A Blessed and Holy Palm Sunday
I know that most of you already know, and doubtless heard or
are hearing numerous messages from the pulpit about Palm Sunday, and know what
it is all about. Therefore, I will not bore you by repeating words that are
still resounding in your ears, other than to add my own greetings to you from
Gateway to Heaven Church on this beautiful Sunday before Easter.
That being said though, I wonder what Scripture you heard
mentioned. Maybe all four Gospels and
maybe too, Zachariah 9:9. But I bet
hardly any of the messages you heard mentioned or explained why Jesus wept over
Jerusalem? And if they did, what do you
remember? Do you know why Jesus wept at
a time when He was being hailed and greeted and treated like a king, when an
earthly king would have been waving and smiling and feeling a feeling of
grandeur?
I suggest to you a primary reason was that while an earthly
king would have simply savored the glory of the moment, Jesus was seeing events
5 days hence, when that same adoring crowd would be shouting, “Away with Him
crucify him?
Have you ever been there?
Do you remember when the mouth you fed yesterday, turned round and bit
you the very next day?
A second reason of course was that Jesus’ eyes were fixed on
an event 40 or so years later (c. A D 70), when the temple would be reduced to
rubble, hence His words, “not one stone would be left on top another.”
But the Scripture I choose for today is the one found in
Luke’s Gospel Chapter 19: 1-10. And it does not deal with the Palm Sunday event
per se, but the prelude to that event.
It concerns a little man, and a little rich man at that, whose name was Zacchaeus, you remember him,
and how he climbed a tree among the throng, and how Jesus saw him and told him
to come down because He Jesus wanted to dine with him? We know too that Zacchaeus was a rich Tax
Collector, a category of person that the Jews hated. For instance Jesus had a
lot of explaining to do to have Matthew accepted into the fold with His other
disciples because Matthew was a tax collector. But we note too, that though
Zacchaeus was rich, his heart was in the right place unlike the rich young
ruler who sought Jesus only to turn away when Jesus told to sell all he had and
give it to the poor. But Zacchaeus was different; his heart sought after God
and saw that Jesus as his only way in. So in the midst of the accusations made
against Him by the self-righteous Jews Jesus said, “For the Son of man is come,
to seek and to save that which is lost.” (19:10)
And in the words of Romans 3: 23, “All have sinned and come
short of the glory of God.”
May God bless everyone who reads and heeds His Holy Word.
A Message from www.gatewaytoheavenchurch.org
