Acts 18:5-6 “When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to Jews that Jesus was the Christ. But when the Jews opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, ‘Your blood be on your own heads! I am clear of my responsibility. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.’”

What a shock! Once again Paul got himself kicked out of a place for telling people that Jesus was the Savior God promised. At least this time no one tried to kill him. In spite of this repeated pattern of rejection and opposition, Paul kept on speaking, because that is the only way people were going to believe and be saved.

I don’t have to tell you that there are still certain Christian truths people don’t want to hear. Talk about them, and you will be opposed. Some of them may even surprise you. When I did Dan and Betty’s wedding years ago, one of their relatives was quite upset that I suggested the couple might be sinners who need a Savior in the wedding sermon. I didn’t call them out for any specific sins. I just mentioned that marriage can be hard because we are all sinners, and aren’t we thankful that we have Jesus to forgive us and help us along the way. But I was a horrible person for saying it in the wedding.

When my friend Pastor Dave conducted a funeral for a man who died of AIDS, several people in attendance got up and walked out when he mentioned that the dead man had repented of the sexual sins which had led to the disease in the first place. The message wasn’t a diatribe against same sex relationships or promiscuity, though it made reference to these sins. It was mostly about the gospel of God’s grace. But Dave and his congregation almost lost the church building they had been renting over the issue as well.

Going door to door in the town where I now live, I have been opposed and rejected for believing that the Bible is a reliable source of information, for believing in the traditional definition of marriage, for believing that people can’t save themselves by living a good life. This is neither unique nor new. It isn’t an excuse to stop speaking, either. People need to hear the gospel, whether they like it or not. Just like I do. Aren’t we glad we have Jesus to forgive us and help us along the way?

Acts 18:1-4 “After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There (in Corinth) he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.”

We could forgive the Apostle Paul if he didn’t feel like talking about Jesus anymore. A Christian pastor once observed: “Where the Apostle Paul went, they started a riot. Where I go, they serve tea.” Paul was on tour in Macedonia and Greece–the first Christian mission work in Europe. He came to Philippi, where they beat him severely and threw him in jail. He went on to Thessalonika. After three weeks, the people who didn’t like his message started a riot, and he had to sneak out of the city in the middle of the night. He went to Berea, and the same thing happened there. He went on to Athens, where they mocked him as a babbler and sneered at the idea that God raises the dead.

“After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth,” Luke tells us. You could forgive Paul if he was getting discouraged. You know how negative reinforcement works. Scientists manipulate a lab animal’s behavior by giving it a shock every time it does something they don’t want it to do. In short order it learns to stop that behavior. Every time Paul opened his mouth about Jesus, he got his little “shock” from the local citizens. If he just kept quiet about Jesus, maybe they would let him stay a little while.

What made coming to Corinth harder was that Paul came alone. He had to leave his traveling companions behind in Berea, a couple of stops back. He had no support network around him as he entered this new city–all the more reason to keep his mouth shut and not risk more rejection.

At various points along the way we have had the sense that we are on our own. We are going it alone. We don’t have our comfortable support network around us. That throws a wet blanket on our desire to speak about our faith. Maybe we feel it in the transition between schools: from grade school to high school, from high school to college. Maybe it has come when we relocated for a job. Maybe someone we love and lean on passes away, or maybe some family relationship or friendship comes unglued and falls apart. Alone, or at least feeling that way, we don’t want to stick out and look different. We don’t want people to think we are weird, or worse, bad. We are tempted to keep Jesus to ourselves. We shut our mouths. We become Christian cowards.

But we are never really alone. “There (in Corinth) he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome.” What a coincidence! Paul was a Jew. So were Aquila and his wife. Paul was new to Corinth. So were they. Paul was a tentmaker just like they were. God had prepared this new support group for Paul to encourage him to keep on speaking in the synagogue, trying to persuade the people there to believe in Jesus.

I can’t say that God has specifically promised to support us in exactly the same way. But he wants us to keep on speaking. If we look carefully, we will probably find that we aren’t all alone wherever he has placed us.

 During my seminary years I did cross-cultural mission work in the inner city of Milwaukee. The atmosphere and culture of these neighborhoods was new to me. I’m Anglo. They were mostly African-American. I grew up in relatively safe suburbs. These were high crime areas of the inner city. I had a very middle-class existence. The people I was trying to reach mostly belonged to the underclass: poverty and hunger were the norm for their lives.

Yet at the corner of North Avenue and 26^th St. stood a little grocery owned by a man who shared my faith and supported my work. He could introduce me to people. He provided an office above his store as a base for my work. He understood the culture better than I did. I wasn’t alone. God had others there. He wanted me to keep on speaking. He wants to support you on your mission of Christian witness where he has placed, you, too.

Mark 16:7-8 “But go and tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’ Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”

Jesus had trained the Twelve disciples to be his messengers. At least two times during his ministry he sent them on training runs to preach and teach in villages around Galilee.

The women who followed Jesus mostly spent their time learning from him and providing material and financial support, we learn from the gospels. One of these women, Salome, was the mother of James and John and may have been involved in some way in the family fishing business. But none of these ladies had been trained for mission work like the Twelve.

That was not an excuse to keep their mouths shut about the good news they had just learned. “Go and tell…” the angel commands. That was their new calling on this day, their new “vocation.” God didn’t ask them to pastor congregations or evangelize a pagan tribe in some far off land. He did ask them to tell people they knew that Jesus was alive. Mark’s comment, “They said nothing to anyone,” isn’t evidence of disobedience. It was an indication that they took their mission seriously, and went straight to the disciples without stopping to tell anyone else.

When I preach on Sundays, I stand in front of retirees, security guards, students, dishwashers, managers, IT professionals, homemakers, medical aids. They have come to church to learn about Jesus for many years. They have provided material and financial support for the ministry of the gospel. They aren’t trained theologians or called pastors or missionaries.

But you and they know that one spring day about 2000 years ago a crucified corpse woke up in its tomb and walked out alive. You and they know that he died to set everything right between God and humanity, to make amends for all the great crimes and small slips committed by every person who ever lived. You know that he can and will wake the dead from their graves, just as he woke up himself, and give them a life of never-ending pleasures in God’s presence. You know that he is your Lord, your brother, your Savior, and your God.

Does it have to be stated that this is not information to keep to ourselves? Does some church have to vote to send us a call before we know that we have a calling, a “vocation,” to share this with the people we know? I believe that it is self-evident for those who may or may not have been looking for Jesus, but he found them when he captured their hearts with his gracious words of love.

Mark 16:5-7 “As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he said. ‘You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

As these women arrive at Jesus’ tomb, this question suggests itself: Are they looking for Jesus in the right location?

I suppose the answer to the question of location is “Yes and no.” They had the right tomb. The angel makes that clear. “Jesus” was a popular name in his day. No doubt there were many men named Jesus buried around Jerusalem. But this was the tomb of the Jesus from Nazareth, the one who had been crucified. These ladies were not mistaken in thinking this was the last place they had seen his body laid.

But that place was empty now. “He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him.” A tomb may be a place to visit when there is a body in it. It is no place to stay or live for those who are alive. And Jesus was alive. Death had to let go of him on the third day. By his death he had removed the original reason for death: our human sin. When Jesus erased our sins, death lost its right to keep us anymore. Jesus himself was the first person released from its grip. But he is not the only one. One day every one of us will follow.

So did these women find Jesus in this location or not? In the sense that they found his literal, physical body, the answer is no. That body once dead now lived and left the tomb. They would find him just a few minutes later along the road back into the city, as Matthew’s gospel tells us. Maybe some of them saw him in Galilee when he met with the disciples there. But the tomb was and is empty. You can travel to Jerusalem yourself today, if you like, and see the same spot to which the angel pointed and told the women, “See the place where they laid him.” The only ones there now are pilgrims and tourists.

On the other hand, these women did find Jesus in the words of the angel. He preached the greatest Easter sermon ever, with the greatest visual aids, in that empty tomb. They may have been looking for a Jesus they could touch and feel. He would show up a little later. They found a Jesus they could trust and worship, one they could hold in their hearts and take with them wherever they went. In the angel’s words, they found not just a friend and teacher. They found their God and Savior from sin.

The cross and empty tomb are still the right place to look when you are looking for Jesus. These real places in Christian history, these actual events from the life of Christ, are still the places where Jesus meets us with the love that floods our hearts with the forgiveness of our sins; the place where the promise of life after death sparks a new life of faith right now and makes our hearts his homes on earth. When you are looking for Jesus, don’t look for him in tips about how to live a successful life. Don’t look for him in rules to live by. These may all be helpful, and interesting, and true, but Jesus doesn’t live there. Look for him in the good news that he died and rose to save you. That’s the location where he promises to be found.

Mark 16:1-3 “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, ‘Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?’”

Maybe I’m just more aware of it now that I am more involved in our family’s shopping. Maybe it is something more cashiers have been trained to do at the checkout counter. I am unloading my grocery cart at the cash register, and the cashier asks me, “Did you find what you were looking for?” Every Sunday afternoon our family goes grocery shopping at ALDI, and without fail the person scanning my groceries asks me, “Did you find everything you were looking for?” But it’s not just ALDI. J.C. Penney, Lowes or Home Depot, CVS Pharmacy–they all ask the same question: “Did you find what you were looking for?”

The two Marys and Salome were looking for Jesus when they came to his tomb that Sunday morning. The body itself was usually anointed with perfumed oils. Notice that Mark says they were coming “to anoint Jesus’ body,” not merely add some potpourri to the tomb.

But something was missing. These women expected that Jesus was dead. They expected, then, that he had been just another mortal human teacher–a great prophet, an outstanding example and role model. They expected he was a man whose memory they should honor and celebrate, like we do with the Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson memorials on the mall in Washington D.C., but nothing more. They were looking for Jesus, but with the wrong expectations.

And notice how this had deformed and disfigured their Christian lives. For the past two days they had worried about a problem that didn’t exist. For the past twelve hours they had wasted time and lost sleep over solving it. They had spent large sums of money–the kinds of oils and fragrances used for this kind of thing were not cheap–to use in a tomb that had no body. It is interesting that we never hear again about the fate of these rather expensive deodorants they had purchased. In light of the truth they learned about Jesus, none of this mattered anymore.

You and I know better, I believe. We don’t think that we are following a dead hero, as though Easter was a spiritual version of President’s Day. We are looking for a risen Lord, our victorious God, the conqueror of sin and death, and Satan and hell, and every other evil with which our world has to contend.

But notice how, though we know this in our heads, and we believe it in our hearts, somehow it escapes us in our practice. We live like Jesus was dead. We worry about problems, that may not even exist, as though it all depended on us to solve them. We waste time and forfeit sleep over a future we don’t control: what’s going to happen at work, what’s going to happen at school, what’s going to happen in Washington D.C. or the state capitol, what’s going to happen at my next doctor’s appointment?

I am not saying we should do anything foolish or neglect our responsibilities. But Jesus is alive, still today, two thousand years later. He is victorious over sin and death. Doesn’t the living and victorious Jesus have the future covered for us?

Isaiah 53:10 “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.”

Would it surprise us if God the Father found the day of Jesus’ crucifixion infuriating? Shouldn’t we expect it? Fathers naturally want to protect their children. They want what is best for them. Attend a youth soccer game sometime, or a baseball game. Listen to the way the dads get on the referees, or even their own coaches, if they think their boys aren’t being treated fairly. Several years ago a father became so angry at his son’s hockey coach during a practice that he beat the man to death. Do we think that the Father in heaven loves his Son less? Remember what Jesus once said about his Father’s regard for his children on earth? “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

But what does Isaiah say about the heavenly Father and Jesus’ suffering on this day? “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer…” It was the Lord’s will. Literally, the Hebrew word Isaiah uses means “delight.” That’s hard to fathom, maybe even impossible for you and me. That the Lord would allow this to happen, even begrudgingly, is hard to get your head around. In his book The Problem of Suffering, Pastor Gregory Schulz describes a father’s agony at watching his children struggle with chronic disease and its pain. He had to tell his son he couldn’t have any food or water as he prepped for surgery. He had to restrain his son while nurses invaded his body with intravenous needles. And then, preparing a sermon on John 3:16, he reads the words, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” And aghast, looking at those words in light of his relationship with his own son, he could only ask, over and over again, “How could you?”

You see, we aren’t talking about a helpless father watching it happen from a hospital bedside, completely dependent on the doctors, nurses, and medical technology. We aren’t talking about some unfeeling father, too dull to know, too full of himself to care. This is the Father above all fathers, the God who is love, somehow finding delight in what his Son suffers on this day.

Nor is there any analogy or illustration strong enough to describe what happened to this Father’s Son on the cross. “It was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer.” Children have been slowly crushed to death by their parents backing out of the garage. We hear about children burned alive in house fires. All of that pales in comparison to Jesus’ suffering. He was crushed, not so much by Jewish fists, or Roman whips, or nails driven through his wrists and ankles. He was crushed by the combined weight of humanity’s sins, the guilt of all people and all history that he carried to the cross. He was crushed by the fury of hell, the price he paid for those sins in God-forsaken darkness and abandonment.

Still, this is the Father’s will, his delight. How could anyone, much less the Father in heaven, find anything about this “good”?

Our struggle to understand does not come because we are more moral than God. Any idea that we are better than the God who reveals himself to us on the pages of Scripture is a delusion. No, the problem is that we have never felt love for anyone else anything like the love this Father has for you and me. In our sin, our concept of love is wrapped up in affection for those who benefit us in some way. It has to do more with what we get than what we give. Isn’t that so? Don’t you love those who please you, and find excuses not to love those who cause you pain?

The reason our Father could so delight in crushing his Son is that he cannot separate the horrible event from its saving results: “…the Lord makes his life a guilt offering.” In the blood sacrifices of the Old Testament, the guilt was transferred from the worshiper to the sacrificial victim: the lamb, or the calf, or the goat that died in those ceremonies. In the death of the sacrifice the guilt was disposed. The Father made Jesus our guilt offering. The wall of sin that kept us from God is gone!

And so, “he will see his offspring.” Jesus’ death brings many sons and daughters to the Father, millions of them, maybe billions. When God first created man, he did so because he wanted someone to love. He desired a relationship with a creature he fashioned like himself: rational, self-conscious, capable of loving and being loved. Jesus’ death restores God’s dream. Now such a family is possible. Now God’s family is enlarged. This is how “the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.” What God always wanted finally becomes reality at the cross: holy sons and daughters he can claim as his very own. This is why the heavenly Father can also call this day “good.”

Exodus 12:15 “For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel.”

God was deadly serious about Israel keeping the yeast out of their bread at Passover. Even more, he wanted the whole house purged. Why?

Yeast offers us a natural picture or symbol of sin. As it feeds on and spreads through whatever has become its host, it has a corrupting influence. Its spread is difficult, if not impossible, to stop. And once yeast is introduced into a place, traces of it are everywhere. Actually ridding your house of all yeast is a daunting task. Today, devout Jews go through a ritual of “nullifying” any yeast in their homes twice in the twenty-four hours before Passover. In the ritual they renounce ownership of what little might remain because it is so hard to get rid of.

Is it hard to see why God would choose this to teach us about the nature of our sin? Ever try to get sin out of your life on your own? You could work at it your whole life and you would never succeed. Some people may feel that they only “dabble” in certain sins, but there is no dabbling in sin, is there. When I was a boy I liked to collect things. I dabbled in collecting rocks, collecting coins, collecting Hardy Boys mystery stories, and building models. When the time came, it was easy enough to give those things up.

You can’t pick sin up like a hobby and then put it down again. Long before you took hold of any particular sin, sin took hold of you and me. You know how difficult it is to shake your taste for attitudes or activities you know are wrong. And when we look at the broad sweep of sin in our lives, all the different parts of me that it has corrupted, all the nooks and crannies in which it lives and grows, we know its presence is everywhere. As yeast lives in bread dough, sin lives in people, people just like you and me.

So God had his people eat bread without yeast at Passover, a picture of the kind of people without sin who could be considered his own. But how many people qualify? All by itself, this picture would not make us more sure of God’s love. It would create more doubt and uncertainty. It would lead us to despair. How can we become such sinless people? Only one man ever lived whose life was not infected by the yeast of sin. He is God’s solution for our sin. In fact, he used the unleavened bread sitting on the table at his last Passover supper to give his sinless body to his disciples. That is better understood from another part of the Passover meal.

The Passover also involved the sacrifice of a lamb. This sacrifice was roasted and eaten by the participants. The perfect, innocent lamb sacrificed at the Passover was a picture of sinless Jesus. The Apostle Paul tells: “Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed.” Just as the Passover lamb died instead of the sinful people who offered it, Jesus gave his life to spare us from our sins. John the Baptist cried out, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”

But how can I be sure Jesus’ sacrifice counts for me? I don’t see my sins vaporized after God tells me I’m forgiven. I wasn’t at the sacrifice when Jesus died on the cross nearly 2000 years ago. I didn’t even exist yet. I’m still committing sins every day. How can I be sure?

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10, “Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar?” The Passover lamb was more than a sacrifice. It was a meal. The people at the meal knew that they were partakers in what that sacrifice accomplished. They received the benefits of the sacrifice, that they had a personal connection to the sacrifice and its blessings when they ate the lamb. This was a personal and individual way in which they were involved. How could they miss the point that this lamb died for them as they ate the very flesh of the animal that gave its life?

Jesus’ sacrifice took place long ago, and it doesn’t need repeating. We didn’t get to see it. But our sin was present and paid for. Jesus’ sacrifice does count for me. And just to make us sure, God miraculously takes that same body sacrificed so many years ago, and he gives it to us to eat in the supper he sets before us at the communion table. It’s a personal and individual way by which he applies the forgiveness, life, and salvation flowing from Jesus’ cross to each of us.

Analogies for this are hard to think of, but consider this: I have a box of high school mementos at home which still contains a boutonniere from a high school banquet my wife and I once attended. It was a real part of that event that I can touch and see.

As interesting and meaningful as such a keepsake might be–more than a picture, but an actual artifact from the past– all it can do is conjure up a memory. It doesn’t actually bring me anything. In the feast Jesus sets before us, he does more than display an artifact from the past. He gives more than fond memories. We receive the body of God’s own Son. With it come God’s own promise of forgiveness and love. Here we see God’s real solution for the problem of sin, the sin he pictured as yeast, the sin our Passover Lamb removes.

Zechariah 9:10 “I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war-horses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.”

If you know a little about Israelite history, you know that at the time of King David’s grandson Rehoboam, the nation was split in two. The northern kingdom, which took the name Israel, was sometimes referred to as “Ephraim” because that was the dominant tribe where the capitol city of Samaria was located. The southern kingdom was named Judah, and it was ruled from the city of Jerusalem. Sometimes the two nations had a peaceful coexistence, but they never liked each other much and often went to war.

The prophet Zechariah sees Jesus as the King who will put an end to the fighting between God’s own people. The weapons will be taken away from Ephraim in the north and Jerusalem in the south. They will live and act as one people once again.

Historically, the northern kingdom had pretty much disappeared from the face of the earth about 200 years before Zechariah. There was a little remnant of their people, but they never existed as a separate, identifiable state any more. What the prophet is giving us is rather a picture of the divisions among God’s people, internally–with each other, and the promise that Jesus will put an end to them.

Externally Christianity may still look very divided, with more flavors than Baskin Robbins. But spiritually, invisibly, we confess our faith in one holy Christian and Apostolic Church. Inwardly, faith in Jesus unites those who trust in him. We may not be able to see this yet, because faith is a hidden thing, a matter of the heart. We Christians may be forgiven, but we still struggle with sin and stubbornness and false beliefs that get in the way of our unity. Still, our King has given us his powerful word which attacks those divisive problems now, and the day is coming when “the battle bow will be broken.” All his true people will be gathered as one around his throne.

The benefits of living under this King are not limited to people living in one country or descended from one race. Part of the good news is that his reign is universal. “He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.”

Some people criticize Christians for spreading their faith and trying to change people who already have a religion. That’s because people on the outside of the Christian faith don’t understand what our King has to offer. If we were trying to provide clean drinking water or a cure for malaria in some other part of the world, no one would complain about lack of respect for other cultures and faiths.

Jesus brings something far better and far more important, and he is the only source for what he has to give. No one else, no other belief system, can provide free forgiveness of sins, peace with God, and life that never ends. That’s why this King is spreading his kingdom “from sea to sea,” and “to the ends of the earth.” Wherever the gospel is preached, and people are coming to faith, people of every color and nationality are getting the same King we have, and the same blessings he brings.

There is no greater peace people can share. There is no greater unity we can know.

Zechariah 9:9 “See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Candidates for office make a lot of promises about what they are going to do for you. Sometimes they would have to be king to be able to do all the things they say they are going to do. Mostly their term begins, and then it ends, and things stay about the same, at least in my experience.

When Jesus comes as King, he comes with no small promise in hand. He has salvation. He isn’t promising to rescue us from a bad economy, stagnant job growth, low wages, high taxes, global warming, Islamic terrorists, or a crazy dictator in North Korea. He brings salvation from our own sins. Have you slept with someone you shouldn’t? He forgives that. Ever lied to stay out of trouble? He pardons that, too. Have your actions ever broken up a family, cost someone their job, contributed to someone’s delinquency, shattered someone’s faith, separated close friends, or gravely disappointed your parents? Forgiven, forgiven, forgiven, forgiven, forgiven, forgiven.

You realize that this isn’t some insignificant political trick like preventing thermonuclear war or keeping the polar ice caps from melting. This is huge. By bringing salvation from sin, Jesus has just presented us with the cure for death, not just until the next time we get sick, but forever.

Put that on your average politician’s resume–the salvation of the world–and his head would swell as big as a small planet. But is that the kind of person we see riding into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday? The prophet says he is “righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey.” The Hebrew says something more like “lowly” or “humble” and riding on a donkey. Maybe “humility” is such an unbelievable trait after everything we have read about this King that even the translators have trouble translating it that way.

But it all fits the picture. Jesus was infinitely better than the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the lepers, and the other outcasts of his day. But he was not too high and mighty to attend their dinners, spend time teaching them, or heal their sick. Jesus was more than the rightful King of Israel. He was Lord and Master of the Universe, the most powerful man in the world. He had the ability to control the weather and modify the laws of physics. But he doesn’t enter Jerusalem on a white horse or in a golden chariot, the First Century equivalent of a limousine in a motorcade. He rides a donkey, the average man’s vehicle, the First Century Ford or Chevy compact sedan. This is not a King who is full of himself.

This makes him a King we can approach with confidence. Have you ever met someone famous and felt a little awkward, or intimidated, to be in the presence of such an important person? You’ve seen people become speechless when they met a favorite sports star, entertainer, or politician. You won’t find anyone any higher than Jesus, but you won’t find anyone easier to approach. Bring your requests, your sin and guilt, your desperate situations and deepest needs, and give it to him. He’s happy to hear you for as long as you want to talk, happy to help you with whatever issues you have, because he is humble and gentle even though he is truly a King.