it because this was the revealed will of the Father. Jesus wasn’t fooled by the praise and adoration of the people or pleased by the palm branches being waved in celebration that their King had finally come to rescue them from Rome. They had part of it right. This was their King, the promised Messiah, but He didn’t come to deliver them from the rule of the Roman Empire, that wasn’t their greatest need.
These are stories that we tell every year at this time and for a moment we shake our heads in acknowledgement that Jesus did come to do the will of His Father, and it was not going to be pleasant.
This should continue to impact our walk with the Lord on a daily basis. In other words it should change us. We will never be in the place where we have all of God that is available, but we will have all that we need. We need all of Him that He is willing to pour into us. If we are to be the living witnesses of Christ to a lost and dying world we must become more like Him and less like the world.
This week we must ask the Holy Spirit to refocus our minds on what it cost our Savior to pay for our sins and what it has cost many millions since then to continue the proclamation of the Good News of the Gospel. We need to ask God to refocus our hearts on His majesty, glory, power, mercy, and love, and that He will anoint us to be the ones who lay down our lives for the glory of God and the benefit of our neighbors.
Today is Palm Sunday and we enter what is known to the church as “Holy Week.” Since Ash Wednesday on March 5th we have been in the season of Lent, which will end on April 17th, Maundy Thursday. We have focused on the cross of Christ while we remember that it was our sin that put Jesus there. This year’s Palm Sunday lectionary readings followed the drama from the “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem, but then the Gospel lesson after we begin takes us through the last few days in Jesus’ life to his betrayal. In our gospel reading this morning you have had the story read to you in its entirety.
Now, for a few moments longer, we will consider the implications and importance of the greatest story of self-sacrifice ever told.
Jesus knew that what he had to do must be done alone. Though there were many who assured him that they would stand with him no matter what. Jesus knew that even the Father would turn away from him as he bore the sins of the world upon himself, by becoming sin itself. We are limited in our ability to emphasize with Jesus as to what it was like for Him and the Father to be separated because of Jesus taking the sins of the world upon himself.
There had never been even one moment when the Trinity had not lived in perfect unity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now for the first time the Father, who is
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perfect purity, righteousness, and holiness, would have to turn away from his beloved Son in the moment of his greatest need.
Since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden there had never been a human who was perfect in purity and sinless, until Jesus. Because of that we can’t really understand how sin can be such an affront to God. To many, this whole scenario seems foolish and an overblown reaction on the part of God. More like a petulant child. Couldn’t he just live and let live? Was all this death and sorrow, and talking about wrath, justice, and hell really necessary?
The holiness and purity of God is something we have no capacity to thoroughly understand, but many places in Scripture show that God cannot reveal Himself to us physically at present or our human bodies would simply be consumed. When Adam was created, he did live in the presence of God and things were vastly different. However, when Adam choose to disobey God, his relationship and existence before God was fractured and death entered the created world for the first time.
Since that moment, God has been forced to distance Himself from us for our own survival—this is actually an act of mercy from God! We can’t be in the full presence of the God who is without sin, morally completely pure, and undefiled in any way. The fact that men and women don’t see the “big deal” is actually a perfect example of their blindness and the reason that Jesus, the perfect “God/ Man” had to come to pay a price we couldn’t pay.
In our fallen condition only Jesus could restore the breach or chasm between us and the God who is Holy. It’s hard for me to understand why he would do it, but we can see that what was done on our behalf was done intentionally. In our Epistle reading from Philippians 2:6–8,
Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Essentially, God was willing to come to us in human form and dwell in our midst, put up with our arrogant, selfish, and foolish nature, and die for us. For those of us who have been Christians a long time, we are accustomed to hearing certain passages read during this time of year. We have learned to identify those
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passages of scripture, Psalms or prophecies that are Messianic in their reference. It serves as a reminder that we can see the history of redemption unfolding and moving ever forward toward the day when Jesus will return, and all things will be made new. But the concern is- does this familiarity with these scriptures and
their themes still move our hearts and bring us to our knees in repentance and praise?
We read together Psalm 22 this morning and from the first verse we are reminded of the words of Jesus on the cross as he experienced the wrath of the Father poured out upon him because of our sin. It’s sobering to consider but is nothing like what it meant to Jesus when He read those words knowing it referred to him.
It’s the cry of agony, of someone bereft of all hope and Jesus was willing to go through this moment that you and I could not begin to comprehend. Why? Because this was the only way that we could escape an eternity of this type of agony, where there is “no God.”
That is the description of Hell, and he was willing to go there so that we could avoid it. Even though we can understand that Hell is a place that we wouldn’t want to go, I don’t believe that we can have any sense of what it would be like.
It’s a place where God removes his saving presence entirely, for eternity. No hope of any relief just the eternal wrath of God on those who have rejected him.
Today we can merely turn on the news or go online to a steady diet of many stories where people have turned from godly virtue and embraced a level of evil that is startling.
In our own country we are seeing many of those in leadership resisting the very law of God that was the foundation of our country and insisting that those who love God’s word and teach that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation are bigots, fascists, and could be guilty of hate speech. In his book The Allegory of Love C.S. Lewis wrote, “The descent to hell is easy and those who begin by worshipping power, soon worship evil.”
Jesus was in a remarkably similar situation when he entered into the city of Jerusalem. The religious leaders who should have welcomed him, instead saw him as a threat to their authority and rule over the people of Israel.
Leading up to Jesus’ entry back into Jerusalem tensions had been growing between him and the religious leaders, who had made it known that they
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intended to kill him. This is an extremely dramatic scene. By openly entering the city where he was a marked man, Jesus took the first step toward the final confrontation. Again, it was an intentional move, and he knew there was no turning back.
Passover was one of the three major feasts that Jews were supposed to attend in Jerusalem, and consequently, the population of Jerusalem swelled enormously at this time. The city was packed not only with those who had come from all over to attend this feast, but also those who had come to see what Jesus would do.
There was a sense that a showdown was imminent. As this great crowd was beginning to gather from around Israel—and even the larger world of those who lived away from Jerusalem—news about Jesus was spreading and for many there was a feeling of hope that maybe, finally, the Messiah had come. This was the King, the royal Son of David that they had longed for.
The fact that they chose to welcome Jesus by waving palm branches reveals a lot about what it was that they were expecting from him. This had all the elements of a patriotic parade. Palm branches were a symbol of Jewish nationalism since the time of the Maccabees. F. F. Bruce in his commentary wrote,
From the time of the Maccabees palms or palm branches had been used as a national symbol. They had figured in the procession which celebrated the rededication of the temple in 164 BC (2 Maccabees 10:7) and again when winning the full political independence was celebrated under Simon in 141 BC. Later palms appeared as national symbols on the coins struck by the Judean insurgents during the first and second revolts against Rome (AD 66–70 and 132–135).
Jesus would be the King like no other before Him and would rule over all that He had created, His vision was not limited to Israel, something they couldn’t comprehend. Jesus knew the prophets and the role he was to play, but at the time he was the only one who did.
If Jesus had settled for the throne of David in Jerusalem the real issue of mankind’s bondage to sin and death would never have been dealt with and the kingdom of Satan would have remained in power and authority over the earth. At the time of his entry into Jerusalem, only Jesus fully understood what was at stake and that only he could do what was necessary to overcome the kingdom of darkness.
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Jesus entered Jerusalem walking in the midst of lambs who were destined for sacrifice during the celebration, and as he walked, he alone knew that they were a symbol of what he had come to be: John 1:29, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
Jesus was the living reality of what the sacrificial lambs pointed to—a sacrificial atonement that would be made once and for all. He knew what the scriptures foretold about the Messiah and was under no illusion that it would be easy.
Unfortunately, the truth is that there are many churches that claim to gather to worship God but deny the divinity and authority of Jesus Christ alone, and as a consequence, they are merely celebrations of death. When he came into Jerusalem, they welcomed him as their new King, but when he went to the cross to pay the price for our sins, He did the kingliest thing that he could do, he laid down his life for his subjects.
As we consider all that is happening in our country and around the world it’s a reminder that we are far from being through telling this story. Jesus won the victory over sin and death, but the battle for souls still rages. The only hope for our community, our state, our country, and the world is Jesus Christ, and he has commanded “his body” to deliver the message of the cross to those around them, even if it comes at a great cost.
The task before us is to live into the victory that Jesus won and in His glorious name enter the fight that rages on all around us. Signs of the kingdom of darkness are all around. We don’t have to look very far but can see the evidence and can read about it daily in the news. The task before us is to be living witnesses to the love and power of Christ to those around us and to be continually praying that God would use us in the lives of those in our community. Let’s pray,
Lord, raise us up as faithful servants and use us more fully than ever before. As we move this week towards the celebration of the resurrection next Sunday, let our hearts be longing for the resurrection power to move in and through us that you might be glorified and those who are lost might experience the transforming power of Jesus Christ in their lives. For your glory, O Lord, we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen!
©2025 The Rev. Michael J. Moffitt
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