Embracing Our Need for Divine Help: Hosanna!

They have been singing, O Lord, save us, Hosanna, year after year after year. This comes from the psalm, Psalm 118. This is a great psalm to read as you lead up to Easter. You can read it and think, why were these people singing this song? You can read it and think, what was Jesus looking at when he saw this song? What sort of mission did he see for himself? And you can read it looking back and say, how has Jesus fulfilled this psalm? Psalm 118, O Lord, save us, Hosanna. [00:02:52]

They looked for help year after year after year until this year in AD 33 or thereabouts they ran into the one they were singing about. How did they know that this Jesus on the road that they cheered with palm branches, how did they know to celebrate him to throw down their coats? Well, one thing we saw heard in the reading is that Jesus himself was clear that he was that king. Jesus was announcing himself. He's on a rescue mission. [00:03:36]

Jesus boldly stars in his own Easter pageant. Your king is here from Psalm 118. He's saying open to me the gates. I'm the king on a rescue mission and I want Jerusalem to know and to rejoice. So that's how they know because he announces it himself and secondly the people of Jerusalem know that he's this coming promised king because the crowd around him, the crowd who's been with him journeying with him seeing his miracles hearing his teaching they help to identify him. [00:04:31]

We find a king who opposes religion. Jesus entered the temple. He drove out all who sold and bought in the temple. He overturned the tables of the money changers, the seats of those who sold pigeons. That's pretty dramatic, isn't it, kids? He's overturning the tables. He's driving them out. He said, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers. [00:06:00]

He bears this one small resemblance to Jesus that Jesus opposes some forms of religion when the king enters his temple he opposes religion that brings a profit, religion that's self-serving. The money changers are taking foreign coins with the pictures of the Emperor and so we can't have that in God's temple. There's only one God not the Emperor so you're gonna have to change your money but there'll be a bit of a you know money-changing fee. [00:08:03]

Good help comes from above, but so often we don't look up. We look around to things that aren't really good help. We look to things that can't save us. Things of stone and wood like the temple or like the idols in the ancient world. Things that can't bring crops. They can't bring the rain. They can't bring fertility. We look to things of stone and wood or we look to things that, you know what, let's just be practical. [00:13:41]

Jesus is pointing out when he quotes this psalm, Psalm 8, that the greatest praise we can give God is the praise of complete dependence to the majestic God who made us. The highest praise we can give him is to acknowledge our dependence to become as he says in Matthew 18 to become like little children completely dependent and simply shout shout hosanna help praise that's praise to God when we call on him with complete dependence for help. [00:18:35]

This on my own the Beatles remind us that's foolish to be independent and it puts ourselves on the wrong side of the fence to God. God knows very well we can't live without him and guess what we can't oppose him either. What happens to the people who try and oppose Jesus? They nail him to a cross but three days later he rises again and begins recreating the world. The Beatles say those days are gone I'm not so self-assured anymore. [00:19:22]

Or anybody he will save his people from their sins that's why he's dying to save his people from their sins he was born to save his people he accepted his rescue mission he gave his life as a ransom for many he was separated from God my God my God why have you forsaken me he was separated for God so that we can return to him so that we can call to help to him for help and know that he can give it so that we can draw near in praise. [00:20:33]

I think that peace without a true religion is in fact a great imagining but but there's no need to despair here's something we don't have to imagine we don't have to imagine a king who came to save his people a king who rode into the city a king who gave his life as a ransom we don't have to imagine that he came to die for us what we also don't have to imagine is we don't have to imagine the key the impact that this king has had over the centuries. [00:23:47]

And if he is your king and savior this Easter will you reflect are you trusting more in your religious practice your religious attendance are you practice trusting more in the temple of the Lord than you are in the Lord of the temple are you doing this Christianity thing for your own security for your own social well-being or are you giving him praise and acknowledgement and identifying him to the world in every area of your life. [00:26:14]

From the house of the Lord, we bless you. We welcome you, Lord Jesus. We praise you that you are not an imaginary king, but you walked up the hill to Jerusalem, that you walked carrying your cross, that you bore the burden for us, that you lived the life we should have lived, that you died the death that we should have died, so that we can have a life with you. So we shout, Hosanna, save us, forgive us. [00:27:14]