And when he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to
Jerusalem. 29 When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the
mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, 30
saying, "Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you
will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it
and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you
untying it?’ you shall say this: ‘The Lord has need of
it.’" 32 So those who were sent went away and found it just
as he had told them. 33 And as they were untying the colt, its
owners said to them, "Why are you untying the colt?" 34 And they
said, "The Lord has need of it." 35 And they brought it to Jesus,
and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36 And
as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. 37 As he
was drawing near – already on the way down the Mount of
Olives – the whole multitude of his disciples began to
rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works
that they had seen, 38 saying, "Blessed is the King who comes in
the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!" 39
And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher,
rebuke your disciples." 40 He answered, "I tell you, if these were
silent, the very stones would cry out." 41 And when he drew near
and saw the city, he wept over it, 42 saying, "Would that you, even
you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now
they are hidden from your eyes. 43 For the days will come upon you,
when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround
you and hem you in on every side 44 and tear you down to the
ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave
one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of
your visitation."

Before we get back to Romans 9 the Sunday after Easter, I wanted
to preach a message that is partly an overflow of one of the books
I worked on during the writing leave. (It will probably be called
Don’t Waste Your Life.) Actually, this message is the
overflow of more than the book.

• It’s the overflow of conversations with John Erickson
  about his vision for ministry in the city.

• It’s the overflow of conversations with my son Benjamin
  about what it means to be a merciful person on the street.

• It’s the overflow of reading Timothy Keller’s book,
  Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road.

• It’s the overflow of the seminar I did on Prayer,
  Meditation, and Fasting a few weeks ago, as I pondered what it
  really means to enjoy fellowship with Jesus and anticipate meeting
  him face to face very shortly and giving an account of the way I
  have thought, for example, about giving to people who ask for
  money. I remember, specifically, in one of those hours asking the
  class: Suppose you die and you’re standing before Jesus
  Christ, who surrendered his body to spitting and shame and torture
  and death so that undeserving sinners (like you and me) might be
  drawn into eternal joy, and he inquires how you handled the people
  who asked you for money – you know, panhandlers, beggars,
  street people, drunks, drifters. What would you say?

  I suggested to them, and I suggest to you now, you’re not
  going to feel very good about saying, "I never got taken advantage
  of. I saw through their schemes. I developed really shrewd
  counter-questions that would expose them. So I hardly ever had to
  give anything." Do you know what I think the Lord Jesus is going to
  say to that – the Lord Jesus, the consummately, willingly,
  savingly abused and exploited Jesus? I think he is going to say,
  "That was an exquisite imitation of the world. Even sinners give to
  those who deserve to be given to. Even sinners pride themselves on
  not being taken advantage of." Well this message is a spillover of
  some of those thoughts.

• And it’s a spillover of a conversation that Noël and
  I had at Annie’s Parlor a little over a week ago as we
  assessed our lives how we wanted the next ten years to look –
  if God gives us ten – in regard to practical deeds mercy.
  What do we want Talitha to see in the city? What kind of Jesus do
  we want her to see living through us in Philips neighborhood on
  11th Avenue? Do we want her to remember someday when we are gone:
  my folks were shrewd? Or do we want her to remember: My folks were
  merciful?

Palm Sunday: An Event of Insight and Misunderstanding

Well, that’s what led me to choose this text for Palm
Sunday. It’s a Palm Sunday text. Palm Sunday is the day in
the church year when traditionally we mark the entrance of Jesus
into Jerusalem for the last week of his life. It’s an event
of great insight and great misunderstanding. The great insight was
that this Jesus really is "the King who comes in the name of the
Lord" (Luke 19:38). He was the Messiah, the Son of David, the
long-awaited Ruler of Israel, the fulfillment of all God’s
promises. But the great misunderstanding was that he would enter
Jerusalem and by his mighty works, take his throne and make Israel
free from Rome.

It wasn’t going to be that way: he would take his throne
but it would be through voluntary suffering and death and
resurrection. The first sermon Peter preached after the
resurrection comes to an end with the words, "This Jesus God raised
up" so that he was "exalted at the right hand of God" (Acts
2:32-33). And the apostle Paul says that he is now King: "He must
reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet" (1
Corinthians 15:25; see Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 3:1).

So Palm Sunday was a day of insight and a day of
misunderstanding. The insight gave joy, and the misunderstanding
brought about destruction – the murder of Jesus a few days
later, and the destruction of Jerusalem 40 years later. And Jesus
saw it all coming.

And what I want to focus on this morning is Jesus’
response to this blindness and hostility that he was about to meet
in Jerusalem. Indeed, he met it already in this very text. The
crowds were crying out in verse 38, "Blessed is the King who comes
in the name of the Lord!" But in the very next verse it says, "Some
of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, rebuke
your disciples’" (Luke 19:39).

So Jesus knew what was about to happen. The Pharisees were going
to get the upper hand. The people would be fickle and follow their
leaders. And Jesus would be rejected and crucified. And within a
generation the city would be obliterated. Look how Jesus says it in
verses 43-44:

For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a
barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side
and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you.
And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you
did not know the time of your visitation.

God had visited them in his Son, Jesus Christ – "he came
to his own, and his own received him not" (John 1:11). They did not
know the time of their visitation. So they stumbled over the
stumbling stone. The builders rejected the stone and threw it away.
Jesus saw this sin and this rebellion and this blindness coming.
How did he respond? Verse 41-42: "And when he drew near and saw the
city, he wept over it, saying, ‘Would that you, even you, had
known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are
hidden from your eyes.’" Jesus wept over the blindness and
the impending misery of Jerusalem.

How would you describe these tears? You can see from the title
of this message that I call them, "Palm Sunday Tears of Sovereign
Mercy." The effect that I pray this will have on us is, first, to
make us admire Christ, and treasure him above all others and
worship him as our merciful Sovereign; and, second, that seeing the
beauty of his mercy, we become merciful with him and like him and
because of him and for his glory.

Admiring Christ’s Merciful Sovereignty and Sovereign
Mercy

First, then let’s admire Christ together. What makes
Christ so admirable, and so different than all other persons
– what sets him apart as unique and inimitable –
matchless, peerless – is that he unites in himself so many
qualities that in other people are contrary to each other.
That’s why I put together the words "sovereign" and
"merciful." We can imagine supreme
sovereignty, and we can imagine tenderhearted mercy. But who do we
look to combine in perfect proportion merciful sovereignty and
sovereign mercy? We look to Jesus. No other religious or political
contender even comes close.

Look at three pointers in this text to his sovereignty. First,
verse 37: "As he was drawing near – already on the way down
the Mount of Olives – the whole multitude of his disciples
began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the
mighty
works that they had seen." Jesus had made a name for himself
as the worker of miracles, and they remembered them. He had healed
leprosy with a touch; he had made the blind see and the deaf hear
and the lame walk; he had commanded the unclean spirits and they
obeyed him; he had stilled storms and walked on water and turned
five loaves and two fish into a meal for thousands. So as he
entered Jerusalem, they knew nothing could stop him. He could just
speak and Pilate would perish; the Romans would be scattered. He
was sovereign.

Then look, secondly, at verse 38. The crowds cried out: "Blessed
is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and
glory in the highest!" Jesus was a King, and not just any king, but
the one sent and appointed by the Lord God. They knew how Isaiah
had described him:

Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no
end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it
and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time
forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this."
(Isaiah 9:7)

A universal, never-ending kingdom backed by the zeal of almighty
God. Here was the King of the universe, who today rules over the
nations and the galaxies, and for whom America and Iraq are a grain
of sand and a vapor.

Third, verse 40. When the Pharisees tell him to make the people
stop blessing him as a king, he answers, "I tell you, if these were
silent, the very stones would cry out (Luke 19:40). Why? Because he
will be praised! The whole design of the universe is that Christ be
praised. And therefore, if people won’t do it, he will see to
it that rocks do it. In other words, he is sovereign. He will get
what he means to get. If we refuse to praise, the rocks will get
the joy.

It is remarkable, therefore, that the tears of Jesus in verse 41
are so often used to deny his sovereignty. Someone will say, "Look,
he weeps over Jerusalem because his design for them, his will for
them, is not coming to pass. He would delight in their salvation.
But they are resistant. They are going to reject him. They are
going to hand him over to be crucified." And so his purpose for
them has failed. But there is something not quite right about this
objection to Jesus’ sovereignty.

He can make praise come from rocks. And so he could do the same
from rock-hard hearts in Jerusalem. What’s more, all this
rejection and persecution and killing of Jesus is not the failure
of Jesus’ plan, but the fulfillment of it. Listen to what he
said in Luke 18:31-33 a short time before:

And taking the twelve, he said to them, "See, we are going up to
Jerusalem, and everything that is written [planned!] about the Son
of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. 32 For he will be
delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully
treated and spit upon. 33 And after flogging him, they will kill
him, and on the third day he will rise."

The betrayal, the mockery, the shame, the spit, the flogging,
the murder – and so much more – was planned. In other
words, the resistance, the rejection, the unbelief and hostility
were not a surprise to Jesus. They were, in fact, part of the plan.
He says so. This is probably why it says at the end of verse 42,
"But now they are hidden from your eyes." Remember what Jesus said
about his parables back in Luke 8:10: "To you [disciples] it has
been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for
others they are in parables, so that ‘seeing they may not
see, and hearing they may not understand.’" God was handing
them over to hardness. It was judgment.

We have seen all this in Romans 9. The mercy of God is a
sovereign mercy. "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I
will have compassion on whom I have compassion" (Romans 9:15). But
here is the point I want you to see today: This sovereign Christ
weeps over heard-hearted, perishing Jerusalem as they fulfilled his
plan. It is unbiblical and wrong to make the tears of mercy a
contradiction to the serenity of sovereignty. Jesus was serene in
sorrow, and sorrowful in sovereignty. Jesus’ tears are the
tears of sovereign mercy.

And therefore his sovereign power is the more admirable and the
more beautiful. It’s the harmony of things that seem in
tension that makes him glorious: "Merciful and Mighty," as we sing.
We admire power more when it is merciful power. And we admire mercy
more when it is mighty mercy. And, as I said, my prayer is that as
you see his mercy and admire his mercy, you will become like him in
his mercy.

There are at least three ways that Jesus is merciful, which we
can draw out of this context. And I pray that I will become like
him in all of these. I pray that you will too.

Jesus’ Mercy Is Tenderly Moved

First, Jesus’ mercy is tenderly moved. He feels the sorrow
of the situation. This doesn’t mean his sovereign plan has
wrecked on the rocks of human autonomy. It means that Jesus is more
emotionally complex than we think he is. He really feels the sorrow
of a situation. No doubt there is a deep inner peace that God is in
control and that God’s wise purposes will come to pass. But
that doesn’t mean you can’t cry.

In fact, on the contrary, I appeal to you here: pray that God
would give you tears. There is so much pain in the world. So much
suffering far from you and near you. Pray that God would help you
be tenderly moved. When you die and stand before the Judge, Jesus
Christ, and he asks you, "How did you feel about the suffering
around you?" what will you say? I promise you, you will not feel
good about saying, "I saw through to how a lot of people brought
their suffering upon themselves by sin or foolishness." You know
what I think the Lord will say to that? I think he will say, "I
didn’t ask you what you saw through. I asked you what you
felt?" Jesus felt enough compassion for Jerusalem to weep. If you
haven’t shed any tears for somebody’s losses but your
own, it probably means you’re pretty wrapped up in yourself.
So let’s repent of our hardness and ask God to give us a
heart that is tenderly moved.

Jesus’ Mercy Was Self-Denying

Second, Jesus’ mercy was self-denying – not
ultimately; there was great reward in the long run, but very
painfully in the short run. This text is part of the story of
Jesus’ moving intentionally toward suffering and death. Jesus
is entering Jerusalem to die. He said so, "We are going up to
Jerusalem . . . and the Son of Man will be delivered up . . . and
they will kill him" (Luke 18:31-33). This is the meaning of
self-denial. This is the way we follow Jesus. We see a need –
for Jesus is was seeing the sin of the world, and broken bodies,
and the misery of hell – and we move with Jesus, whatever it
costs, toward need. We deny ourselves the comforts and the
securities and the ease of avoiding other peoples’ pain. We
embrace it. Jesus’ tears were not just the tender moving of
his emotions. They were the tears of a man on his way toward
need.

Jesus’ Mercy Intends to Help

That leads us to the third and last way Jesus is merciful.
First, he is tenderly moved, second he is self-denying and moves
toward need. Now third, he intends to help. Mercy if helpful. It
doesn’t just feel – though it does feel – and it
doesn’t just deny itself – though it does deny itself
– it actually does things that help people. Jesus was dying
in our place that we might be forgiven and have eternal life with
him. That’s how he helped.

What will it be for you? How are you doing in ministries of
mercy? How are you and your roommate, or your housemates, doing
together? How is your family doing? (That’s what Noël
and I asked at Annie’s Parlor.) What is tenderly moving you
these days? Is there movement toward pain or suffering or misery or
loss or sadness, that means denying yourself – in the short
run – and multiplying your joy in the long run? And what help
are you actually giving to those in need?

Two prayers: Oh, that we would see and savor the beauty of
Christ – the Palm Sunday Tears of sovereign joy. And oh, that
as we admire and worship him, we would be changed by what we see
and become a more tenderly-moved, self-denying, need-meeting
people.