May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of
God and of Jesus our Lord.
In that Knowledge, Jesus speaks to you today, saying:
“Behold, your king
is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey”
Jesus has hidden Himself, as we heard and expressed in
Church last week. And even today, on this most public event of traipsing
through the Jerusalem countryside with as big a parade and as raucous a crowd
as you can get, Jesus remains hidden.
You may recall the first time there was an attempt to
coronate Jesus, when kings followed the Morning Star and offered Him kingly
gifts and the current king of the area was afraid for his own position, and He
was only an infant (Matt 2)! The result was Jesus refusing that throne and
crown and continuing to hide Himself within the immaturity of man.
Or how about the time when He blew the minds of all
the teachers of Israel, when He was only 12. You can be sure that they were
wanting Him to stick around and begin teaching them, maybe as a king, or at
least as the High Priest forever. He refused.
Or when He had just fed 5000+ people and the bread and
the fish gave the men so much energy that they were going to take Him by force
and make Him king (Jn 6:15). Refused! Or when His own disciples pleaded with
Him to restore the Kingdom of Israel on earth right now (Acts 1:6). Rejected!
Or how about the gall and hubris and audacity that
Pontius Pilate and the Romans had, attempting to force a crown on His head and
coronating Him with a crucifixion saying, this is “Jesus of Nazareth, King of
the Jews” (Jn 18:37, 19:14, 19)??
No. Even though Jesus says that if the children are silent,
during this Palm Sunday Parade, that the very stones would cry out (Lk 19:40),
He is hidden. And this is why. Because, His crown is a crown of thorns, His
throne is a cross, and His royal robe a mass of fatal wounds. Jesus hides
Himself in suffering.
Now, does God get His way? Yes. God always has success in
whatever He sets out to do. He is successful in getting the Magi to worship
Him, He is successful in preaching His Gospel to those in the Temple, He is
successful in filling the hungry with good things (Lk. 1:53), He is successful
in showing the restored Kingdom of Israel to His disciples, and He is
successful in completing His crucifixion.
However, notice all these events again. What is Jesus’s role
in them? He is silent when people respond to Him. He does not speak up to the
Magi, He does not acquiesce to the Temple rulers, He does not allow the 5000,
the disciples, or the Romans to do as they please. It is as Isaiah says,
“He
was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb
that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers
is silent, so he opened not his mouth” (Isa 53:7).
He is silent because His work is done in suffering and one
who suffers hardly ever musters enough energy to make noise, at least coherent
noise. He is silent because His kingdom is not of this world. It is not
supposed to be full of aimless folk wishing rulers to make all their decisions
for them.
It is not supposed to be full of unenlightened teachers, of
hate-filled kings, hungry people, or enemies of God. As such as it is filled
with these things, it must not be acknowledged and must be cleansed and remade.
For a world with a silent God is a world that doesn’t exist.
God may be silent in front of His executors, but He is not
silent in front of His followers. In fact, the New Testament is full of God
being a loud, rabble-rouser. Case in point, He stirs up the people around Him
enough to gather in a large crowd, march Him to Jerusalem, all the while
knowing He is parading to His cross.
For where God talks most is about His Son. Maybe you can
relate. We talk about our own sons, even though they cause us to suffer and
even when they suffer as well. While we can not do anything about our own
suffering, we turn to and parade around with the only one Who can today.
Life is suffering. Anyone who tries to tell you different is
selling something. For God’s Word is a hammer that breaketh the rock into pieces
(Jer 23:29). And yet He promises to “give you a new heart, and a new spirit I
will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and
give you a heart of flesh” (Eze 36:26).
He says, “We must go through many hardships to enter the
kingdom of heaven” (Acts 14:22), but “my yoke is easy and my burden is light”
(Mt 11:30). The cross, suffering is not optional for the Christian life. To
know Christ is to know the fellowship of His sufferings. the amazing thing is
that these burdens are instruments of God’s love and healing for us (Where in
the world is God, Senkbeil, 31).
Acts 14, which I just quoted a second ago says “WE” must go
through many hardships. God includes Himself in this “we”. He does not just
watch from the sidelines, but becomes the King of Suffering for you, taking on
His own reasonable Body and Soul in order that He may suffer for Himself and
take on your suffering as well.
For, where the King is not silent is upon the cross, because
this is what the true king of all looks like and this is what the true kingdom
over all is like: first the cross, then the crown. It is like a God-man hanging
on a cross saying these words:
Father, forgive them (Luke 23:34), “today,
thou shalt be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43), “behold thy son. Behold thy
mother”, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), I thirst
(John 19:28), “It is finished” (John 19:30), and “Father, into thy hands I
commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46).
The King of all, Jesus Christ is not silent before His
baptized believers proclaiming the Kingdom of heaven to be about forgiveness,
paradise, families, a God Who forsakes His only Son instead of sinners, a hungering
and thirsting for righteousness, a complete perfection of Salvation for all,
and a loving, heavenly Father Who gives all this to us only out of fatherly
divine goodness and mercy on account of His Son all while dying on the cross.
This is why Jesus hides Himself, so we see His kingship in
His crucifixion. This is how Jesus hides Himself and He hides Himself in
suffering because we suffer. If you want to find Him, you must look to His
wounds by which we are healed. You must find His Body and Blood that suffered
for your sake. There you will find the Kingdom of God.
At Calvary’s holy mountain, all hell broke loose. All the
ugly power of sin, death, and the devil was unleashed and Christ the King, the
sinless Son of God gobbled it all up. God the King was given over unto the
death on a cross so that He might give us His own life to live.
Now, suffering leads to healing. In the crucified and
resurrected Son of God, suffering leads to glory, for the Christian, and that’s
good news. First the cross, then the crown for everyone who trusts in Him.
First the cross to crucify our sinful nature and drive us to
His Word of forgiveness. God desires to kill the sin within us because it
threatens our life with Him. through His Word made flesh, our loving God brings
us to repentance and encourages faith. When we are broken, helpless, and
unkingly, then we can see God’s love clearly.
For it is at those points in which we look away from that
pain and weakness to something outside of ourselves and the Gospel points us to
the cross. God’s grace is sufficient for us. His power is made perfect in
weakness.
The King hides Himself with us, His Church. Which isn’t
really hiding at all, because we easily find Him in water and Word and bread
and wine, as He brings angels and archangels, all the company of heaven, and
all the blessings He purchased and won for us, upon the throne of His cross.
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