Episode 1309: This is the Day

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1,309 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:06] Myles Wakeham: I'm Myles Wakeham. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to live an unconstrained life is key and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this The Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott.

[00:00:35] Scott Maderer: Where that human confusion that we all have, that human doubt that we all have is called out and put on the front burner. And as we ask Hosanna, will you save us? We have to understand part of what we're asking to be saved from is our very own. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the [00:01:00] Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:01:02] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the.

[00:01:31] In today's spiritual foundation episode, I talk about Matthew Chapter 21, verses one through 17. I talk about how Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday are both very human days, and I also share how the questions we have are more important than the answers we. As they approached Jerusalem and came to Beth Phage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples saying to them, go to the village ahead of [00:02:00] you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there with her cult, by her.

[00:02:04] Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them and he will send them right away. This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet say to daughter's ion. See, your king comes to you gentle in writing on a don. And on a cult, the full of a donkey, the disciples went and did, as Jesus had instructed them, they brought the donkey in the cult and placed their cloaks on them.

[00:02:29] For Jesus to sit on a very large crowd, spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road, the crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed, shouted, hosanna to the son of David. Blessed as he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.

[00:02:47] When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, who is this? The crowd answered, this is Jesus the prophet from Nazareth and Galilee. Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and [00:03:00] selling there. He overturned the tables of the mini changers and the benches of those selling doves.

[00:03:05] It is written, he said to them, my house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a dent of robbers. The blind in the lame came to him at the temple and he healed. But when the chief priest and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant.

[00:03:23] Do you hear what the children are saying? They asked him, yes, reply Jesus. Have you never read from the lips of children and infants? You Lord have called forth your praises. He left them and went out of the city to Bethany where he spent. this is a passage that we've used to talk about passion or Palm Sunday in the churches at various times we're in that season of what they call Holy Week around Easter, and you have all of these special Sundays to recognize all of these different events that occurred at this time.

[00:03:58] And this [00:04:00] is a day that the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it. You've heard that and this is a day and it could be made argued that this is a day for us of all the different high and holy days. This one in some ways seems to be the most human. This is a week where there's a divine to human encounter.

[00:04:24] And this day, the Palm Passion Sunday Day, this in some ways is the most human. Of those days. I, in many ways the Easter Sunday is God's day and we receive it like a gift. Good Friday is a day where sin and these things are exposed and they're ugliness. And we have Monday, Thursday, which is a D day that in many ways honors Jesus.

[00:04:52] And yes, they all honor Jesus and they all are about Jesus, but they illustrate different parts of that. [00:05:00] And Monday, Thursday often illustrates by example and by word what it means to follow Jesus. But this day in some ways is a different day. It's a more human day. This is the day that Jesus makes a declaration.

[00:05:16] He claims the ritual and the pageant and the triumphal entry that a conquering king would. When they were coming back and or a day where a king was going to be enthroned. It, it's a day of pageantry. And here he is subsuming it in a way and saying, I'm claiming now the crown and the throne that was mine from the beginning of time.

[00:05:42] And we don't wanna reduce that in any way. If it was just Palm Sunday that we were recognizing you could stand back and wave the branches and shout for salvation, which is what Hosanna meant. Save us. And there is a lot of energy that can be put part towards that parade of [00:06:00] Palm Sunday, and there's nothing wrong with that.

[00:06:03] But there is also an understanding and a hint of why this is also recognized as passion Sunday. There, there's a truth that's being told in this a collision of us shouting praise, and shortly coming after Hosanna comes, calls to crucify him. These are in the same week, but they're also in the same day.

[00:06:31] They're in the same. It. It's this remembrance of how we can flip flop from one moment to the next, from a place of asking for salvation to a place of condemning to death. Are we standing, celebrating? Are we standing asking for help? Are we standing calling for judgments? Are we standing saying we are better than others?

[00:06:56] Are we standing in some way saying [00:07:00] that we're the main. . See, many people think about it in terms of what was Jesus doing here? Was Jesus putting himself on this cult and this donkey holding himself hard forward for recognition, for adulation, soaking up some honor, knowing that shortly after this, he's going to be suffering on the cross, and that doesn't seem like it completely fits.

[00:07:30] There's also this celebration where they're laying palm leaves down in front, and maybe you've gone to a church where they do that. Sometimes they even bring in a donkey and often that creates other problems. But all of these questions come to mind. Was was this whole thing with the donkey, the cult, was that prearranged had somebody gone ahead and said, Hey, we're gonna borrow your donkey, or was the whole city really involved in.

[00:07:59] Or was there [00:08:00] just a few people? What was there? How is it that they talk about a donkey, but they also talk about a cult? Was Jesus writing two different animals at the same time? Were the people that were pulling down the branches of trees asking the owners of those trees if they could do it did they get it?

[00:08:20] What, was there something going on underneath the purpose? This is a king coming not on a warhorse as a conquering hero, but on a donkey representing peace. And the answer that they tell us is people are yelling hosanna in reply. That implies that they got it. They understood Jesus was there to save them, but maybe not in the way that they originally thought.

[00:08:47] Maybe they wanted to get it or maybe they did get it. Maybe the rest of the city was clueless. Maybe the disciples were clueless. Maybe the crowd was large, but maybe some of the people in the crowd didn't [00:09:00] get it, and others did. By that time, maybe Hosanna no longer meant save us. Maybe it just meant hooray or howdy ora, or something like that.

[00:09:11] Maybe it was even goodbye or a blessing, God be with you. Maybe people were turning to each other. Wh why are we doing this? Why are we following this guy? And people would say, I don't know, but there's that Jesus guy from Galilee. And they'd say, yeah yeah, Jesus got it. And they didn't really know it.

[00:09:32] It's hard to say if they got it or not. It's hard to answer the questions of what actually happened, and the prey doesn't end with handshakes and high fives. A job well done. No the it ends when they get to the temple and Jesus turns over tables and knocks over some dove cages and throws some people out, chases them with whips.

[00:09:55] Here he is coming in, writing a donkey representing peace, and then the [00:10:00] very next passage is him striking a blow. And not against the Romans, not against the foreign oppressors, but. The economic machinery going on in the temple against his own people in some way. Wouldn't it have been better to keep a low profile in some way and maybe just write a nasty note or send a letter, but instead No.

[00:10:25] He dramatically acts out against the structures of the time and points out how they are wrong at that. These questions all come to mind, and yet it's really hard to have any answers to them. It's important to recognize as you celebrate and look forward to Easter, that this is a time where that human confusion that we all have, that human doubt that we all have is called out and put [00:11:00] on the front burn.

[00:11:02] And as we ask Hosanna, will you save us? We have to understand part of what we're asking to be saved from is our very own selves. Thanks for listening.

[00:11:21] Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor. Go over to facebook.com/inspir.

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