Sermon Cloud

Matthew 21:1-22 Shake Hands / Josh Vance delivers check
I was hoping this was going to come in today. I'd found out a month ago we'd been awarded this money but I wanted to make sure we had the check before announcing it to all of you. Our Advisory Council has already discussed what to do with this 1.2 million dollars. We're NOT building a building, remember, buildings don't reach people, people reach people. But thanks to this money, we're never going to have to serve again. We'll just show up on Sunday morning and everything will be taken care of. No more study for me, I'm going to hire someone to study for me. I'll just tell them the passage and topic and they'll prepare my messages. No more serving in the nursery, we're going to hire babysitters every single Sunday. No more working on set-up crew, we're going to hire some local college students. Band - you're done, we're hiring professional musicians. No more bringing donuts, we're just going to buy the Daylight Donuts that's for sale on Main Street.
And if we invest our money wisely, the interest alone will be enough for the hired help. Just think about it, we can show up on Sunday mornings and never have to give or serve again. You with me? You excited?
Good, I'm glad you're not with me. Other than the building comment, everything I just said was obviously tongue-in-cheek. Our worship planning team had thrown around the idea of dragging this out further, but it would've been to painfully obvious.
But this thought of "me-first" or "what God can do for me" while completely ignoring others is the common theme running through the 3 stories we just heard read.
The first story is what historians call "the triumphal entry." In the church calendar, we refer to this day as "Palm Sunday." This is the first time Jesus has entered Jerusalem since he began his teaching and leading. Jerusalem is an important city. In order for his teaching to spread as far as possible, he needed to make it to Jerusalem. Jesus knows this, but he's probably been avoiding it as well. Because Jesus knows that just a few days from now, he'll be hanging on the cross.
But the people in the crowd have no clue that the cross is coming. They are praising Jesus because of what they believe he's about to do for them. It's pretty easy to sense their motives. First of all, they're waving palm branches. This practice of waving palm branches started about two centuries before Jesus, during what was called the Maccabean Revolution.
The Revolution was in response to the Roman law that Jews had to give up their religious practices and become Greeks. So different bands of Jewish warriors carried out Guerilla warfare against the Roman army. Every time they'd win a victory, they'd march through the streets while the people waved palm branches. The people in Jerusalem think Jesus is going to overthrow Rome
And the title they were calling Jesus, "Son of David" was also a military term. David was the greatest King in Jewish history. They believed "the son of David" to be the next great king that would restore Israel to their rightful place as the world's super power. So calling Jesus "Son of David" was saying, "kick some Roman butt and win us back our country." They were praising Jesus because of what he was going to do for them. They completely missed the point.
We see people missing the point in the second story, too. Jesus walks into the temple and he can't believe what he sees. People selling stuff and exchanging money. Now, worshippers needed to buy doves so they could offer them as a sacrifice. And when worshippers gave of their offerings at the temple, they had to exchange their Roman coins for Temple coins. So this stuff needed to happen, but it didn't have to happen in the temple.
And until just a few years earlier, all of this buying, selling and exchanging had taken place outside the temple. There was a market place at the Mount of Olives. But when a guy named Ciaphas became High Priest, he set up a new market inside the temple courts. His reason wasn't to make it easier for worshippers. He simply wanted to put the market at the Mount of Olives out of business. That market was run by his political rival.
Jesus sees that the place that's supposed to be about the worship of God is now being used for political and economic gain. "God's house is supposed to be a house of prayer, but you've turned it into a den of thieves." And he goes crazy, running people out of the temple and overturning their tables. It was a righteous anger.
The place that was supposed to be about God had been twisted so it was now about self.
After Jesus clears the temple, all these needy people start flocking to him. He heals the blind and the lame, the children are praising him. And then Matthew tells us the religious leaders get mad at Jesus. And this is so typical. They're not mad that he messed up the temple, they're mad because he's allowing sick people into the temple. An honorable religious leader would never waste his time with the sick.
Unfortunately, this is a pretty accurate picture of a lot of churches. And this is what I love about TF, you'll never hear me tell you who to vote for and it doesn't matter how sick or messed up someone may be, anyone is welcome at this church. Because we're all sick and screwed up.
The temple is being used for political and social gain, there's nothing sicker than that, but the religious leaders don't realize how sick they are. The temple is no longer about worshipping God, it's become all about me.
And the third story is very disturbing. Jesus is walking along the road between Bethany (a suburb) and Jerusalem and he's hungry. In those days, rather than pulling into a Quick Trip, you'd just pull fruit from a fruit tree.
A fruit tree would be the essence of being others-centered. A fruit tree produces fruit not for it's own good, a tree can grow taller and live for a long time, even if it doesn't produce fruit but for the good of others. The fruit does not benefit the individual tree, it feeds others.
Jesus finds a fig tree that ought to satisfy his hunger, but the tree has no fruit. Jesus is so frustrated, he causes the tree to whither. This tree is not fulfilling its purpose. The scholars I studied were all in agreement; Matthew is using this fig tree as a symbol. The fig tree represents the people of God. Those who have been chosen by God to point others toward him. In Jesus' day, it was the Jewish people. But they weren't doing it. You've got religious leaders selling out the temple. You've got people wanting Jesus to pick up a sword and kill the Romans. The same crowds that were praising Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem would be cursing him a few days later as he hung from the cross. Those who were supposed to be producing fruit, so as to feed the spiritually hungry, weren't doing it.
Thankfully, though, that only was only true in Jesus' day and has no application for the people of God now.
Just like the characters in these three stories, those of us who claim the name of Jesus have been completely missing the point. We've been followers of Jesus for only what we get out of it. And when our commitment to Jesus contradicts our lifestyle, we often choose our lifestyle rather than letting Jesus change us.
Let me confess one of the ways that has happened in my life. There's a lot of ego temptations with starting a new church. There's competition to be the next big thing. If we'll be honest, all church planters have the hope that they're the next great leader people are writing books about. That's getting invited to speak at conferences. The overnight success who was such a great leader that their church went from 0-1000 in two minutes. And while my motivation for starting Trinity Family was not so I'd be considered a success, there was always a thought in the back of my mind of "but God does owe you some success."
I'd always been pretty successful at everything I'd done in life, sports, music, academics, leadership. Things weren't easy, but I have enough natural talent that with some work, I've over achieved in just about everything I've been involved in. College Football being an obvious exception, but I still got a small scholarship.
So I graduate from seminary with high honors, get the highest score in the church planter's assessment, we move to Gardner and I have this unspoken thought in the back of my mind. We ought to launch with about 400 people and then never look back. It will be work, but I ought to be the top of my class in this just like everything else I've done. I had visions of being the hotshot young church planter for our denomination.
And so it was a shot to the ego when a friend of mine of college became the hotshot young church planter for our denomination. And the first two years of pastoring this church God has been busting my pride into pieces. "Donnie, this is not about you, it's about me."
Last April was a perfect example. I was in the middle of 100 hours of prayer, when I sensed God leading me to start a parenting class in our neighborhood. Erin and I set aside several hundred dollars of our own money to pay for the class. I knocked on every single door of our subdivision to invite people to the class. I had several families say they were coming. But the first night of the class, no one from the neighborhood showed up.
Let me tell you, I was mad. I knew I was doing what God wanted me to do, we were spending our own money - and nothing happened. I'm supposed to have more success than this! I was so mad, I took a month off from praying. I was protesting God.
About a month later, I was listening to a podcast from one of my roommates in college. He pastors a church in Parsons, KS. He told a similar story from his own ministry. And when we was frustrated, an elderly lady in his church looked right at him and said, "God does not owe you anything."
God got a hold of me right then. "Donnie, I don't owe you anything. You knocked on those doors, not because I promised you great results but because I asked you to. And I expect you to be obedient." That conversation marked the end of the one month gap in my prayer journal.
If we're honest, we can all admit there have been times where we've been much more concerned with what we get out of following God than being faithful to what God is asking of us. But I wouldn't be standing here this morning challenging you with the tough parts of scripture, giving you a glimpse of my own self-centered immaturity, if I didn't believe it's possible to live differently.
We're going to look back through these disturbing stories and see the grace that's to be found there. Had the people who were shouting about Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem been paying attention, they would've noticed something really significant. Had he been intent on conquering Rome, he would've been on a big, powerful war horse. Instead, he was riding a stinking donkey for crying out loud. Jesus was a king, but a king of peace, not war. Jesus entrance into Jerusalem was fulfilling this promise from the OT, Zechariah 9:9-11. Jesus is the conquering Messiah, but he conquers not through military might but by allowing his enemies to crucify him. It's the paradox of Jesus. That the one who rules becomes a servant. The Creator of life allows himself to be killed. And he does it for our own good. As his followers, we also can give our lives in service.
And what's interesting is that Jesus accepts their praise, even though it's misguided. They're praising him as a king who will conquer even though he knows he's going to die.
That's the way it always goes with Jesus. We all come to him with self-centered reasons. For what we get out of following Jesus. Yet he still accepts us. But he doesn't leave us that way, he starts working on us. Changing us from being self-centered to being others-centered.
And you know what else is amazing, Jesus works despite our self-centeredness. In the temple story, the temple has been taken over by those looking out only for themselves and yet Jesus is still able to heal people there. That's good news. It's good news that despite the fact that your pastor has some serious personal flaws, God is still using this church to transform people's lives. Despite the fact that none of us are completely Jesus and others-centered, God still works through us. That's good news.
But there's even better news in the final story, where Jesus curses the fig tree. It's pretty easy to think of how we're like that fig tree, failing to produce fruit. It's easy to get overwhelmed when thinking about how God has big plans for our church, he wants us to transform our little corner of the world and yet we're so imperfect as a church. How in the world can God work through us as individuals or us as a church? Well, that's the good news.
Right after cursing the tree, he makes this incredible promise, 21:21-22 Jesus isn't saying that if we pray hard enough, we'll get a new car. Jesus is making this promise in the context of becoming people who bear fruit. Jesus is saying that as impossible as the idea of becoming others-centered may feel to us, with Jesus nothing is impossible. If we have faith, Jesus will transform us. To have faith doesn't mean we just believe something up here, it means we reorient our entire lives around Jesus Christ. If we come to the point of saying, "Jesus, my life is yours, whatever you want from me," then nothing is impossible. So we throw ourselves into prayer, saying "Jesus, I believe you can change me. I believe you can do great things through my life."
God will answer that prayer every single time!
In fact, I want us to take a few moments, to stop and pray. Prayer
Now I want to share with you some opportunities to live out what we've just been talking about. To follow Christ's example and be others-centered.
We're passing around two different sign-up sheets. One is for the 40 hours of prayer, along with a reminder card. That's pretty self-explantory. The other is for passing out flyers through neighborhoods. You may have heard, we're having a Late Night Easter Egg Hunt here on Friday night at 8:00. This is not only for us, but also for our community. What we need are different groups of people this week to stick these flyers in doors in the surrounding neighborhoods. I don't mean knocking on doors and inviting, just sticking them in the front door. We did this for Trunk-or-Treat and had a great response. So when you sign up, you're picking a night and let me know if there's a neighborhood you prefer. My goal is to hit all the neighborhoods around Madison Elementary.
Another way you live this out is by praying for your Fave Five. If you haven't filled out a card, we're passing these around as well. These are the 5 people that don't yet know Jesus that you can be praying for, serving and inviting this year. This weekend is the perfect opportunity. Invite your Fave Five to the Easter Egg Hunt and to Easter Sunday. Someone who is a new Christian in our church ran up to me last Sunday and said, "someone from my Fave Five is here!" She was so excited.
And another opportunity to give to others is our Child-Credit Campaign. TF Kidz Logo You've likely already heard of this. We're in need of some serious funds to give some serious upgrades to our kids area. Purchase a projector, sound-board and some other equipment And because of the economic stimulus, tax-rebate check we'll all be getting later this spring, we have the perfect opportunity to give to our kids program. We're asking everyone, whether or not they have kids, to commit the equivalent of one child-credit ($300) to our children's ministry. If you haven't received a commitment card, you can pick one up at the welcome table.
These are all ways we say, "it's not about me, it's about loving and serving and giving to other people."
This is what we're all about as a church. IPOD picture