Because Jesus died for us…the best is yet to come!

John 12:12-18        

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason -- April 4, 2004

Information Please

A man tells the story about a special friend he made while just a boy. When quite young, Paul's father had one of the first telephones in their neighborhood. Paul was too little to reach the telephone, but used to listen with fascination when his mother talked to it.

Then Paul discovered that somewhere inside the wonderful device lived an amazing person - her name was "Information, Please" and there was nothing she did not know.

"Information, Please" could supply anybody's number and the correct time. Paul's first personal experience with this genie-in the-bottle came one day while his mother was visiting a neighbor. Amusing himself at the tool bench in the basement, Paul hacked his finger with a hammer. The pain was terrible, but there didn't seem to be any reason in crying because there was no one home to give sympathy. He walked around the house sucking his throbbing finger, finally arriving at the stairway.

The telephone!
Quickly, Paul ran for the foot stool in the parlor and dragged it to the landing. Climbing up, he unhooked the receiver in the parlor and held it to his ear. "Information, Please," he said into the mouthpiece just above his head.

A click or two and a small clear voice spoke into Paul's ear.
"Information."
"I hurt my finger," Paul wailed into the phone. 
"Isn't your mother home?" came the question.
"Nobody's home but me" Paul blubbered.
"Are you bleeding?" the voice asked.
"No," he replied. "I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts."
"Can you open your icebox?" she asked. He said he could. "Then chip off a little piece of ice and hold it to your finger," said the voice.
After that, Paul called "Information, Please" for everything. He asked her for help with his geography and she told me where Philadelphia was. She helped him with his math. She told Paul that his pet chipmunk, which he had caught in the park just the day before, would eat fruit and nuts. Then, there was the time Petey, the pet canary died. Paul called and told her the sad story.
She listened, and then said the usual things grown-ups say to soothe a child, but Paul was inconsolable. He asked her, "Why is it that birds should sing so beautifully and bring joy to all families, only to end up as a heap of feathers on the bottom of a cage?"
She must have sensed his deep concern, for she said quietly, "Paul, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in." Somehow, he felt better. .
When Paul was nine years old, his family moved across the country to Boston. Paul missed his friend very much. "Information, Please" belonged in that old wooden box back home, and he somehow never thought of trying the tall, shiny new phone that sat on the table in the hall.
As he grew into his teens, the memories of those childhood conversations never really left him. Often, in moments of doubt and perplexity Paul would recall the serene sense of security he had then. He appreciated now how patient, understanding, and kind she was to have spent her time on a little boy.

A few years later, on his way west to college, Paul's plane put down in Seattle. He had about half an hour or so between planes. He spent 15 minutes on the phone with my sister, who lived there now. Then without thinking what he was doing, Paul dialed his hometown operator and said, "Information, Please."

Miraculously, he heard the small, clear voice he knew so well, "Information."
He hadn't planned this but he heard himself saying, "Could you please tell me how to spell fix?"
There was a long pause. Then came the soft spoken answer, "I guess your finger must have healed by now." Paul laughed. "So it's really still you," he said. "I wonder if you have any idea how much you meant to me during that time."
"I wonder," she said, "if you know how much your calls meant to me. I never had any children, and I used to look forward to your calls." Paul told her how often he had thought of her over the years and asked if he could call her again when he came back to visit his sister.
"Please do," she said. "Just ask for Sally."
Three months later Paul was back in Seattle. A different voice answered, "Information." He asked for Sally. "Are you a friend?" She asked.
"Yes, a very old friend," Paul answered.
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this," she said. "Sally has been working part-time the last few years because she was sick. She died five weeks ago."
Before he could hang up she said, "Wait a minute. Is this Paul?"
"Yes," Paul replied.
"Well, Sally left a message for you. She wrote it down in case you called. Let me read it to you." The note said, "Tell him I still say there are other worlds to sing in. He'll know what I mean."

John 12:12-18
      12 The next day, the news that Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem swept through the city. A huge crowd of Passover visitors 13took palm branches and went down the road to meet him. They shouted,
 “Praise God!  Bless the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
 Hail to the King of Israel!”
14Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, fulfilling the prophecy that said: 15 “Don’t be afraid, people of Israel.  Look, your King is coming,
 sitting on a donkey’s colt.”
      16His disciples didn’t realize at the time that this was a fulfillment of prophecy. But after Jesus entered into his glory, they remembered that these Scriptures had come true before their eyes.
      17Those in the crowd who had seen Jesus call Lazarus back to life were telling others all about it. 18That was the main reason so many went out to meet him—because they had heard about this mighty miracle.    19Then the Pharisees said to each other, “We’ve lost. Look, the whole world has gone after him!”

In the calendar of the Christian Church, this is known as Palm Sunday. We often think of the arrival of Jesus for the feast as the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We think of it as a joyous occasion and the response of the crowd that surrounded him on that day was certainly joyous. However, it was a sad day and is a picture of a great sadness.
 
  Jesus entered Jerusalem triumphantly and the city was stirred to its very foundations, but a strange god was there—the pride of the Pharisees. It was a god that seemed religious and upright, but Jesus compared it to “whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27).

It was the first day of the week. In the calendar of the Hebrew people, it was the day on which the sacrificial lamb for the Passover was secluded. The Master had spent the Sabbath in quietness with his friends. With the day of rest over, Jesus is now seen on his way into Jerusalem amid the thronging multitudes. I am not sure that we really understand what Passover in Jerusalem was like back then. Conservative estimates of the number of people in Jerusalem for the Passover when Jesus entered the city are about 3 million people. That is the number given by Josephus in his History. With that, many people in the area, the surrounding towns would have been over crowded and there would have been thousands of people who were living in tents and booths during that Passover Celebration.

In Exodus 11 and 12, we find the story of the first Passover. Moses had been sent to Pharaoh in Egypt to seek the release of the people of God who were slaves there. When Pharaoh refused to let Israel go, God unleashed a series of plagues on Egypt to force them to set Israel free. The last of the plagues was the plague of death that would strike the first born in Egypt.

The Israelites were to kill a lamb or goat to eat the night before they were to leave Egypt. They were to take blood from the Passover lamb or goat and smear it on the two door posts and lintel of the door of the house. They were commanded to eat the Passover meal in haste, dressed and ready to leave Egypt. That night when the angel of death passed over Egypt, he would see the blood and pass over their house and the first born would be safe.

The first thing we need to see about that first Passover is that faith was required for the people to place the blood on the door posts and lintel. It was no different later when Jesus the Lamb of God came to Israel. The people were challenged to believe God had sent him to them as the Lamb of God.

People were anxious and eager to see Jesus. You will remember that on a previous Feast in Jerusalem when Jesus’ brothers suggested that he go to Jerusalem publicly so that the people could make him their king, that he went up to Jerusalem secretly about half way through the celebration. At that time, he just showed up at the temple teaching the people.
It would not be so this time. The crowds met him and escorted him into the city.  He chose to enter Jerusalem this way. It was by his own arrangement that he rode into the city on the colt. This was recognized as a kingly mount and surrounded by his followers it would have been known to anyone who saw him come into the city that he was making a claim to be King of the Jews.

We have often wondered about the crowds in Jerusalem for the Passover that year. One day they hail him their king, “Hosanna,” …”save now” and shortly afterward they hiss, “crucify him!”. How do we explain that difference. We could see it as a matter of the tide turning on Jesus during this week with the enemies of Jesus finally having sway over the crowd. However, it makes better sense to understand that there were two crowds there at that Passover. The Galileans surrounded him as he entered the city proclaiming him King of the Jews. They were open to Jesus and the possibility that he was their Messiah. The other crowd was the Judean crowd. They viewed Galilee and Galileans with contempt, as Galilee of the Gentiles and the people there as contaminated by their contact with the gentiles. Judeans were not as sympathetic toward Jesus and more under the influence of the Pharisees and the rulers of the Jews.

Jesus goes to Jerusalem as a Victor and not as a victim of circumstances. The crisis that is precipitated and that leads to the cross is one of his own making.

How would the patrician Romans look at the entry of Jesus into the city as the Jewish King? One would think that if one was coming into Jerusalem as the new King of the Jews, they would have stopped him and stopped this demonstration. But they did not interfere with it. Why was that? It was because they would have seen it as a pathetic, contemptible event. The Romans would have considered it a laughing stock. They were acquainted with triumphal entry into Rome that was filled with spectacle; with kings overcome in battle chained to the general’s chariot wheels, and all the booty won during the campaign.

Here you have Jesus riding into the city on the colt, not even a horse. He was accompanied by old clothes, broken trees and unarmed peasant folk. That is what the Roman would have seen and he would have held it all in contempt. Grotesque!

Jesus’ disciples did not understand what was taking place. He alone fully understood what was happening.
The people were crying “Hosanna – Save Now: blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord.” They were crying out for the establishment of the Kingdom and deliverance from the bondage of the Romans. Their thought was that this was the day predicted of old that their Messiah was coming to set everything right, to set up their kingdom and to throw off the yoke of their oppressors.

The word Hosanna was a combination of two words “save” and “now”. I think the Galilean crowd was appealing to Jerusalem to receive their king. They saw who Jesus was and are appealing to the Judean Jews to accept Jesus as their king.

This was what his disciples had been wanting for a long time. They had often hoped that he would do what he was doing now. At last, he was riding into Jerusalem, to proclaim his kingship. But the kingdom could not come as they wanted or expected. The way to his kingship was through the cross. There could be no other way.

The Pharisees were the only ones who were consistent through out this whole event. In John 11:53 we see that “from that day on they planned together to kill him.” And by the time you get to John 11:57 you read that the “chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where he was, he should report it, that they might seize him.” And then on the day of the entry into Jerusalem the Pharisees said to one another “You see that you are not doing any good; look, the world has gone after him.” They were hostile, fearful, rebellious, determined to put an end to this whole thing about Jesus.

And Jesus saw in it all the blood of the Cross.
He had to go through the cross to please His Father. This is what the Father had decreed so that sin could be dealt with once and for all and that those who would place their faith in Jesus as their Savior and Lord of their lives might be forgiven and saved…to be with him forever.
Go back to the first Passover celebration.  What did it mean?
* It meant redemption…They are redeemed by the blood of the lamb. The people who live in this house (covered with the blood) are free. They have been slaves but are now redeemed.  That is what the blood of Christ means to us.
* The blood on the door meant that they belonged to God.  “…you are not your own, you are bought with a price.”
* The blood meant acceptance. He who had the blood sprinkled on the door post has it to show that he is acceptable to God. So it is with us who believe in Christ, we have had the blood of the Cross sprinkled on us and that shows that we are acceptable to God.
* The blood meant perfect safety. The Israelite in the house with the blood on the door post was safe from the judgment of death that night. The Angel would not strike them. Death would pass them by. So it is that we who are sprinkled with the Blood of the Christ are safe from the judgment to come on sin.

But when Jesus was arrested….
His disciples all forsook him and fled.
The multitudes of Galileans left and hurried away home.
The Judeans cried, “Away with Him, Crucify him!”
The Pharisees remained consistent in their hatred of Jesus and murdered him.

Jesus said that his kingdom was not of this world. By that, he meant that it was not to be established on principles of this world. It would not be established on worldly ideals or by worldly methods or result in the kind of glory and glamour which is of this world.

He began his work in the spiritual center of this world.  All that makes up this world will be brought under his dominion. He will then remake, renew these things by dealing with the spiritual center. Because he was willing to go to the cross as the sacrifice for our sin, we will have a song in a better world that will bless us forever.
 
Let me close with this. It is entitled: Keep Your Fork.

There was a woman who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and had been given three months to live. So as she was getting her things "in order," she contacted her pastor and had him come to her house to discuss certain aspects of her final wishes. She told him which songs she wanted sung at the service, what scriptures she would like read, and what outfit she wanted to be buried in. The woman also requested to be buried with her favorite Bible. Everything was in order and the pastor was preparing to leave when the woman suddenly remembered something very important to her.
"There's one more thing," she excitedly.
"What's that?" came the pastor's reply.
"This is very important," the woman continued. "I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand."
The pastor stood looking at the woman, not knowing quite what to say. "That surprises you, doesn't it?" the woman asked.
"Well, to be honest, I'm puzzled by the request," said the pastor.
The woman explained. "In all my years of attending church socials and potluck dinners I always remember that when the dishes were cleared, someone would inevitably lean over and say, 'Keep your fork.' It was my favorite part because I knew that something better was coming... like velvety chocolate cake or deep-dish apple pie. Something wonderful and of substance! So I just want people to see me there in that casket with a fork in my hand and I want them to wonder, 'What's with the fork?' Then I want you to tell them: 'Keep your fork... the best is yet to come.'
The pastor's eyes welled up with tears of joy as he hugged the woman goodbye. He knew this would be one of the last times he would see her before her death. But he also knew that the woman had a better grasp of heaven that he did. She knew that something better was coming.
At the funeral, people were walking by the woman's casket and they saw the pretty dress she was wearing and her favorite Bible and the fork placed in her right hand. Over and over, the pastor heard the question, "What's with the fork?" And over and over, he smiled.
During his message, the pastor told the people of the conversation he had with the woman shortly before she died. He also told them about the fork and what it symbolized to her. The pastor told the people how he could not stop thinking about the fork and told them that they probably would not be able to stop thinking about it either. He was right. So the next time you reach down for your fork, let it remind you oh so gently, that the best is yet to come.

The best is yet to come because Jesus did not accept the offer to establish his kingdom without going to the cross.
Because he willingly suffered and died on that cross, we have:
Redemption.
We belong to God.
We have God’s acceptance.
We are perfectly safe until He takes us home.
The best is yet to come for us who believe in Him because he followed the course the Father had set for him, the course that led him to suffer and die on the cross.

 --Dennis Gleason