458: The King's Tears: Palm Sunday | Dave Sloop

Introduction

Good morning everyone. Good to see you today. I want to begin with a question this morning, and this is a question you don't have to raise your hand. Just in the quietness of your mind and heart, just think about an occasion where this may or may not have been true about you. When is a time that you can remember being caught off guard? By tears—where you're just minding your own business, and then all of a sudden you find yourself crying.

Now I don't have an example like this because I'm a man, but perhaps some of you, weaker people—just kidding. The truth is, the older I get, the softer my heart has become. I find myself crying at things that sometimes don't make a whole lot of sense to cry at. Remember not too long ago—actually just a few years ago—Andy Fetser and I, we were traveling to Europe to help with a Young Life camp that was happening there in Barcelona. We took off out of Dulles, but our flight was delayed, so we missed our connecting flight in Charlotte to Barcelona. We were stranded for 24 hours.

We actually landed in Dermot, and Evan Dermot was there to help us out. So the four of us, stranded, stayed at this dumpy motel. The next day, we had an entire day to kill before our flight left that evening. So we got an Uber to the nearest movie theater just to kill some time. The only movie playing was a movie we didn't particularly want to see, but there was nothing else to do. So we go in and we watch this movie, and I ended up loving it. It was so well written, so well acted. There are points in this movie where I just found myself laughing hysterically, but at the end, it's one of those movies that just has like that perfect ending.

But the music is playing and I suddenly start to feel these tears streaming down my face, and I look over at Fett’s, and he was crying too. We just started laughing. If you haven't figured it out by now, the movie was The Secret Life of Pets. Telling you, if you haven't seen that movie, we'll get you.

But sometimes that happens, you know, you just find yourself crying. Other times, you might find yourself crying for more obvious reasons. I remember back in 2020, it was the last day of Young Life staff for me, an organization that I had served on for about 18 and a half years at the time. But I had been involved since I was in middle school, and here I was, recognizing that a page was turning. I just woke up with a lump in my throat. I knew that God was inviting me into a new chapter, but I just had to sit down and start writing. And as I did, I just started weeping—it was the ugly kind of crying. I was glad Melissa was still sleeping because I wanted her to stay attracted to me. And this was just like ugly tears.

There's a mentor, a hero in my life, a man named Pat Goodman. He was on Young Life staff for a number of years. In fact, he trained Melissa when she was becoming a Young Life staff person. In fact, Pat Goodman is coming to be our speaker at the men's weekend, May 16 to 18. I really hope that you guys will consider signing up for that. But Pat Goodman would often say this: he would say, "Listen to your tears." In other words, your tears have a voice, in a sense—they're tapping into something deep inside, something that is close to your heart, something that you deeply care about. And so listen to them. Follow them back to where they came from to understand what it is this going you learn something about yourself.

The Context of the Passage

We're here today to celebrate Palm Sunday, that historic day when Jesus makes his way into that great city, Jerusalem, as her rightful king. And the people receive him as such—they extol him as king. They're waving the palm branches like we did earlier. They're laying their garments on the ground so that he can travel over top of them. They praise him as the king. But instead of swelling with pride, Jesus breaks down in tears. They worship, and he weeps.

What is that all about? I want to invite you this morning, along with me, to listen to Jesus’ tears. They have a voice, too. They're communicating something—not just about who he is, but that, for sure. But I think if we listen closely today, we're going to learn also something about who we are.

Let's take a look at this passage together. We're going to start in verse 29 of Luke 19, and here's what it says:

When he drew near to Beth Fage and Bethany at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, "Go into the village in front of you. When you enter it, you will find a colt tied on which no one has ever sat. Untie it, and bring it here."

Let me just paint a picture of what is going on here. Jesus shows up to this town, Jerusalem, at the time of the Passover, when all of Israel was traveling, pilgrimageing to Jerusalem for this celebration of the Passover feast. It was a time when the population of Jerusalem would have grown by an order of magnitude—from about 200,000 to 2 million.

And here is Jesus, as he sees the city off into the distance. He tells his disciples, "We're going to make an entrance. I want everyone to see me coming, and I want them to know exactly who I am." He made no apologies about it because he was, first of all, the unapologetic king. He wanted everyone to know. Does this strike you as a bit odd, if you've been following throughout the Gospels? This is a departure from Jesus' standard operating procedure, is it not? And we see glimpses of Jesus' divinity and some of the miracles he performs. We even see him having conversations in secret with people—like when he heals the leper and he says, "Don't tell anybody about this." Or when he's talking to Peter and his disciples, and he says, "Who do people say that I am?" and Peter says, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," and he says, "Blessed are you, Simon." But then, at the end of that passage, he says, "See to it that you don't tell anybody." He was almost shy about his divinity. Why? As he would tell his mother in John chapter 2, right before he performed the miracle of turning water into wine, he says, "My hour has not yet come." It wasn't time yet.

What we see here at the beginning of Luke chapter 19 is this: the time has come. His hour is here, and he wants everyone to know precisely who he is, claiming to be. There is no confusion about who he's claiming to be. And so he sends the disciples on an errand. He says, "Go fetch me a donkey. Bring me a donkey." Not just any donkey—he says I want it to be a baby donkey, a colt, the full of a donkey. A donkey that no one has ever ridden on.

Now, why is that significant? You can't ride an unbroken donkey. You just can't. See, for those of you who might not be seasoned donkey riders, you might not have known that. But the truth is, if you're going to ride a donkey, it needs to be trained. It needs to be trained to receive a saddle and a rider and to learn how to accept commands and prompts. You can't just get on it—it will throw you to the ground. A donkey is an incredibly self-protective animal. It looks like stubbornness, but it just doesn't want someone else to tell it what to do. And yet, when Jesus gets on this donkey's back, it leads him exactly where he wants it to go. Why? Because that one that rides on this donkey's back that day is the same one that rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Quiet, be still." And they listened. Because all of creation bends to the will of its master. And that is precisely who Jesus was: he was the king over all creation.

It was coming a day when everything would behave like that donkey was, when every knee will bow, every tongue will confess. The lion will lay down with the lamb. He will bring all of creation under his divine, authoritative rule. Why? Because he is the king—not just the king of Israel, but the king over all creation. He is the one who spoke creation into existence. This is the king.

And today, he shows up in a little town called Jerusalem. It’s not just how he rides into town. I want you to listen to what the people say:

Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest. — Luke 19:38

This is from Psalm 118. We read the psalm beforehand. It's a messianic psalm—it’s pointing to the king who would come from the line of David, a king whose reign would never end. In Matthew's account of this same story, he adds that the people were saying, "Hosanna in the highest," which means "Save us, son of David."

Jesus had a lot of titles, but this was a significant one. He was the son of David, the messianic king. This king that Israel had been waiting for since Genesis 3:15. Right after the garden, right after the fall, God promises to send a redeemer, who would be the seed of woman and would crush the serpent's head. The entire Bible is an unfolding revelation of who that person would be. And the people rightly say, "This is him. This is the son of David."

We can look at a lot of different passages to explore his character, his nature, his essence. But let me just share this one from Isaiah 9:6:

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

There is no confusion about who the son of David was: it was God Himself who had come to visit his people—God in the flesh. All of that divinity shrunk down into a human body. He shows up in the flesh that day as the true king of all creation.

Jesus’ Tears and the Brokenness of Rejection

What’s the point? Jesus, when he shows up that day in Jerusalem, it’s a line in the sand moment. There’s no confusion anymore. I want you to know something: I’m claiming to be your king. Not just the king of Israel, but the king of creation. In the same way that he had imminent domain over that donkey—that he would commandeer for his purposes—because, he says, "The Lord has need of it," and it is his. He has imminent domain over you. He is the king. That’s who he is.

Secondly, I want to take a look at the fact that he is the unwanted king. First of all, he’s the unapologetic king. He tells you who he is, and he makes no apologies for it. But secondly, he is the unwanted king. If you look at verse 28—skip back to verse 28—it says:

When he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.

I’ve never noticed this before, but Luke connects the things he just said in the previous passage with the events that were about to take place in his triumphal entry. He says, "After he said these things." What was it that he had just said? Jesus had just told a story about a man born of noble birth who went away to a distant land to be appointed king. But his subjects hated him, and they sent a delegation after him saying, "We don’t want this man for our king." But he became king anyway, and then he returned.

Jesus tells that story right before his triumphal entry because he wanted to frame it. See, this was not Jesus coming into town to sit on the throne forever. Today was about Jesus coming in to get a crown. It was about Jesus coming in to go off to a distant land to get a crown—that's what today was about. And in order to do that, he was going to be rejected. We see that in two ways.

By the way, this was promised—the fact that Israel missed this. They just missed these obvious prophetic references throughout the entire Old Testament. In Zechariah 11, we see that Israel would reject the shepherd that comes. They would reject him. And that's precisely what they did. You can see this in the response of the Pharisees to Jesus' coming into town. They said, "Tell your disciples,"—I can't find it; I’ll summarize—"Tell your disciples to be quiet." These disciples that were saying, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,"—they knew what that meant. And they said, "How dare you let them worship you? How dare you let them call you the king of kings?" What did Jesus say? The rocks will cry out if they are silent. The Pharisees' explicit rejection, this in-your-face rejection—they didn't want Jesus as their king.

We see that kind of rejection in our world today of Israel’s Messiah. But there’s another kind of rejection here—it’s a little more subtle. It says the crowd began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all of the mighty works that they had seen. They praised him for the good stuff they had seen. But there was something else going on here.

See, at the end of this passage, we’re going to see a Jesus who is weeping because he sees through the heart. He understands what true worship is and what it isn’t. Jesus did not come that day to save Israel from Rome. But that is what everybody expected, and that is what everyone wanted. In fact, at the very beginning of this parable, it says that Jesus told this parable because there were a bunch of people that thought the kingdom of God would come at once—that he was about to set up his throne on earth forever. And he tells this parable to let them know that’s not happening right now. That’s what they wanted.

See, this same crowd of people that was saying "Hosanna! Praise him! He’s the one—blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord"—is the same group of people that a few days later would be saying, "Crucify! Crucify!" Why? Because there is a kind of rejection that hides behind a thin veneer of worship. It looks like praise. It’s a kind of worship that says, "You can be my king if—" and then fill in the blank. "Give me deliverance from Rome, then I’ll worship you." It’s a conditional kind of worship. And Jesus looks through that kind of worship, and it breaks his heart because it isn’t genuine. And he weeps.

He is the unapologetic king, and secondly, he is the unwanted king. But lastly, he is the unexpected king.

The Unexpected King

If you look at Zechariah 9, you see the story of a king who comes to Zion, to Jerusalem. With Jesus riding into town that day on a donkey, it wasn’t just a show that he was Lord of all creation—he was. But perhaps even more importantly, he did it to intentionally fulfill a prophecy that took place in the book of Zechariah. Here’s what it says in Zechariah 9:9:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he. He is mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

That is what they expected of a conquering king—coming in on a mighty steed. But here comes Jesus on a baby donkey. Is that what you think of when you think of a king who comes to conquer? Typically, he would come in on a mighty steed. But Jesus is the paradoxical king—he’s the king who is both mighty and gentle.

He says, "Come to me. I’m gentle and lowly." Jesus, he's the paradoxical king. There’s a good chance you’ve met some people with this sort of larger-than-life, powerful personality, but you probably wouldn’t characterize those people as meek and humble at the same time. Jesus had this way of being both at once. He was bold, yet humble; mighty, yet meek; powerful, yet personal. There was nobody like him.

In fact, one of the reasons they rejected him is because they just weren’t expecting him to be like he was. That’s true today, too, isn’t it? Perhaps one of the most misunderstood human beings to ever live, Jesus was bold and humble simultaneously. He was strong but tender.

One of the things I missed most about being on Young Life staff was the opportunity to talk to high school kids who were disinterested in the person of Jesus Christ. Because I knew that if we could just open this up, and I could talk to them about who he really is, they would find themselves irresistibly drawn to him. That’s what it was like when he was here. Did you know that?

He was surrounded by crowds of people all the time, but he always saw the individual. He was always busy, but never in a hurry. He was popular, but he never let it go to his head. He was perfect. He was the perfect human being. It’s the kind of human being God would be if he were here because that’s exactly who Jesus was.

There’s a verse in Isaiah 53 that suggests Jesus wasn’t much to look at; he wasn’t that handsome. Yet, he was so attractive, you just couldn’t resist being in his presence. He was the unexpected king— the king who did not come to be served, but to serve, to give his life as a ransom for many.

In John 13, a few days after this event, it says he was in the upper room with his disciples. It says he knew that he had come from the Father and he was returning to the Father—that all authority had been given to him. And so, he got down on his knees and he washed his disciples’ feet. You just couldn’t pin this guy down. He was just as quick to confront your sin as he was to cry for your rebellion. And notice, when Jesus weeps at the end of this passage, he’s not crying for what’s going to happen to him. He's crying for the destruction that’s coming to them.

We see Jesus here, the unexpected king, who sheds tears for his very enemies. But the most unexpected thing about Jesus is that he came prepared to shed far more than just his tears. He showed up that day to shed his very blood.

I want to briefly mention that there are places in Ezekiel that tell us about the glory of the Lord departing from the temple in chapters 10 and 11. But in Ezekiel 34, God says:

I will come to be your shepherd; I am coming myself to do it, me and my servant David.

That’s a promise that he’s coming back. In Ezekiel 43, it says the glory of the Lord, as Ezekiel sees a vision, comes back into the temple from—where? From the east.

As Jesus rides into town that day, the manifest presence of God, we behold his glory, John said—full of grace and truth. That man, the glory of God, comes back into Jerusalem through the east gate. There was another name for that gate: the sheep’s gate—the gate through which all of the Passover sheep would pass, never to come back because they would be slaughtered. And Jesus, that day, goes through the same gate to fulfill what every Passover lamb that went before him was merely a shadow of.

He went in that day as the lion of God to become the lamb—the great shepherd of the sheep who himself was led to slaughter. You see, this unexpected king wasn’t just unexpected in his humility and kindness and compassion and love. He wasn’t just unexpected because he hung out with sinners instead of religious people. He was also unexpected in that he was willing to empty himself and allow himself to be nailed to a cross.

Why? Because you and I have a debt we cannot bear. We could never pay it. We needed someone to come and bear our sin. He lived the life we couldn’t live and he took the penalty we deserved—so that we could be restored to the one for whom we were made.

And by the way, every single one of us in this room—you're going to crown something in your life. You will have a king. The question is: will it be the true king?

Every other king you could have in your life—any other person, any other substance or thing, or career—it's going to leave you empty. Only he will satisfy because he is the one for whom you were made.

Application and Response

You see, the apologetic king, who was the unexpected king, became the unwanted and rejected king—why? So he could become your king. He knew that there was no way to become your king, no way for him to get his crown, other than going through his cross.

Is he your king? Where do you find yourself in this story today? I wonder. Maybe you're here today, as someone you know, overtly, with your life, you have been like the Pharisees—openly rejecting the king of kings. I wonder if today might be the day you come to him and bend the knee—that you see him first crying for you and then dying for you. Because that’s what he does for his enemies.

Or maybe you see yourself like someone in the crowd today. Maybe you’ve worshiped him with your mouth, but just beneath the surface, you're still on the throne. You're still in charge. There are conditions upon your worship of him: "I'll follow him if..." Fill in the blank.

My prayer for all of us is that we would be like that donkey. Isn’t it great when the donkey is the hero other than Jesus? He's who we’re supposed to be like in this story. God uses the foolish things to shame the wise. That donkey, who just cooperated with the nature of things as they were—that donkey is the king. Stop fighting it.

What would that look like in your life? I’d like to suggest what I think that might look like. The truth is, in order for him to become your king, he had to get on a cross. But you know what else? In order for you to crown him, you have to get on a cross—die to your way, die to your pride. Say, "Lord, this is what I demand of you." No, he's the king. You just come and bring your life. You trust him, and you let him lead you—just like that donkey.

Closing and Invitation

I’d like to close with this quote, one of my favorites, from A.W. Tozer. He says:

And every Christian’s heart has a cross and a throne, and the Christian is on the throne until he puts himself on the cross. If he refuses the cross, he remains on the throne.

Perhaps this is at the bottom of the backsliding and worldliness among gospel believers today. We want to be saved, but we insist that Christ do all the dying. No cross for us. No dethronement. No dying. We remain king in the little kingdom of man’s soul, and wear our Caesar crown with pride.

Let him be your king. It’s what you were made for.

Conclusion

Lord, thank you for our time together this morning. We acknowledge and extol you as King. I pray that that wouldn’t just be lip service, but that it would be from the depths. Lord, thank you for your tears, that you weep for enemies and then you die for them. Praise God. Amen.

Well, listen, if you'd like to respond, if you'd like to respond, these rails will be open for you. If there's something you'd like to be prayed for, if you've brought some burden in here and you'd like someone to pray with you, there are some folks in the back who would love to do that for you. For the rest of us, let's stand and sing.