On Palm Sunday, Jesus rode triumphantly into Jerusalem. He received a King’s welcome. People spread their cloaks on the ground to “make a path” for Jesus to travel on. They waved palm branches which were symbols of victory. We know from history that the waving of palms was done to celebrate kings and conquerors. In addition, we know that in Greek athletic competitions, the victors were given palms to wave in honor of their victory. Instead of the gold, bronze or silver medal, they received a palm, and it meant just as much as those medals do today.
This picture of Jesus as a conquering King is also described by John in Revelation 7:9 as he paints a picture for us of what Heaven will be like. After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. Jesus is being celebrated as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords by every nation, tribe, and tongue in Heaven, and on Palm Sunday, there was a similar demonstration on earth.
The Palm Sunday account is called the “Triumphal Entry” for a reason. People were recognizing the One who had been sent to triumph, the One who had been sent to conquer. However, they did not understand just what Jesus would triumph over; just what He would conquer. There was a great expectation for Him to triumph over Rome, to deliver them from political oppression. In their shortsightedness they saw that as their greatest need. It wasn’t. It still isn’t.
There will always be political upheaval this side of Heaven. We cannot get so fixated on what is happening in the political realm that we fail to see what is happening in the spiritual realm. As citizens of Heaven, we belong to a greatly superior Kingdom than the kingdoms of this world. So many in Jesus’ day were focused on their earthly circumstances that they failed to see their spiritual need and see that Jesus was the answer to it all.
We know the cries of “Hosanna” quickly turned to cries of “Crucify.” Scholars debate just how many of the Palm Sunday Crowd were also in the “Crucify Crowd” a few days later, but the point is public opinion changed. With loud voices, those who rejected Jesus as a spiritual King, those who rejected Him as the Messiah, called for His crucifixion.
It is actually this transition from “Hosanna” to “Crucify” that gives me great confidence in the Sovereignty of God. This transition and the betrayal of Judas, the disciple who offered Jesus up to be arrested by Rome for 30 pieces of silver, those two moments give me great confidence that nothing that happens can thwart the greater plan of God. Jesus suffered betrayal and rejection, yes, but everything that happened played out according to God’s eternal plan. In that moment, when the crowd called for the release of a prisoner named Barabbas and for the crucifixion of the prisoner named Jesus, they thought they were in control. However, God was executing His perfect will that the entire world would be saved.
God’s plans were far greater than for the Jews in Jerusalem and surrounding areas. God’s plans were for the salvation of the entire world. When John had his vision of Heaven, where people were waving palm branches around the throne in Heaven, he saw that will come to fruition as people from every nation, tribe and tongue were joining together in that time of worship.
So, yes, Jesus died, but that is what He came to do, and I would argue this morning based on the Word of God that Jesus wasn’t a victim. Oh, He was crucified, that is true. He absolutely died as a result of that crucifixion, no doubt. No friends, Jesus wasn’t a victim. Jesus was a willing sacrifice. His death wasn’t the result of being a victim with no choice. Jesus had the power to lay down His life, and that is what He chose to do for us. Look at this text from John chapter 10:
John 10:11 and 14-18-11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. 17 The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.”
I want us to understand that what Jesus did, He did willingly. No one forced Jesus to die. No one took Jesus’ life. He laid it down. Jesus made His point a few times in these short verses to drive it home. He said, “I lay down my life. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” And notice how He emphasized what He was doing. He said, “I have authority to lay it down.” Twice, in these two verses, He also said He would take His life up again. It is clear that Jesus had made a decision to sacrifice His life, to give His life for the sins of the world.
Mark 10:45 emphasizes Jesus as the One who had pre-decided, pre-determined to be crucified. He said this of Himself, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Jesus emphatically declared that no one took His life. Rather, He gave it. Does that make you even more in awe of His love for you? Does that give you a deeper appreciation for His sacrifice? He didn’t have to be talked into it. He wasn’t deceived or tricked. He knew what He had determined to do.
Now, what I want us to notice is something that could easily be missed or minimized. Here it is: His decision was in response to the will of God the Father. We cannot miss this. When faced with the plan of God, when confronted with the will of God, Jesus had a choice, and He chose, not just in the instance of the cross, but in all of His earthly life, He chose the will of God. Look at John 6:38-“For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.”
In His humanity, Jesus had to wrestle with the will of God, just like we do. His surrender to the Father’s will wasn’t a one-time surrender either. He left Heaven which took the surrendering of His Divine rights and privileges as a member of the Godhead. Look at Philippians 2:5-8 5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature[a] God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature[b] of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man…
His commitment to the will and plan of God led Him to surrender. He literally emptied Himself to become a human. God became a servant. Deity became a commoner. Glory was forfeited for flesh. Oh, the surrender began long before the Cross.
His surrender began in His mind. He chose a mindset of surrender. Philippians 2:5 says, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.” There will be no surrender to the will of God without the surrendering of our way of thinking. To know what God desires, to know what God expects, to know where God is leading and to possess a “so what” mindset isn’t the way of discipleship. The mindset of discipleship is a full surrender to the will of God.
The mind of a disciple of Jesus must be focused on doing the will of God alone. John 4:34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish His work. Do you hear the commitment in that statement? Jesus compared doing the Father’s will to feeding His own body. We don’t willingly skip too many meals, do we? We pay attention to the cravings of our bodies, the needs of our bodies. And when we start to get hangry, we do something about it. We are conscious of what our bodies need, and we take the necessary steps to satisfy those needs.
As disciples of Christ, we are to be conscious of the will of God and take the necessary steps to accomplish that will. All throughout His earthly ministry, Jesus was questioned and harassed by the religious leaders. Time after time, He chose not to defend Himself because He was surrendered. He was surrendered moment by moment to a greater plan than one His flesh could create. Most of us would be quick to defend ourselves, to let people know just “who they are dealing with,” and so many times, Jesus let attacks roll on without the need for any defense. Why? Because He was choosing the will of the Father.
There are many times the Scriptures tell us that Jesus said, “My time has not come,” or “My hour has not come.” Jesus resisted any temptation to exert His will if it usurped the will of the Father. If defending Himself didn’t fit the moment, if it didn’t support the will of God, He didn’t engage.
Choosing the Father’s will was an ongoing, daily choice for Jesus, and it must be for us as well. Not only did surrender involve Jesus’ mind, but it absolutely involved His heart.
If TVCOG filmmaker, Jacob Holmes, would make a movie about Jesus’ prayer time and arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, and if he asked me to title it, I would tell him it should be called “All Heart.” it would be a tear-jerker from start to finish. When we read the Scriptures, we often read them as words on a page, as history that took place, as a story to know, rather than as deep passion that was expressed. Gethsemane was a gut-wrenching place of deep anguish and sorrow. There, we see Jesus’ heart on display. His heart was broken. He was absolutely gutted in the Garden of Gethsemane.
In Gethsemane, we witness the failure of His disciples to watch and pray with Him for even an hour. While Jesus was in agony and distress in the place of prayer, His disciples were asleep a few feet away. Picture if I was going through something traumatic, something horrific, and I had a few of my friends up here on the platform with me. Envision the scene. I’m needing help from people I think I can count on, but instead of comforting me, instead of kneeling with me to pray, instead of offering an encouraging word, instead of even listening to the pain I am pouring out, they physically turn their backs on me and talk to each other or just drift off to sleep like the disciples did.
How cold-hearted or selfish or emotionally unintelligent would people have to be to not be able to see the struggle their friend Jesus was enduring? Satan had entered into the heart of Judas to betray Jesus. Had he somehow blinded them from seeing the enormity of Jesus’ agony in the Garden? That is an extrabiblical thought, so don’t take that as Bible. It’s just something that came to my mind as I tried to wrap my mind around how they could have been so insensitive to Jesus in that crushing time.
The content of Jesus’ struggle was the weightiest to date. Surrender would require not just a commitment to a plan in His mind, not just a suspension of a desire to defend Himself, but it would require His all, and in that moment, Jesus was conflicted. It’s in the text. Luke 22:42-42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”
In that moment, Jesus and the Father had a different will, a different desire. It is right here in the text. “Yet not my will, but YOURS be done.” Does that ever happen to you? Do you sometimes have a different will from the will that the Father has for your life? Sure it does. “The struggle is real,” right? God wants something for us or wants us to accomplish something for Him, and we have a choice to make. It will require our minds and our hearts.
Jesus asked to be excused from His mission. His hour had come, but He didn’t want to step into it. He didn’t want to “drink the cup” that He was being given to drink. He asked for the cup to be taken from Him. He was wanting to pass on drinking the cup of sacrifice.
It was going to be too hard. It was going to cost too much. It was going to involve horrific physical and emotional abuse and heartache. It was going to be a bloody and bitter cup that He would have to drink. He was literally going to take into His inner being a cosmic blast of wrath, the judgment for the sins of the entire world.
What I want us to see, however, is that there was no hesitation from Jesus’ ask for a pass and His surrender to the Father’s will once again. He didn’t say, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me,” and then wait to see if the Father would say, “I’m so sorry You have to do this. I wish it didn’t have to be this way. Maybe we can work something out.” You know how we sometimes throw something out there to someone, hoping they will come back with an offer for us to be less involved or less inconvenienced? Don’t look at me like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You know the trick. Sometimes the phrase starts with, “I’m just checking to see if you still need me” or “If you think you have enough help, would it be Ok if I didn’t show” or some other cue to elicit a pass from the other person.
Jesus didn’t say what He said to try to get the Father to change the plan. No, Jesus said what He said so that we could see that He was making a choice to surrender.
Jesus wanted us to understand that surrender IS a choice, and that surrender IS often a struggle. I would also submit to you that Jesus wanted to model that surrender to the will of God is the highest goal and will accomplish the greatest good. It took more than His mind in that moment. It took His whole heart.
Perhaps this is the greatest, most poignant expression of the reality that Jesus and the Father are one. They were one in heart. Jesus’ heart was for the Father’s will and for that reason, He quickly moved from “take this cup from Me” to “have Your way with My life.” And the will of the Father was to crush Jesus (Is. 53:10) and to cause Him to suffer so that we could live.
I’ve always known the Garden arrest took place late on Thursday of Holy Week and that the crucifixion took place on Friday, what we now call Good Friday. I have also known that Jesus, after He was arrested, He endured several court trials; six to be exact. There were three trials in front of Jewish leaders and three trials in front of Roman authorities. When did those happen? They took place all throughout the night between the late Thursday arrest and Friday morning. The Jews broke many of their own laws to rush Jesus through the many court proceedings, the first of which was that no trial was to be held at night. Talk about the dark night of the soul. All night, Jesus was questioned, accused, and condemned.
Jesus was tried before Annas, the former high priest; Caiaphas, the current high priest; and the Sanhedrin. He was charged in those “ecclesiastical” trials with blasphemy, claiming to be the Son of God, the Messiah. The trials before the Roman authorities started with Pilate (John 18:23) after Jesus was beaten. The charges brought against Him were very different from the charges in the religious trials. He was charged with inciting people to riot, forbidding the people to pay their taxes, and claiming to be King. Pilate found no reason to kill Jesus, so he sent Him to Herod (Luke 23:7). Herod had Jesus ridiculed but, wanting to avoid the political liability, sent Jesus back to Pilate (Luke 23:11–12). This was the last trial as Pilate tried to appease the animosity of the Jews by having Jesus scourged. The Roman scourge was a terrible whipping designed to remove the flesh from the back of the one being punished. In a final effort to have Jesus released, Pilate offered the prisoner Barabbas to be crucified and Jesus released, but to no avail. The crowds called for Barabbas to be released and Jesus to be crucified. Oh, how quickly things can change! From riding into Jerusalem and being hailed a King to being sentenced to die like a common criminal. Pilate granted their demand and surrendered Jesus to be killed (Luke 23:25). The trials of Jesus represent the ultimate mockery of justice. Jesus, the most innocent man in the history of the world, was found guilty of crimes and sentenced to death by crucifixion. And all throughout the horrific night of questioning, Jesus stayed surrendered to the Father. He stayed bowed down to the will of God.
Remember, no one took Jesus’ life. He laid it down. He, the Good Shepherd, laid it down. He gave His mind to it. He gave His heart to it. He gave His all. Here’s what I want to leave you with: The surrendered life isn’t imposed on anyone, including Jesus. It must be chosen.
Neither the “Hosanna Crowd” or the “Crucify Crowd” understood what was happening as it was unfolding for Jesus. Many people won’t understand your choice, if in fact, it is full surrender to the will of God because it will seem counter intuitive at times. It might even appear weak, in those moments that you choose not to defend yourself. It might cost you more than others think is reasonable to pay, but what is accomplished will be far greater than you could ask or imagine. To exert our own will, to accomplish our own plans will gain us a moment of earthly applause or a second of satisfaction, but to accomplish the will of God, will be to make a lasting impact on many for eternity.
One last Scripture: John 8:28-29- 28 So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up[a] the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. 29 The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.” Anything less than full surrender would have kept us from knowing, truly knowing that Jesus was and is the Messiah. Had He stopped short of the cross, we could never live convinced. Aren’t you glad that Jesus surrendered? Notice that the surrendered life is where we experience God with us. The surrendered life is where we become aware that we are never alone. And the last phrase of Jesus’ words here in John 8 sum up the entire message: “For I always do what pleases Him.” Can we say the same? Jesus surrendered. Will we?
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