Here For Good :: No Enemy List // Chris Holm

Sermon Summary:Palm Sunday is more than a parade. It is a case study in what happens when people see what they want to see instead of who is actually there.The crowd that welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem was desperate. Rome was occupying their land, and Passover week was saturating the air with stories of the God who had defeated Pharaoh. When word spread that the Messiah was coming down the Mount of Olives, the crowd responded with everything they had. Palm branches. Cloaks. Shouts of Hosanna. They were ready for liberation.One week later, much of that same crowd was calling for his execution.The difference was not what Jesus did wrong. The difference was what he failed to deliver. He did not fight Rome. He did not rally an army. He got arrested. And once he stopped performing according to their category, they stopped seeing a person. They saw a failed label. And failed labels are easy to discard.This sermon traces that dynamic into our own lives. The human brain categorizes constantly, and that capacity becomes dangerous when the category replaces the person. Paul's phrase in 2 Corinthians 5 is kata sarka, seeing according to the flesh, sorting people by surface and deciding they are the sum of one characteristic.Jesus refused that. He sat down with tax collectors. He looked at Matthew in his booth and saw someone worth calling. He kept finding the actual person underneath what everyone had already decided.And at the cross, the most powerful labeling device the empire had, he prayed continuously for the people killing him. No enemy list.The invitation is to let what God has already said about us free us from needing to label others. The love of Christ compels us. The Spirit changes what we see first.URF WEBSITE: ➤ http://www.urfellowship.comSOCIALS: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urfellowship/➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urfellowship