Good morning everyone, it's so good to see you this morning. My name is Paul Rajkumar and I am part of the More College Mission Team. And can I say what a privilege it is to preach this morning in the parishion or less of KAAPA and TC Hammond? It is a real privilege to be here.
And can I say on behalf of the More College Team, what a privilege it has been to partner with you this week, to be encouraged by you to encourage you as we strive side by side for the faith of the Gospel. It has been a real privilege and pleasure, so thank you on behalf of the More College Mission Team. As we begin this morning, it is indeed Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week, the most important week for Christians across the ages and across the world. And as we begin this Palm Sunday, the question that we need to consider this morning is in our text.
If you want to flick backwards to page 13, our second lesson in our Bibles, if you've got one there in front of you, if you'd like to refer to that, it's page 801. But the text we need to consider this morning is this. Verse 10, when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, who is this? Who is this?
That question, who is this? That is a question that every single man and woman will need to consider for themselves. Who is this Jesus? I wonder if you've heard of the US Senator James Tallarico.
He was recently in the press because about a month ago, an interview that was going to go to air on the lecture with Stephen Colbert was banned by the FCC. That's the American equivalent of Acoma. Now, he's doing very well in the polls. There's talk that he might be the first Democrat Senator to flip the seat of the seat of Texas for the first time, flip it blue since 1990.
And unlike a lot of Democrats, he is Christian. In fact, he has actually been to Bible college. He is a Presbyterian seminarian. And this is what he has to say about the Lord Jesus.
Now bear in mind that he's a seminarian. He's a self-styled, progressive Christian. So this is what he thinks of Jesus. He sees him as a radical barefoot rabbi bent on revolution.
This is something that he said about him. And I quote, not once in the entire Bible does Jesus ask us to worship him. All he asks is that we follow him. Love like he loved, loved the outcast, welcomed the stranger.
If Jesus were here today, he wouldn't just pray. He would act. He would run towards the broken. He would protect the children.
He would confront the systems that let them die. They're strong, powerful words, aren't they? There's something compelling about that conception of Jesus. But the question we have to ask friends, especially this holy week, in light of the death and resurrection, the Lord Jesus, is this the Jesus that we encounter in Scripture?
Is this the Jesus that Jesus himself would want to present? Because our text for this morning, our electionally reading, would suggest that indeed Jesus is the gentle and lowly Jesus who could who finds up the broken heart. But nevertheless, he is the Lord. He is God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, judge of all men, the ones who every knee must bow.
He's the Lord who has come to bring salvation. And he's the Lord who has come to judge. Friends, as we look at our text from Matthew's Gospel, this morning, my prayer for us, this morning, is that we would be those who recognize who is this Jesus for ourselves, that we would recognize that he is the Lord, the one who has come down to save us and to judge, and the one to whom we must ascribe glory and praise. Shall I pray that's indeed the case for us this morning?
Allow me to leave some prayer. Our holy Father, we pray this morning as we come to your living and a body word that you would enable us to see with perfect acuity, your Son, we pray that we would see him as you want us to see him, as revealed in your holy Scripture. So it's for Jesus' sake, we pray. Amen.
Amen. Friends, we have two points for this morning. You can follow along with your outlines at the back there. Point one, who is this Jesus?
He is the Lord who has come to bring salvation. He's the Lord who has come to save. And point two, he's the Lord who has come to judge. That first point, he's the Lord who has come to bring salvation.
We can see here, with our election reading, Matthew 21, we're in a section of Matthew's Gospel that runs from chapter 19 until the end of chapter 25. And the key question of this section is what happens when Israel's Messiah? It's Christ when it comes home, when he comes home. When he comes to Israel, what will he find?
And Jesus has been adamant three times in this section. He has been adamantly saying, he must, he must suffer and die and rise again. And yet as he comes to Israel, we will see time and time again that they will reject their Messiah. And so there's a climax as it were as we get to this passage.
The text, it's been like a centrifuge. Jesus has been circling, getting closer and closer to Jerusalem, the point of his imminent passion. But just before he gets to Jerusalem, in verse one of chapter 21, Jesus pulls the reins both metaphorically and literally, because Jesus in verse one stands atop the Mount of Olives. Now in Zechariah 14, the Mount of Olives is where the Lord stands upon the mountain to judge Israel's enemies.
From Mount of Olives, judgment goes forth. Matthew's going to return to the Mount of Olives, Jesus is going to return to Mount of Olives a few more times in this section. But this stage in the narrative, that's not the bit of Zechariah that we get turned to. Verse five, instead, Matthew our author wants us to draw our attention to Zechariah 9.
And Jesus does himself, did you notice, in verse three, Jesus calls for a donkey and a cult and says the Lord is in need of them, drawing upon the covenant name of God, Yahweh. He's trying to make it very clear who it is that's speaking at this point. And Matthew our author, he cites almost in full in verse five, Zechariah 9. He's missed one very important bit of the citation.
We'll come to that in a moment. But as you can see, he's pictured here, gentle, riding in on a donkey. This king does not come to this city upon a horse, a war horse, but upon a lowly donkey. Friends, as an aside, this Easter, if you are someone who is suffering from grief, guilt, from the burden of sin, could it be that this is the Jesus that you need to hear about this Easter, the gentle and lowly Jesus who does not quench a burning wick, who binds up the brokenhearted, who is gentle and lowly, who has come to give us rest if we are weary.
If that is you friends this morning, take heed of these verses that Jesus is indeed that gentle and lowly king. Did you notice from verse 10 that onwards that there are two crowds pictured? There's one crowd that is coming in with Jesus, and they do what you would expect people to do when the king has come. They place their cloaks in front of him.
They cut palm branches before him. They shout out Hosanna to the son of David, drawing upon Psalm 118, as we had in our Psalm readings. Interestingly, that's not again going to be the bit of Psalm 118 that Jesus is going to return to later in Matthew's gospel. But then we have another crowd, the one from Jerusalem, who come to meet this crowd, and they meet this crowd, verse 10, and Jesus enters Jerusalem.
This moment of immense biblical significance. God is now in the presence of Zion, and the whole city is stirred, or in other words, shaken. The entire ground shakes as God enters in. And what does Jerusalem say?
Hosanna, Hallelujah, praise the Lord. Verse 10. Who is this? Who is this Jesus?
It's a pretty lukewarm response, isn't it? To their Messiah. We're going to come back to their response in our second point. But let's stay with the first crowd for now.
They shout out, Hosanna, which means in Hebrew, save us, save us. There's something that this crowd have recognized about Jesus, something that Matthew and Jesus want to make clear to us this morning very clearly, that this Jesus is the Lord himself, who has come to save us, who has come to save you, who has come to save me. Who is this Jesus? He's the Lord who has come to save us.
Can you see friends how that idea of Jesus coming to save us cuts very much in a different direction to that US Senator James Tarico, because he presents Jesus as a thought leader, a revolutionary, someone with a lot of good ideas, essentially reducing Jesus down to some sort of moral teacher, someone who's if we take on his teaching, our lives will be improved, just in the same way as we might take on any secular ethics and our life might be improved. All that has happened in that world of progressive thinking is that we have just bought the lives of the locks and the russos of this world, that if we just do better, if we pull up our socks and do better, if we hear some good teaching and do better, then we can save ourselves, that there can be redemption for us. But haven't the events even just in the last few months shown to us as a nation? That just simply isn't true, whether it be a terrorist attack on Bondi Beach, or whether it be protests outside Sydney Town Hall or our own Dios and Cathedral.
We are proving to ourselves as a nation that we can't save ourselves, as good as Jesus teaching is, and it is a beautiful teaching teaching. We need his salvation and it's true for us on an individual level as well. As we say in our morning prayer, save us in our morning prayer order of service as our prayer book teaches us, we can only plead individually that God have mercy upon us, us most miserable offenders, that there is no health in us, that in every way we transgress God's holy laws and we provoke most justly his wrath and indignation. I hope your lived experience is one that recognises that you personally are in need of a Savior, but friends the beauty of the Christian gospel, the one who can bring this salvation, the law, the salvation that we individually and the world needs, is gentle and lowly.
He does indeed run towards the broken, he does indeed protect children, but not as we or the world expects, but as he lays down his life for them. Friends, is this your view of Jesus? Especially if you're sitting here as someone who may not have surrendered, given over their life to this Lord, given over their life, surrendered to this Jesus, do you see him as just a moral teacher, as an example a thought-linger, or do you see him as Lord, the only one who is capable and willing to save us, the gentle and lowly Lord, the Lord who has come to save you and me, who is this Jesus, he's the Lord who has come to save us. The question we should be asking at this point about text this morning, especially in view of those two crowds who come to meet each other, is well, for whom is this salvation?
Or whom is this salvation? And that's what we get in our surprising next point. Verse 12 to 17, the Lord who has come to judge, the Lord who has come to judge. Picking up from verse 12, Jesus now enters the temple in Jerusalem, again, a moment of fundamental biblical significance.
The Lord is now in his temple, and he suddenly starts flipping tables and checking people out of the temple. What happened to that gentle and lowly Jesus just a few verses ago? A lot of people struggle with these verses because they think, well, is this showing the human side, the two human side of Jesus? His anger, made his sinful anger.
And the thing is that he's actually undoing what is going on here, because this isn't just anger that we're seeing. This is wrath. This is the rightful wrath of the Lord. You see friends, in Zechariah 9, what we had earlier, that citation, there was one verse that Matthew our author forgot to include.
That is in Zechariah 9, his king is described as being righteous and victorious or righteous and having salvation. And the twist is, is that as Jesus rides into Jerusalem, for these people, sadly, he's not come to save. He's come to judge. He's the Lord who has come to judge.
And yet even in amongst that judgment, there are still people who cry out to this Lord, verse 14, the lame, they come to him, the blind come to him, and he heals them. Verse 15, the children, they shout out to him. They also shout out, Hosanna, save us, son of David. And the chief priests and the scribes, well, they're in dictum, verse 15 and 16.
They say, do you hear what he's children are saying? And Jesus quotes Psalm 8 to them. Of course, this is what happens. This is what happens when God comes, when the Lord comes.
This is standard response. Children sing praises to their Lord. But again, Jesus has dropped off an essential bit, because as we had in our Psalm reading, the purpose of this praise is to silence the foe and the avenger. The reason why these children sing and cry out praises, it's to silence the adversary.
And lo and behold, who are the adversaries and the foes? The chief priests and the scribes are the very ones that reject him. And as a result, verse 17, he leaves them. He leaves Jerusalem.
Jesus, in this space of a day brings chaos, a maelstrom. But above all, he's come to bring judgment. He's the Lord who has come to judge. Friends, I wonder if this picture of Jesus, this Jesus who brings judgment, does this square with your paradigm of him?
Because friends, this picture, this little picture we have here, as Jesus judges old Israel, it's only a foretaste of the judgment that he will come when he comes at the end of all time. Reality friends, is that this is the Lord to whom every need must bow the overturning of the tables. That was just a warm up act for what will happen at the end of days when the Lord will return not to his temple, but to the earth to judge the ends of the earth. Friends, I want us to see if we're sitting here as Christians this morning, that we need this Jesus just as much as we need that Jesus to save us.
For all the reality of sin in the world that we see in the world today, whether it be Bondi, Iran, Ukraine, we need this Jesus. For those that oppose Jesus in the public square or otherwise, we need this Jesus. For those of us who've been out on mission this week, everyone that we've encountered on the streets or in church, they need this Jesus. And friends, your friends and family, especially if you're sitting here as maybe a grandparent and your grandchildren don't follow the Lord Jesus anymore, they need this Jesus.
Because friends, do you notice that even in the midst of this judgment, there is hope that children who cry, Hosanna, save us, they're singing praises to this Lord, the gentle and lowly Lord Jesus who is nevertheless come to judge. Who is this Jesus? He's the Lord who has come to judge. Friends, we start to this morning, I'll this morning's talk from our election reading with that question.
Who is this Jesus? And friends, I hope we can see from our time here from this passage that yes, Jesus is meek and mild that he's gentle and lowly. He is here to bind up the broken hearted, but he's nevertheless the Lord, the Lord who has come to save and the Lord who has come to judge. And the question for us this morning then as we close, well, is he your Lord?
Is he my Lord? Shailen is in prayer as we close. Living Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for this picture of you that we see in scripture this morning. We thank you so much that as we see that you're righteous and having salvation, that you have come to bring salvation.
We praise you, Heavenly Father, that in your infinite mercy you have sent us your Son, your dearly beloved Son, to save us. We pray so much, Heavenly Father, that this Easter time, this Easter period, as we think upon your Son's passion and his resurrection, that we will be those who ascribe him, the glory and praise those due to his name. And we pray for those Heavenly Father that don't know you, especially those who are personally known to us. We pray that this picture of the Lord who is the judge would invoke us, would stir us up to speak of your glorious deeds, to praise your name just as these children do, pry out Hosanna, Hosanna to the King who has come.
So it's for Jesus' name we pray. Amen.