Zechariah 9:9-12
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,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall speak peace to the nations;
his rule shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.
Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
today I declare that I will restore to you double.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Happy Palm Sunday. Today we are journeying through the final week of Lent. Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Jesus's Passion Week as he enters into Jerusalem, the humble King, riding on a donkey with a crowd following him. They are waving their palm ranches. They are throwing their cloaks ahead of them, they shout, bless it is he who comes in the name of the Lord? Pretty fun day, right? I imagine looking back at the crowd and being amazed at what's going on. Right? Can you see I mean, you can see in your head, right 1000s of people waiting for Jesus cheering. They had just heard that he had called Lazarus out of the grave. They're following they're throwing things. The Pharisees are looking out and going, Oh, no, what's going on? We look back at that. And we think What an impressive spectacle. What a joyful day. But it's actually kind of in contrast to what people expect it. We read in our opening that they were shouting blesseds is the is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel. And you think, Wait a second. Is that how kings come to a city they're about to conquer? With donkeys? On branches? No, of course not. The crowd that follow Jesus. If he were a conquering king, the king of Israel, they would have had armor and spears, shields, swords. They would have dragging behind them siege engines to bombard the walls and take them down so that they could storm Jerusalem and go after punches Pilate out the Romans and live under a new king. That would have been much more impressive, right? Jesus himself would not have been in his lowly clothes on a donkey. He would have been on a horse with a crown armor, gleaming white flashing eyes would have been very impressive. Very different from the humble King that we see. His crowd was not dangerous. They were in need of being saved. His horse was not mighty. It was a donkey. And it makes us see that Jesus is a different kind of king. A king who does not have an army that does not have warriors. But a king who operates differently and are reading today when we were standing outside pointed us to Zachariah chapter nine or Old Testament reading that looks forward to Jesus coming in on this donkey into Jerusalem. Behold, your King is coming to you righteous and having salvation is he humble and mounted on a donkey on a colt, the fall of a donkey. Zachariah gives us a little bit about what Jesus's kingdom will be like. It says, I will cut off the chariot from Efrem and the war horse from Jerusalem and the battle bow shall be cut off. And he shall speak peace to the nations. His rule shall be from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. Wait a second. How does the king rule without a chariot? A war horse or a battle bow. That's not how it works. Even God's people, when they went out to meet the nations, what did they do? They brought their weapons with them because that's how you ruled King David. He was a warrior, a leader of men he fought battles when he was going to be crowned king before that while Saul was was getting jealous of him. You know what the people chanted, Saul has killed his 1000s. David his 10s of 1000s. That's how the Kingdom of Israel enabled its rule defended its borders and protected its people. It's the same way with every other nation and Empire. If you think about the Babylonians, that's what they did when they conquered the city of Jerusalem. The Mongols, they develop the largest empire in history, by battle, by fighting the Romans to who controlled Jerusalem, they had this amazing Pax Romana, which was this whole area of the empire, you could be safe and travel and be free. And how did they enforce it? Not with gentle words, with a poke of a spear every nation ever since. And every nation that has ever existed, has enforced its rules and its boundaries with violence and threats of violence. Napoleon, Hill, Germany, China, even the United States, every one defends itself, and governs its people with violence. When they go out to the nations, they use threats, to keep the peace. What about Jesus, it will cut off the chariot, the war horse and the battle bow, there will be no guns or missiles or weapons or just peace. And his rule shall be from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth. That's how Jesus enters his city. A conqueror, a king, with no army. How does Christ rule over this kingdom? How does he deliver His salvation, enforce his boundaries and change his people govern his church. It's not with violence. It's very simple. It's by the power of the Word of God. That is how God governs his kingdom, we call the church. Now you might go wait a second. That's not all that big a deal. This is just words, after all, but we have to remember the power that is behind the humble and lowly Word of God. It is the word of God that said, Let there be lights and light came into existence. Everything that you see everything all around you was spoken into existence, by the voice of God. Out of nothing. The Word of God went out and did other things too. When Christ was out with his disciples on the water, we in the boat and the waves were washing up and everyone was scared they were gonna drown. Jesus said, Peace be still and the waves listened. We can't even get our kids to listen. And the disciples, they looked at him and said, Who is this the wind and the waves obey him was the Word of God that gathered the crowd of people to Jesus. The word that he spoke just before that when he went to a tomb, and he said, Lazarus come out. And the dead man got up and walked out of the grave that's the word of God at work. Spear can't do that. And now they're gonna missile Reagan. The same power is at work when God gave His word people. God gave his word to Moses. In the book of Exodus. He went and he spoke to Pharaoh and the plagues came. He turned the Nile to blood he brought gnats and flies and hail and disease and even blotted out the sun. All by the power of God's Word. God gave His words to Elijah when he went to Ahaz And he said it will not rain or dew until I say so.
And it didn't rain for three years. God's word, power. And the word came to the disciples which they spoke in the book of acts on the day of Pentecost, and 3000, new Christians joined the church that day. The Holy Spirit is there at work in the power of the word. Paul reminds us of this, when he says, the word is near you, in your heart, and in your mouth. That is the word of faith that we proclaim. Because if you confess with your mouth, that Jesus is Lord, and believe with your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. As Isaiah puts it, where is the rain in the snow come down from heaven and do not return there, the water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be, that goes out from my mouth, it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent. The Word of God is the power of Christ, our King, that he uses to deliver salvation to you and govern us, his people and guide us in His Church. And it's the word of God that empowers our sacraments. Matthew 28 tells us of baptism, where Jesus says, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The Word of God empowers Holy Communion. Luther tells us that as these words given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins, that empowers the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament, to deliver these things to give us life and salvation. The Word of God that gives strength to the absolution that I spoke before, where Jesus said to His disciples received the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven them, if you withhold forgiveness from any of it is withheld. The Word of God, it empowers the entirety of what the church does. It is how God changes your hearts. It's how he molds our minds. It's how he guides what we do. And it's how he gathers more people into our flock, and preserves us from the evil. It's all in the word, read and spoken and proclaimed the Word of God. As we consider the humble King, riding on a donkey, with a small crowd around him, that's not the crowd you'd expect. no weapons, no power. Would you consider that it is not a surprise then that the word of God does not appear impressive? Right? Nothing near so impressive as all of the human things that we think are pretty cool. And so often, even we who understand the word and its power, can lose confidence in it. We can say to ourselves, any number of things regarding this, but one of the things that we might say is, well, that works for people back in those days, pastor, but nobody's listening to it. Now. Kids these days need something more than they need something else to gather them to really get out there and do it. This is something the church has been saying for centuries. And it didn't work. Back when the first Lutheran colonists came over to the United States in the 1700s. That's what some of them said. They said, Ah, these Americans, they will never listen to the Word of God like we grew up with. We need a new American version that will get the young people into church didn't work. Those groups that fell off the map, were left behind. And then every couple of generations, a new group would pop up and say, Ah, this word of God, it just isn't strong enough anymore. You know what we really need, we need to do tent meetings out in the wilderness, and get those snazzy songs and get the people all riled up. Because if we do that, then then the kids will come to church. Which is why there are tent meetings in every city, every place or across the country right now. Not so much, right? Because that movement fell away to the same thing happened over and over and over again. They thought is they had to hide the Word of God behind something else, to trick people into hearing it. And instead, what they did was they focused on that whatever that thing is, they didn't get Christians. It would be kind of like a basketball league that decided that people weren't interested in basketball. So what they would do is they would have singing, and dancing. And you know what you get when you do that? Basketball players in jerseys who like to sing and dance, right? Not play basketball. When we think that we have to add something to the Word of God, what we end up doing is covering up God's power and presenting human things. Similar thing happens when we think we need to be protected from the world by something more than God's power. You see, the word of God is what defends us. The Word of God is what preserves us. And it does it through the sacraments and the word that we hear every single day. But sometimes Christians think, well, the world is just far more dangerous and terrible than it used to be. We need people who will protect and save us. And then we make alliances with people who like to use guns, and missiles to protect us, law and power. Which ends up making us no longer the church again. Because what we do is we trust the people that we vote into office, the people who make the laws. We trust them to protect and preserve us, acting as if the same power that overthrew the Roman Empire. Through the preachings of the apostles could not protect us here today in America. The same power that went out and took over the entire world, without a politician on its side. Couldn't keep us safe, until the return of Jesus Christ. You don't want to make alliances with bad people, just because we're scared. We want to trust the Savior. To gives us His word, the same word that spoke light into darkness that quieted the waves that forgives sins and saves us from the devil is here protecting us today and now. Christ gives us peace and safety. He rules over all the nations not with violence, but by the power of His Word. His rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. And it will be that way until the day he returns. In Jesus name, Amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai