Luke 19:28-44

Majesty and Meekness

by Pastor Jim Lincoln on Palm Sunday, April 1, 2007

One of the things I find so attractive about Jesus is the way qualities that normally contradict each other come together in Jesus with perfect balance¹ . I want to be a balanced person, but I can be prone to extremes. I can identify with the woman that asked if there really was a middle ground between lethargy and hysteria. Luther said that we're often like a drunken sailor on a donkey who just can't manage to stay in the middle. Unlike us, Jesus is always in perfect balance. It's the harmony of things that often conflict that makes Jesus so glorious. And to be like Jesus is to discover that same kind of harmony and balance of godly attributes in our own lives.

On the one hand, Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. What is it about a lion that makes it majestic? Isn't it its enormous strength and power? Isn't the roar of a lion is so majestic, fierce, and strong that it seems to come from everywhere and surround everything. The way a lion is with those massive shoulders, huge head and a full mane around its neck communicates intimidating authority. At the same time Jesus is the Lamb of God. Two things could not be more opposite. A lamb excels in meekness, humility, and dependence² . Sheep are humble and vulnerable. Only in Jesus do these two things meet perfectly together.

Consider justice and mercy. We often struggle with the question of whether we're being too harsh and judgmental or if we're being too soft and too nice. Whether it has to do with raising children or dealing with an employee, we often wonder if we're being too harsh or too soft. Jesus combines these tow things perfectly every time. In Jesus, infinite justice and infinite mercy meet perfectly because He's both. As the judge of the earth, He's a righteous judge and will not unjustly acquit or clear the guilty. Yet, at the same time He's infinitely merciful. His grace is sufficient for sinners like you and me and not only to give us some good but also to give us the greatest good possible. Both of these meet perfectly in Jesus and nowhere else. Explain to me from any other religious belief system how the guilty can be cleared and perfect justice be preserved at the same time. It's impossible. But in Jesus, justice and mercy meet perfectly. The list goes on and on. As the Son of God and co-creator of the universe, Jesus has supreme dominion, and yet he is the most submissive and obedient person who ever lived. In Jesus, infinite glory and infinite humility come together in a way not possible for any other being³ . He just makes you step back and say, "Wow! How is it that such glorious and diverse attributes can come together in one person?" There is only one answer. Jesus is the Son of God. He's the supreme manifestation of God on the earth.

That balance or combination of divine qualities is no better seen than on that first Palm Sunday. So, this morning, I want us to consider the way Jesus combines two seemingly contradictory things. Let's discover how He reveals both His majesty and His meekness. If you want a picture, then look to Rev. 5, where John reveals Jesus as the Lion of the tribe of Judah and as the Lamb of God on the throne. He came into Jerusalem that last Sunday as both. If you can lay hold of both, you'll get it. If you can't, you'll be like most in Jerusalem that day that missed the real Jesus even though He was right in front of them.

Jesus, His Majesty, The Lion of the Tribe of Judah

Let's start with His majesty. How Did Jesus come to Jerusalem that first Palm Sunday as the coming King in Majesty? How did He come as the Lion of the tribe of Judah? I see four ways He did this.

First, notice that even though it was shallow and self serving Jesus accepted praises as the King and Messiah. Jesus never rejected or corrected the claim that He was God's Messiah or God's anointed king. All Jesus had to do to save himself from crucifixion was to say, "No, you've got it wrong I'm not really the Messiah. I'm not the Son of God. I'm not claiming equality with God. Like you, I'm only one with God in purpose. You've misunderstood me." That's all He had to do. But when Jesus came down the Mountain into Jerusalem, the crowds shouted. They got the words right. (38) "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord." Matthew records them saying, "Hosanna to the Son of David." These things were accurate and true. Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of David, the long-awaited Ruler of Israel, and the fulfillment of God's promises. Do you know what God Himself said about the Messiah in Ps. 45:6? God the Father said to God the Son, "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever." God the Father said to the angels, "And let the angels worship Him." Jesus accepted this praise. He received the accolades on the first Palm Sunday with no reservation or qualification.

However, because the crowds couldn't hold together the majesty of Christ and the Meekness of Christ, they could only image Jesus coming to Jerusalem to take His throne by force and free Israel from Roman occupation. They had no place in their theology for the Meekness of the Messiah. So, Jesus was met that day with accurate words about His authority, but His followers were blind to the way he would bring about his kingdom, and his enemies were prepared to do anything to see Jesus dead by the end of the week.

Beloved, this is a great love. That Jesus would walk straight into that crucible of shallow and self-serving followers and hostile enemies and still pursue their joy is a wondrous love. No one has ever loved us like Jesus. It's one thing to suffer when you are being applauded for it. It's quite another to suffer when everyone turns their head away and pities you for not living up to their expectations. And that's what happened to Jesus. As long as He met their expectation He was hailed as their King.

I see His majesty in His willingness to accept their praise as the Messiah even though it was the same crowd that said, "Hosanna to the Son of David" on Sunday, yet they would be saying, "Crucify Him" on Thursday. Jesus' love is so great and resolute that he goes into Jerusalem so that sinners like us could have peace with God. He willingly and with unequaled nobility rode into that kind of rejection and hostility for us. So, beloved, worthy, is the Lamb!

Second, we see His majesty in the fact that He did all of this knowing what was going to happen before any of it did. In Luke 18:31, He even prepared His disciples by saying,

"See, we are going up to Jerusalem and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him and on the third day he will rise."⁴

Jesus predicted all of this: the betrayal, the mocking, the shame, the murder, the unbelief, and hostility. None of this was a surprise to Jesus. Albert Schweitzer said that Jesus was simply the victim of powerful men and circumstances. He said that Jesus just underestimated how low wicked men would stoop. Schweitzer paints Jesus as just too na?ve, innocent, and humble for his own good. Schweitzer couldn't hold the balance of Jesus' meekness and majesty. But does the record suggest that Jesus was just naive and unaware of what was going to happen to him? Of course it doesn't. In His sovereign awareness, He predicted exactly what would happen. No one blindsided Jesus.

Third, He demonstrated His majesty in the things He did. In v. 37 the people were praising Jesus with shouts of joy because of all the miracles He had done. This is exactly why they were praising him. Jesus had demonstrated His miraculous superiority to people like Pilate, the religious leaders and over everyone and everything else.

They saw Jesus heal leprosy with a touch, make the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the lame to walk; he had commanded the unclean spirits and they obeyed him; he stilled storms and walked on water and turned five loaves and two fish into a feast for thousands. He raised the dead. For crying out loud nothing could stop this man! Who can defeat a man who can raise the dead? If you kill his army, he can just raise them up again to fight another day. If you wound them, He can simply heal them. If He wants He can make nature serve Him in any battle to prevail. He could just speak and Pilate would perish; the Romans would be scattered. This is the logic of their praise. He demonstrated His sovereign rule and majesty over men, demon, and nature as well as life and death. They perceived all of this as a simple warm up of what was to come. No one there doubted His sovereign and divine majestic power. His many miracles proved it.

Jesus rode into this crucible knowing that He could prevail over His enemies at any moment if He wanted. He could call down 10,000 angels to protect and defend him. My favorite is when they come to arrest him in the garden and He said to them, "Who are seeking?" They say, "Jesus." He says, "I am He," and with that short response the temple soldiers' knees buckled and the force of Jesus' authoritative word tacked them all to the ground on their backs with them left looking up at the stars. Can you feel His strength, power, the authority, the calm, and the resolve as well as the restraint of His majesty? Beloved, No one takes His life from Him. He gave it up freely. He could have stopped it in the blink of an eye. However, His mission was to go to the cross. Not even His power to stop it would be used. So, after He made His point, He let the temple guards and religious leaders up off the ground to do what they came to do. Jesus revealed His majesty not only in the praise he accepted and in his foreknowledge of the cross, but also in the things He did that proved beyond doubt that He was Immanuel, God with us.

Finally, We see His majesty in His own words. When he told the disciples to go into the village and get the donkey for him to ride on, He said to tell the owner, "The LORD has need of it." In verse 43, His made the prediction, "A day is coming when your enemies will surround you and level you to the ground and they will not leave one stone upon another because you didn't recognize the day of your visitation." Forty years later, Titus did just that and burned Jerusalem to the ground.

When the Pharisees attempted to stop all of this saying, "Rebuke your disciples." Jesus said, "If they don't praise Me the stones will cry out the same things." The declaration of His majesty can't be contained. His claim is that the whole design of the universe is that He be praised. Now, if that's not true then Jesus was not a good teacher. He would be guilty of blasphemy and a wicked man. But He will get what he means to get. If we refuse to praise the rocks will get the joy. The threats of the Pharisees don't trouble Jesus.

When the Psalmist asks, "Why do the nations devise a vain thing?" (Ps.2) The Psalmists says that God just "laughs."

Amen and Amen or Truly Truly. In the synagogue, the synagogue elders would validate a Rabbis teaching in this way. At the end of his lesson they would huddle up and then they would publicly announce, "Amen and Amen" which meant "Truly, Truly." But isn't this how Jesus began many of His lessons? He often started His lessons by saying "Amen & Amen" or "Truly, Truly". By giving the judgment first, Jesus was saying, "I take away your right to judge my words. My truth comes from outside and above this world. My word judges the world. The world has no authority to judge my words. My words should become the basis for how you think about everything and all of your conclusions about life should yield to My words because they are always true."

Our world is committed to the proposition that there is no truth outside of our experience and that we have the right to judge our own conclusions. Jesus lays claim to have authority over us as the Lord of Life.

It was this claim that got Jesus killed. Jesus claimed to share the Father's ancient glory. He claimed that He made everything that has been created. He claimed that He and the Father are of the same essence. He claimed to be sinless. He said that He was the only one who could speak for God. He claimed that He is the only way to God and that someday He will come back and judge the world. This is why His enemies killed Him, they said, "You being a man, make yourself out to be God." As the Son of God, He claims authority over your life.

Aldus Huxley, the British novelist, studied the philosophy of meaninglessness in college. He said that he chose that because at the time he was sleeping with his girlfriend. He knew that any Christian philosophy course would trouble his conscience. He hated that restriction on his life. He wrote this,

"I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently, I assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. However, the philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned with pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way they find most advantageous to themselves....For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political. We objected to morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom...There was one simple method of confuting Christians and at the same time justify ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever."

Jesus came in to Jerusalem as God's Sovereign Majestic King and as such He lays claim on your life and mine as His rightful subjects.

The Lamb of God (Meekness)

But, here is immense relief and beauty. Jesus is not only the Lion of the Tribe of Judah; He's also the Lamb of God. He's not only infinitely sovereign; He is also infinitely meek and full of mercy. There are at least two ways Jesus is merciful here. I pray that we can become like Him in his mercy. No doubt there is a deep inner peace that God is in control and that God's wise purposes will come to pass. But that doesn't mean you can't cry. Jesus Wept for Jerusalem. Look at v. 41 "And when he approached He saw the city and wept over it." Jesus wept. Jesus felt compassion for Jerusalem. The word compassion means to suffer with. He did Judge Jerusalem justly, and He wept for Jerusalem. Let me ask, "Do we suffer with those who reject our message or do we simply judge them? I'm simply calling us to be like Jesus. I'm asking you if you are a balanced person? I'm asking if you feel tenderly the agony of those bound up in sin sickness and the tremendous turmoil they face in their battles with sin. Does that battle make you weep? Do those who disagree with us feel our humility, meekness as well as our judgments? What are we doing to make sure they hear this message of mercy? What are we doing to make them feel our own mercy toward them? In our social wars today I see little balance. I see a lot of vilifying going on, on both sides, and we mount up our arguments but there is little humility. Do we demonstrate as much tenderness, compassion, and humility as we do our judgments? I know it's a difficult balance. But it's to this balance that we are called. Jesus was bold to speak the truth. Jerusalem rejected the Messiah the Son of God, she rejected the day of God's visitation, and she would suffer judgment for that. And Jesus wept with a tender and broken heart. Beloved, I am calling us to be like Jesus: full of grace and full of truth at the same time.

Finally, Jesus showed His mercy by denying himself and sacrificing Himself. He didn't go into Jerusalem with a plan to succeed in winning them over. He went in with a plan to die. He didn't win by demanding His sovereign rights as the King. He doesn't win the day by persuasion. He doesn't win the day by debate. He wins the conflict through sacrificial love for those who rejected Him. He never compromised holiness. His love for others never stopped Him from exposing sin. That diagnosis is a loving thing. But He prevailed and conquered by losing His life.

Listen to how Jesus said that He sends us. He said, "I am sending you as sheep among wolves." Look, how much success does a lamb have when surrounded by a pack of rabid wolves? None. The lamb doesn't come out of there alive. None of the apostles died a natural death." On the plane of human calculations their lives were not considered a success. And neither was Jesus'. Except that on the third day, He rose again from the dead.

Will our moral judgments be connected to our sacrifices of love? What sacrifices of love are we making with those who reject our message? Jesus moved toward pain, loss, misery, sadness, and unbelief. He didn't stand back and simply judge it. And because He did...His death means heaven for us who believe. He died in our place to satisfy the majesty of God's justice and to show mercy to those who would receive it. No one else - no other religious leader has ever even tried to do this. No other could if they did try. That is so because Jesus is the spotless Lamb of God, the perfect sacrifice. And no one else has ever brought more joy to the Father and to us than His Son, Jesus. Who came and moved toward us with The Majesty and Meekness of God. May we admire and praise His Majesty. Jesus, the supreme manifestation of God in the earth, is with us. May His sovereign majesty calm your anxious heart. Beloved, he laughs at the nations that devise a vain thing. Don't be worried. If God is for you, who can stand against you? God wants you to interpret your circumstances in light of His sovereign promise to never stop doing you good. It is the LORD in all His majesty that stands behind all his promises to you! What are the chances that something of lesser power would prevail over Him? None!

May we also worship Him today in His mercy and meekness. Without giving up his inner peace that the Father was in control and that God's wise purposes would come to pass, He wept for and then sacrificed himself for a sin-sick world. He has done it for you and me. In His mercy, He died for us....that we now may have peace with God. He humbled himself and moved toward sinners with mercy and grace. Now He calls us to do the same. May God give us His tears and by His grace may we find the harmony of Jesus to live and enjoy both His Majesty and His meekness, for His glory and our great joy. Amen and Amen.