Praising Jesus on Sunday, Rejecting Him By Thursday

It’s Palm Sunday on a Fifth Sunday, and this morning, as I was getting ready for church that got me thinking. Nearly 2,000 Years ago on a similar Sunday, the crowds were laying Palm fronds and cloaks before Jesus who was riding in to Jerusalem on the colt of a Donkey and fulfilling prophecy. The city was excited, the Pharisees were enraged, and the mood was high. But that all changed on Thursday. Where were the crowds shouting “Hosanna”? Instead, they shouted “Crucify.” As I was meditating on this, all I could think of was “People wanted the Messiah they envisioned, and crucified the one they received.”

In the same way, the world loves Christmas Jesus, a baby in a manger. They love the Jesus who taught “love your enemies and pray for the one who persecutes you.” They love the Jesus who heals, and performs signs and wonders. They reject His teachings, as His own people did millennia ago. The world has always wanted God on its own terms. Worse, they reject the idea of the true God over them, and either seek to enthrone themselves, or to create gods that approve of their behaviors. Jesus did not come to bring pacifism, social change, or any worldly notion. He came to set people free from the tyranny of sin and death. He came to show us what God desired of all humanity, and He came to offer Himself as a ransom for the debt that sin incurs. He is Lord and Master of all. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Our opinions do not matter. Our obedience to Him does.

Colossians 1:3-29

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit.

And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.