Matthew 21:1-17 • Humility
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Matthew, chapter 21, is the description of the children waving their palm branches in the original circumstance.
In some ways, it's contrasted to the scene that we know from the movies.
The king comes home on his battle steed.
The trumpets blare, the people cheer.
The king salutes the troops, they raise their swords.
They roll out the red carpet of rare cloth and golden thread.
It's not like this chapter where a carpenter comes on a donkey and they put palm branches down because nobody's got the rare cloth.
What kind of king is this?
Let's stand and read together Matthew, chapter 21.
Matthew, chapter 21, as the king of glory, makes his humble entrance to the place of the cross.
Matthew 21, "Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphagi, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, "Go into the village in front of you and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her. Untie them, bring them to me.
If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, "The Lord needs them and He will send them at once."
This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, "Say to the daughter of Zion, "Behold, your king is coming to you."
"And mount it on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden. The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks and He sat on them. Most of the crowds spread their cloaks on the road and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before Him and that followed Him were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest."
And when He entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, "Who is this?"
And the crowd said, "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee." And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple. And He overturned the tables of the money changers and seats of those who sold pigeons. And He said to them, "It is written, "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers." And the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple and He healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that He did and the children crying out in the temple, "Hosanna to the Son of David," they were indignant.
And He said to them, "Do you hear what these are saying?"
And Jesus said to them, "Yes, have you never read, out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise."
And leaving them, He went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.
Still in there for now, let's pray together.
Father, we pray that as you open the gates of that ancient city to your Son, you would open our hearts to the King of Glory now.
This Jesus who humbled Himself to grant those who would humble themselves through dignity and glory and grace.
Help us to perceive how good is the greatness of His heart this day that we in humbling ourselves might know how good heaven is, how wonderful to be free, how good to be forgiven because of what Jesus did. Grant us this grace we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Please be seated.
In that classic business book, Good to Great, Jim Collins researches and discovers that only 11 out of 1,435 companies achieved what he identified as greatness, which was defined as superior stock returns over 15 years after a major transition at a company.
What defined those 11 companies out of more than 1,400 researched was what he called a level 5 leader, what he would ultimately define as a paradoxical blend of personal humility
and a fierce determination to promote the good of a company over personal interests.
In an age when leadership is often presented as the almost superhuman visionary leader who ascends to the mountaintop of vision and supposedly then begins to play business and people like chess pieces on a business board and in some sort of amazing wonder brings out success and profit. Instead, Jim Collins describes a level 5 leader of transformational leadership over time as someone who is characterized this way, "Never boasts.
Shun's public adulation does not rely on personal charisma, subverts personal ambition to organization organizational goals and is willing to take blame when appropriate."
For those of us who are students of the Bible, we want to cheer and say, "See, I told you the Bible was right."
After all, against the understanding that what makes a true leader in the business world, the places that we work, is that leader who with bravado and personal confidence and charisma
moves everybody and everything under his will.
And here is the proof even in secular literature that says it's really not true that nice guys finish last or that ruthlessness is the path to success, that there is some proof that the values of Scripture actually succeed even in the business world.
Sounds so great, just a couple of problems.
While Jim Collins does describe the destiny of true humility, he never describes how you get it. What is the formula for humility?
He never says.
Nor does he ever establish how you guarantee the results. After all, even if you are a transformational leader, you may not be able to transcend an economy that goes bust or a product that goes antique or persons who are truly evil.
All of those may overcome even humility in the world that we face. So you say, "Well then, what good is humility?" After all, if the reason that you are pursuing humility is so that you will be guaranteed success, then it's probably not humility that you're pursuing.
Humility is not a business plan.
Humility is a quality of character that is built in the heart, and that's why we need Jesus to teach it to us. After all, what is true humility as you're beginning to see it being described here in the path of Jesus? First we understand that humility is not something thrust upon us. Humility is not something that becomes forced by either people or circumstances.
I can remember an old TV western I used to watch in which a patriarch grandpa of the family used to say in pride, "It ain't bragging if it's fact." Remember that? "It ain't bragging if it's fact."
Well humility is not bragging, but it's also not humility if you have no alternative.
Humility is a matter of choice.
You could claim other things, but humility says, "For the sake of a greater purpose, for the sake of a greater mission, I subvert personal interest out of choice for what I view as a greater cause." We understand Christ doing that just by seeing the claims of Christ that are being made in this chapter that's so familiar to so many of you. After all, what are we learning about Christ, the claims that He has? We understand first that He is a prophet.
He's a prophet because He is both making prophecies and fulfilling prophecies at exactly the same time. In verse 2 you may remember Jesus says to His disciples, "Go into the village in front of you and immediately you will find a donkey tied, a colt with her." If anyone asks you, "Why are you taking the colt?" say, "My Lord has needed him." In other gospels we'll recognize that's exactly the conversation that occurs.
Jesus not only sees ahead that there is this donkey tied with a colt, but even what the conversation will be and the willingness of the one who has the donkey to let it go with His disciples. He's able to prophesy, to see into the future. Beyond that, He recognizes His own ministry is the fulfillment of prophecy. Verse 4, "This took place," the possession of the donkey, "to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, "Say to the daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mountain on a donkey on a colt the foal of a beast of burden." This is a prophecy that actually occurred 500 years before this moment. As Zachariah, during the time of King Darius, remember that's the one that threw Daniel into the lion's den, that same Darius is ruling over the people of God who are in slavery. And Zachariah the prophet says to them to assure them of God's ultimate goodness, "A king is coming to you, a shepherd king, lowly and riding on a donkey, but he brings salvation with them." Not like Darius, who throws people into lion's dens. He's actually going to save you from that devil lion, Satan himself. That is the king that is coming. This is the prophecy that is being fulfilled by Jesus as He rides into Jerusalem on the donkey, so much so that in verse 11, even the crowds seeing Jesus coming on the donkey answer the question, "Who is this?" By saying, "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee." Not only is He a prophet, He is a priest.
When He gets into Jerusalem, where does He go? He goes to the temple. And not only does He go to the temple, He begins to purify it. He begins to identify those who are in the temple in that place of worship for themselves, either for prophet or some sort of superstitious accomplishment that's supposed to make them right before God. And the same Jesus overthrows the money changers tables. He overthrows the chairs of those who are selling sacrifices to purify the place that God intends for worship, to be a place of truly worshiping God and not our accomplishment or our gain. So much so that He says, "This was to be a place of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers." He is declaring judgment upon those who are seeking to self-justify, and at the very same moment is receiving the praise of children. Those who are trying to deserve salvation, He condemns.
Those undeserving but looking to Him in praise, He accepts their praise. It's the early indication of the gospel as Jesus is saying, "My provision is not for those who are trying to make it happen, making me their slave. My provision is for those who know they are totally undeserving and simply praise me for what I provide."
He's a prophet.
He is a priest. Those claims are here, but of course the major one that is being made in this passage is that Jesus is the King. You recognize what they are saying in verse 9, "When the crowds that went before and followed after Him were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord." "Hosanna in the highest." Each phrase carefully identifying by Matthew who this really is.
Hosanna, it's a contraction of ancient Hebrew that we don't hear anymore. "Hoshiah na," save us.
If the word "Hosiah" sounds familiar at all, it's because it's the same root behind Jesus' own name, "Yeshua."
"Hosiah," "Yeshua," as though the people are even in the phrase that they are saying, not fully understanding, are saying, "Save us, Jesus, save us, Jesus, Hosanna."
And they are not simply proclaiming the Hosanna to this Jesus in His own name.
They are saying it in the terms of that praise which was given to the Son of David, the long prophesied Messiah, that from the line of David who would have both an eternal and universal kingdom, they're already declaring it, "Hosanna to the Son of David." And as if to declare that this is the King that has come, some put their robes on the ground, this they would have done centuries before for the boy-king Jehu. Then He was rescuing them from Ahab and Jezebel, and the people in proclaiming the praise of Jehu the new King put their robes on the ground as He was welcomed into the palace. And then those who don't have robes to put down, they put down the cut branches, which is not just about cute kids. It is actually reminding the people of God of the time in which the Maccabees revolted against Antiochus Epiphanes, that long prophesied, cruel leader who would decimate the people of Israel, who would kill anyone who was circumcised, who would put a pig upon the altar, who would put Zeus in the temple, who would cause all kinds of destruction so that the Apostle John in the book of Revelation actually uses him as the archetype of the Antichrist to come. And when the Maccabees overthrew Antiochus Epiphanes because such deprivation had happened in Israel, they had no red carpet to unroll. And so they simply cut branches from the trees, put them down as to say, "We have been saved. This is the only carpet we can offer, but we offer it to those rulers who have saved us." And not only do they put the branches down, but they ultimately proclaim now the children and the people as Jesus is coming into Jerusalem, "Hosanna in the highest!"
Only proclaimed by the Jews one time a year previous at the Feast of Tabernacles. After the people were rejoicing for a week at God's provision to come and tabernacle among them in the wilderness, when they were hurt, when they were fearful, when they had no food, they would praise God saying, "Hosanna for seven days, but on the eighth day." They would circle the altar of provision seven times and then declare, "Hosanna in the highest!" As if to say, "Now we welcome heavenly hosts as well as the earthly host together. Heaven and earth come together to praise the King who's coming." And now the people say it, "Hosanna in the highest! The prophet is here! The priest is here! But more than anything, the King is here! Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest! The King is here! The King has come! He is among us!"
And when the people recognize that, surely something recognizes in the very same moment this is remarkable humility.
For heaven and earth should combine to coronate Him.
And there he is on a donkey.
Working on people's clothes and palm branches because no one is providing anything more.
This is a choice the King of the universe has made for the good of His people. And when you recognize that kind of humility is a choice, you begin to say, "What would it look like in the business world, whether it's the world of a company or the world of a house where our business is to take care of a family as well? If it's truly giving of oneself, one's glory that you deserve for the sake of others, what would it look like to put aside the perks that could be ours for the sake of the morale of the people who work for us? To put aside the bonus that we deserve and could claim so that someone else could actually keep a job?
To be willing to give up a promotion so that our family could be held together?
To be willing to submit to a decision without sulking to prove to everyone around you that your trust is in God, not in your opinion or others' opinions?
That we have a trust in one beyond ourselves because we believe He is working beyond us and we submit ourselves to the good of others, our own glory, our own promotion, our own perks for the sake of those in need. It's actually what Christ is doing. It's what the humility is for. And we recognize even as it is being expressed, it's not only great humility, it is great
courage.
Christ comes into Jerusalem knowing He is going to have to risk every aspect of the glory that's even being given Him in this moment for what He is about to do. He heads to the temple. And when He heads to the temple, He begins to overthrow the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those who are selling the sacrifices. And we read, "The whole city was stirred up." We have no idea how stirred up the city would have been. Listen, in this era in which Jesus is coming into Jerusalem, we actually have Roman documents explaining to us a lot that was happening even in a Jewish city at the time of Passover as Jesus is coming. Even the Roman documents tell us that there were as many as 250,000 lambs that were being sold at this time for the sacrifice in Jerusalem because of the pressure that the slaughter of 250,000 lambs would put on sanitation and facilities, the priest had a rule. Every lamb must cover at least 10 people. I mean if you don't have 10 people in your family, join with another family because every lamb has to cover at least 10 people. If there are 250,000 lambs, there are at least 2.5 million people coming into Jerusalem. They are going up the steps of the southern wall at least hundreds of thousands at a time to offer their sacrifices. They are purchasing the lambs. They are purchasing the pigeons if they can't afford the lambs. They are offering money that comes from other currencies because they come from different nations. And therefore there's a little profit to be made in the money exchange. And as a consequence, you have to think what is going to happen if Jesus is going to upset this? I mean there are stakeholders that are at risk here. You recognize the business people have before them kind of this rolled up altogether Christmas, Easter, and the Fourth of July sales all happening right at once. I mean the whole business is going to be made in this one week.
And now Jesus is upsetting it. And he's not just upsetting the business. There are people who come from all over the world and they think, "If I just offer this sacrifice, if I just do it well enough and good enough, I'll be okay with God." And now Jesus is saying, "Not only am I disrupting business, I'm disrupting your superstition." I mean faith and profit are both being challenged here. And if there are 2.5 million people who are depending on this, other writers have said even a Roman legion would not have attempted what Jesus did. There is huge courage involved. He knows the risk that he is taking to challenge, as it were, these times with the integrity of the gospel even if it cost him so much for the sake of others.
And by the way, it's not just risk that he is taking. He's actually giving his glory for the sake of the people he is seeking to save. How do I know that?
Because he is a prophet.
And he knows what's going to happen to him after he overthrows the money changers and the sellers of the sacrifice. I began reading to you in chapter 21 of Matthew. But if you just back up a little bit into chapter 20, you would read this in verse 17.
And as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, Matthew 20, 17, he took the 12 disciples aside and on the way he said to them, "See, we are going up to Jerusalem and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified and he will be raised on the third day." He knew what was coming and he still kept coming.
It was courage to be willing to put aside the claims of his greatness. He who was by very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing and took on himself the form of a servant and became obedient to death, even death on a cross because he was willing to put aside those heavenly claims for the people he came to save. And that in itself required great courage because he had counted the cost and he knew what would happen.
What does that look like in our places of work?
To actually stand for what we know, what is right when we know it will cost us. Or as another writer has said, "To be willing to show up for the suffering because it is the humility that is on display here."
When Luke describes what Jesus was willing to do, he says, "He set his face like a flint toward Jerusalem. He was not going to be changed." This is more than Jim Collins' hedgehog principle having a single purpose. It is the single purpose that doesn't just lead to success, you know it leads to suffering.
And still he does it for the cause of the souls of those that he knows are around him who are witnessing the consequences of his work and he himself knows he must do this for their sake. It is humility expressed in courage that results in non-suffering and he does it for the sake of the mission of God. What would that look like in our world today? To risk the deal, to preserve integrity, to endure the scorn, to oppose what is unethical,
to be unswayed by ridicule for righteousness sake, even if on the business trip or in the expense reports or in the business pattern everybody else is doing it.
To say for the sake of Christ and the souls of those who witness my life, I will show up for the suffering.
One of the privileges that I have had in my life, having been at the institution I was before I came here, is being able to rub shoulders with Christian business people who ran corporations. They were donors to Covenant Seminary and I praise God for them. But I watched some of them in that great recession of 2008 as they made hard, hard decisions for the survival of their companies. And I think of two in particular who could have sold out and received great personal wealth for the sale of their companies but would not sell because they knew if their companies sold, the employees who had worked for them for years would be without jobs.
And for the sake of others, they forewent their own wealth in order to maintain what they knew was good for God's people. If we are willing to show up for the suffering, God can do amazing things through us. Christ's courage, but it's the humility with such courage that is such a proclamation of the glory of Christ.
I don't know this world so much, but I'm told that the foodie world, that is the culinary arts world, was shocked two months ago when Chef Matthew Sachek, and if that's the wrong pronunciation, tell me later, one of the nation's super chefs in Washington, D.C., gave up the prestigious position of chief chef in Washington, D.C.'s most well-known restaurant and actually set up a deli in rural Maine.
Why?
He explained.
He said, "As a Christian, I had grown disgusted with the relentless pursuit of the four-star rating that earned reputation at customers and profits and fame but drove me to tyranny
with my employees."
In order to get the four stars, he said, "I burned people."
And that became literal one night when one of the line chefs had messed up an order, and to punish him, Matthew Sachek held that line chef's hand in an open flame.
That sobered him, not just from the pursuit of the fame, but from the reliance upon the Jim Beam to medicate him from the pressure that he felt every day.
He wrote these words, "I went home and in humility, got down on my knees and asked forgiveness from the God who had humbled himself on the cross."
We all know the relentless pursuit, don't we?
For fame, for approval, for other people to say we're doing okay, to show them that we're doing okay, to accomplish what is needed to be approved by the world.
And what Christ did when He came in humility was to say, "Even if you do not have the approval of the world, I have loved you with an everlasting love and you are mine forever." And that message is not just for us. The reason I know about the account of Matthew Sachek is not because of some Sunday School bulletin or religious magazine. You know that story of that Christian testimony? It made it onto the website of National Public Radio. That's how I know it. As a Christian testimony went across the world because of someone who said, "I'm going to show up for the suffering.
I'm going to sacrifice glory for the sake of the testimony of Jesus and the people that He loves."
You see humility, while it may require courage, is actually and ultimately fueled by compassion.
We may not understand that compassion of Jesus if we only see Him with a carpenter's strength and a king's rage purifying the temple.
But you will see love in His eyes if you look closely.
You remember what He said in verse 13, "It is written, "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers."
The first statement is actually from Isaiah as Jesus is quoting that portion of Isaiah in which the prophet Isaiah, speaking for God, says, "My house shall be a house of prayer," and the quotation continues, "for all peoples."
Not just for Israel, not just for the covenant chosen people showing up in the nice place and the nice temple. It's to be a house of prayer for all people, that God's people would be praying for more, that their hearts would be torn, broken, humbled for the sake of many more. Jesus is saying, "My house, the place where I gather with my people is where there are prayers for everybody to know My God."
And then He adds, "But you have made it a den of robbers," which is a quotation from Jeremiah in which Jeremiah is saying, "There will be judgment upon the people of God because they've been concerned only for themselves and not for the world that their Father in heaven loves."
Why is the city so stirred? Why is Jesus' heart so stirred? Because He is being driven by compassion. I would give up My glory. I call you to do the same because of the people that I love from all the world who I'm seeking to gather into My kingdom with the knowledge of the one who would humble Himself for their eternal glory. He would ultimately go to the cross taking the sin of all those people out there as well as us upon Himself so that we would know the righteousness of God, be eternally made pure, forgiven, pardoned, as we would put our hearts before Him and say, "God, I'm going to humble myself before You right now and say, "Forgive me.
I have pursued My glory rather than Yours, but I recognize if I would pursue Yours, the one who humbled Himself would grant Me the dignity of His own heart now and forever. Forgive Me, God, and He will."
What ultimately reaches the world is not people who are glorious and proud, it's people who are willing to share their humility. I needed the Savior to.
And that's what reaches out.
You know, next week, Easter, will mark the third year that Kathy and I have been here at your invitation.
And it's caused us to think back of what brought us here. What was the magnet?
It wasn't particularly leaders, I should tell you, who said, "We have a really big building,
and we have really great music.
And we have really good people." Actually, they didn't compliment you that way.
There were leaders who came to us, and as they were speaking to us, they said, "You know what? We built a really big building, and it didn't fill up the way we thought it would.
We thought people would just come to us because we were big and we were important, and, you know, we had a great church with a great history."
It didn't happen.
And you know what?
Not only do we not think of ourselves as great people, we struggle with the fact that a lot of our children don't come here anymore.
Even our children don't perceive our greatness.
And some of the leaders actually tried to scuttle the deal by reminding us what financial pressure this church was under and what pressure would be on us as a consequence.
You know, it was so unlike any other church that talked to us, most of whom said, "We're a prestigious church, and we have prestigious people, and you'll have prestige as you come."
You were the people who said, "We want to minister differently.
We want the gospel, not our greatness, to be what people know. We want to ask forgiveness that we believe we have been arrogant, that we've tried to minister out of our pride rather than out of the gospel.
And I must tell you, it was a magnet to our hearts." We thought, "I think the gospel has a chance here.
There are people here who want the gospel, not their glory, to be known.
And when that was being done, it was a magnet to our hearts, but it is the same for everybody else." Listen, we are in a wonderful time in our culture, just this week that we're in right now. People will respond to invitations to an Easter service out of tradition and out of sentiment, and it becomes kind of easy to ask people to come. But if you do, if you say, "We're going to have a great church, and we're going to have a great music service, and we're going to have great things, and we have some great people here," and...
Listen, you may say all of that, but if you could add, "And there I found the joy that I've been longing for, and the pardon that I needed, and the hope that I had lost."
If there's some humility, that's the gospel.
It's what Jesus meant for us to know, that when we would give of ourselves, the world would long for Him.
Let's pray for that in this coming week.
The people who need the gospel to come, because in humility, we've not tried to convince them.
We've simply shared what Jesus has done for us, the King of Glory, who gave Himself in humility, that we in humility might reach the world for Him. Father, would you work in our hearts and help us to rejoice in the humility of our Savior, that we, in acknowledging our own need, might find not only the glory of the kingdom of pardon, of joy, of hope when the world turns bad, but we would also be the fountains of that same grace, because we have told a broken people who have been humbled by circumstances
of the God who would humble Himself for them.
Help us to reach and teach and share for Christ's sake. We would be so bold as to ask that you would bring people through our humility here next week that they would know of the glorious Savior who gave Himself for them. Do this work of grace in us, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.