Jesus Is Greater Than Our Expectations — Palm Sunday

He traveled through the crowds knowing that days later, they would be shouting, crucify him. And all of it just culminates in that moment of him on that cross. Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. I am so glad because I don't always know what I'm doing either, and I'm so glad for his grace and his love. And that is the example we get to follow because we were in darkness, and God loves us too much to leave us there. [00:35:14] (34 seconds)  #ForgivenAndLoved

So he came up with a solution the moment we invited sin into this world, and we have all sinned, broken what God created. And God put a plan in motion, Jesus. And we now have an opportunity to leave the darkness and step into the light, which signifies a life of purpose, of hope, a transformed life. [00:35:47] (20 seconds)  #FromDarknessToLight

In the days that followed, as he was nailed to that cross, as he died and rose again, he defeated sin and death. Because he didn't come to set up a physical kingdom that would eventually pass away. He came to set up a spiritual one to expand God's kingdom, and then we get the joy and the privilege to partner with him to see it continue to grow as we share our story of how Jesus has influenced, impacted, and changed our lives as we give our life to him. [00:22:34] (27 seconds)  #SpiritualKingdom

I'm here to say that anything we receive from Jesus is always greater than what we expect, and he is so much greater. And so we have to make sure that we hold on to our concept of Jesus not tightly in a way that we think we have it figured out. But we hold on to Jesus, but on the idea of who he is and how he would act in a situation and what we should do, we need to recognize maybe we need to hold on to that a little looser than we think. [00:32:44] (39 seconds)  #ExpectMoreFromJesus

See, they were looking for a king, they were looking for a prophet, and they were looking for a priest. But Matthew, the writer of the passage that we're looking at today, you see, he helps us see that the true messiah, the son of David, that Jesus fulfills all of these old testament prophecies. See, the hope and expectations of the Jews was perhaps for one, but he fulfilled them all. See, he performed the eschatological functions of a prophet, as one commentator put it, priest and king. [00:27:55] (35 seconds)  #ProphetPriestKing

And here once again, the people were expecting another rebellion. But that wasn't what they got because what they expected and what they received, you see, what they received was so much greater. See, Jesus knows their nationalistic ambitions, but he didn't stop them. He knew that the course of this week was going to bring ultimately his death, and that it must be done to fulfill those prophecies, to fulfill his role as our messiah to defeat sin, to defeat death. [00:25:13] (38 seconds)  #PurposeBeyondRebellion

We understand who our messiah is. 100%. I got this. I got it figured out. This is the way it is. However, you don't have to go too far to see how that falls short because Jesus is always so much greater than anything we can come up with. And we forget about looking at Jesus as a whole as opposed to focusing in on one particular piece, on one particular part of his character or how he handled this situation. [00:31:31] (34 seconds)  #SeeJesusWhole

This is what I love about as you look at the life of Jesus. It it just feels like you have to go deep. In fact, I don't think it feels like I think it's true. You just have to go deep and realize that love is at the core of it all. And if we don't start at that part, sometimes we start making up things that Jesus would do, things that how Jesus would act in situation a, b, c, d, and we realize that we're wrong. [00:32:05] (39 seconds)  #LoveAtTheCore