Zechariah 9:9 “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Jesus did not come to be a political king. “My kingdom is not of this world,” he told Pilate. Yet it almost sounds like the prophet Zechariah is trying to whip up the crowd at the political rally. When he wrote these words, Israel had been without a king for about 80 years. They weren’t going to get one for another 500 years. This was largely because the kings of the past had failed God and his people. They acted out of self-interest. They neglected their own faith and the faith of their people. They turned a blind eye to injustice. They promoted immorality. After about 400 years of this, the Lord was done. He took away Judah’s independence and let them be ruled by other world powers. He was not going to give them a king again until he could give them a king who would get it right.

Jesus is that king. The prophet wrote words to assure his people a king was coming, someone they could trust. Here is how they could be sure:

The king is righteous. He is just. This doesn’t apply merely to the way he governs publicly. It applies to his private, personal conduct as well. In this, he is an exception of history. Even by watered-down human standards this is exceedingly rare.

Look at Israel’s kings, for example. The king who set the standard by which every other king would be judged, and even the Lord himself called him a man after his own heart, was David. But was David “righteous”? His personal life became a mess. Sexual scandals surrounding people in power isn’t a modern problem. David had his famous affair with Bathsheba. His children were out of control, like so many royal families who make the news today. Later in his reign his conceit got him tangled up in a self-promotion campaign that cost 70,000 people their lives. It cost them their lives! Yet David was considered the model, the sentimental favorite of the nation. After him they really see no one better.

We complain about the people who govern us. Most people I know complain about it a lot. Do you know why we can’t find better leaders, and historically that has been a problem? It is because those who rule are a reflection of the people they govern. The sex, the scandals, the schemes, the deceit, the greed, the self-interest–that’s not just a Washington problem, or a government problem. It describes what the human race has become. We are all about ourselves.

In a democratic system you can’t tell people that and still hope to get elected. But the Lord can say it. There’s a passage in Isaiah in which the Lord says, “Israel’s watchmen (that is, their leaders) are blind…they are dogs with mighty appetites; they never have enough… ‘Come,’ each one cries, ‘let me get wine! Let us drink our fill of beer! And tomorrow will be like today, or even far better.” That was their leaders.

Then Micah, who wrote at the same time, says, “If a liar and deceiver comes and says, ‘I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,’ he would be just the prophet for this people!” That’s the people (and their clergy). In other words, like ruler like people. It hurts to admit, but looking at the seedier side of those who govern is a lot like looking in a mirror.

So Zechariah gives us good news! We are getting a king, and he is righteous. He isn’t just relatively good, or better than most. “He was tempted in every way just as we are, yet was without sin,” the writer of Hebrew says. He is “the lamb without blemish or defect,” is the way the Apostle Peter put it. In John chapter 8 Jesus challenged his opponents, “Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?” not because he was arrogant, but because he was actually pure. Right up to the day they condemned him to death, no one could answer his challenge, even when they paid false witnesses to lie about him, because the King we are getting is righteous.

Isn’t that the kind of king we need, the kind of leadership for which we have been looking?

Matthew 26:1-5 “When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, ‘As you know, the Passover is two days away–and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.’ Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way and kill him. ‘But not during the Feast,’ they said, ‘or there might be a riot among the people.’”

Jesus and his enemies seemed to agree on one thing as they got ready for the end of this week: “…the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.” The chief priests and elders were plotting to kill him. Jesus intended to give up his life to save us. But neither understood the meaning of this in the same way.

Those against Jesus were convinced that a real Messiah would save his people by raising an army, restoring Israel to power, and leading the nation to victory. Even Jesus’ disciples couldn’t shake themselves free of the idea that salvation should include a free and secure Israel, and a great improvement in the national standard of living. The leaders were going to kill Jesus, but not to complete God’s saving work. This was their attempt to put a stop to the man they considered an imposter, and not a very convincing one at that.

The cross is so ingrained in the culture and life of the church that we may think we are on the same page as Jesus regarding his saving methods.  We nod our heads in agreement when Paul says in 1^st Corinthians, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

But don’t we still become guilty of looking at Jesus as though he were some political hero, a secular Savior? Does our chief plea become, “Make us safe and prosperous?” It’s not just the prosperity preachers on television. In order to be relevant, more and more preachers preach him as the Savior of your marriage, your career, your retirement funds, our nation’s prominence on the world stage. The cross figures less and less in such concerns. I would like a better marriage, career, retirement, and country to live in. The Jesus who secures my earthly happiness sounds good to me, too.

“But what good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26). You and I wouldn’t try to get rid of the Jesus who dies on a cross to pay for our sins and save our souls. But would we be content if he and his cross just faded away so long as we still had a Jesus with relevant ideas about improving our present lives?

“The Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.” The cross is an indispensable part of Jesus’ work, the key component in his saving plan. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.” “He forgave us all our sins,” Paul writes the Colossians, “having canceled the written code that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.” Again: “God was pleased…to reconcile to himself all things…by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

On the cross Jesus is forsaken by his heavenly Father so that we can be accepted by him. From the cross Jesus shouts, “It is finished,” his work complete, our salvation accomplished, our souls secure. The cross is why the Apostle Paul could lay aside his own life, and stop obsessing about his own accomplishments, and frankly tell the Galatians, “May I never boast except in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ.” It still deserves first place in our faith.

Matthew 26:1-5 “When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to his disciples, ‘As you know, the Passover is two days away–and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.’ Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way and kill him. ‘But not during the Feast,’ they said, ‘or there might be a riot among the people.’”

“If only I could get control…” On the one hand, Jesus had already announced, “the Son of Man will be handed over…” At the same time, we hear of his enemies, “they plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way…” Who was really in control of what was going on here?

It is hard to do something on the sly, to accomplish your goals by deceit and trickery, when your victim knows what you are going to do even before you do. First, Jesus announces he will be handed over. Then the chief priests and elders plot to arrest him in some sly way. It speaks volumes about who was really in control of everything. Jesus could have left Jerusalem at this very moment. If he stayed, the One who knew his enemies’ plans before they did had the ability to know all their movements. He could make sure he was never available, never where they expected to find him. He had slipped through their fingers before.

Beyond that, there was an even greater power into which he could tap. With just a word or two he brought dangerous storms to a complete standstill. Certainly he had the power to overcome whatever force the Jewish leaders used to arrest him and hold him captive. The appearance of control by Jewish and Roman authorities throughout Jesus’ suffering and death was only an illusion.

Would it surprise you if I admitted that I want control–control over my own life? I not only want to keep control from people around me, people who have different plans than I do, people who might use their control to take advantage of me. I would also like to control Jesus’ involvement in my life. I plot and I plan. Sometimes I even think that I have control, or I am gaining control. But it is all just an illusion. You and I have to act responsibly, but with our cooperation or without it, Jesus still has ultimate control over all that happens to me.

Isn’t that a comfort when we look at his plans for this Passover? As we review all that he suffered, as we sit at the foot of the cross on Good Friday and look up at his bruised and blood-drenched body, it is easy for us to forget that he is there because he wants to be. He chooses this, not because he enjoys suffering. It filled his soul with such dread that he pleaded with his Father in Gethsemane to take it away if possible. But it wasn’t possible, and so he chooses to let these men arrest him and commit all their crimes against him because it saves and serves us.

“The punishment that brought us peace was upon him,” the prophet Isaiah says. This is not because of some accident, not because God lost it for a little while, but because this was Jesus’ plan. He was in control of the process from the start to the very end. He still is. Don’t be afraid to let him take the wheel.

Hebrews 10:19-22 “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.”

Have you ever toured the White House? I once went as a chaperone for my daughter’s class. It was a bit of a disappointment. You get to walk through some hallways, a dining room, and a room for receiving guests. Then you are back out the door–no trip to the Oval Office; no peak at the living quarters or the Lincoln bedroom. These are exclusive locations limited to the President’s family, staff, special guests and visiting dignitaries.

Have you ever watched the Master’s Golf Tournament on television? In order to play on the course, you either have to be a professional golfer invited to the tournament, or one of only 300 members of the club who can join only by special invitation and pay tens of thousands of dollars in dues to belong. Otherwise, you are out of luck. It’s an exclusive place.

Perhaps no place on earth was ever as exclusive as the innermost room in the temple in Jerusalem, the “Holy of holies” or “Most Holy Place.” Three hundred and sixty-four days a year no one was in that room but God. It was his throne room on earth, the place where he promised to be present with the nation of Israel to hear their prayers and bless them. No one had the idea that the Lord was somehow contained by that room, or confined to that room. Everyone understood that God filled the universe. Still, he had chosen this perfect thirty-foot cube as the place where his grace and power would be present for Israel.

The remaining one day in the year the High Priest entered that room to sprinkle the blood of sacrifices on the ark of the covenant–first for himself, then for the people. He was the only one who could do this. The rest of the world’s population was required to stay on the other side of the curtain that separated this room from the rest of the temple.

This was intended as an elaborate and extended object lesson. It teaches us that our sins disqualify us to be in God’s presence. The man who lives in the White House is no better than I am. Neither are the members of Augusta National Golf Club. But the difference between me and the God who lived in the Most Holy Place is so great that it defies illustration.

“Who may stand in God’s holy place?” David once asked in a psalm. “He who has clean hands and a pure heart” he answers. But our hands are filthy, and not just because of all the germy surfaces we touch. These hands hit and hurt when they should help and heal. They take and keep when they should give and share. They reach and grasp for what they should reject and avoid. And that’s just the hands. The heart? That is polluted with desires that would mingle our spiritual sewage and toxic waste with God’s pristine and perfect stream of gifts and blessings. The heart prefers the sewage.

Until we have some grasp of the extent of the sin that disqualifies us from God’s presence at all, we won’t appreciate the privilege Jesus our Great High Priest has given: “confidence to enter the Most Holy Place.”  

The Most Holy Place in the Jerusalem temple, where God lived with his people and blessed them, ceased to exist when that temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. It has never been rebuilt. But that is not a problem.

Why find God in a building, a little room, sort of an outpost for God’s presence, when Jesus has given us direct access to the throne room in heaven? That is the real “Most Holy Place.” We enter this throne room in spirit. By faith we find everything the Jewish high priests found in the temple and more. We stand in the presence of the one and only God. He loves us as his very own people. He promises to answer every request we make. He empowers us to live meaningful lives full of value and purpose. He transforms even our deaths into a doorway to life that never ends.

Like the high priests of old, we come into the Most Holy Place carrying the blood of a sacrifice. But it is not a goat that died to get us in. It is the blood of Jesus himself. His death pays for the sins that should otherwise exclude us.

Like the priests of old we step through a curtain separating our world from God’s. But it is not made of cloth. It is Jesus’ own body, God made flesh, where our two worlds meet. And in Jesus this “curtain” no longer emphasizes separation, but entrance. He is the way through, the way in. He gives us access to the most exclusive place and privileges in the universe.

John 3:18 “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

Judgment Day is still in the future. On that day God will begin the public trial of mankind. He will present the evidence, good and bad, for each human being. He will pass sentence. The verdict will be final. There is no court of appeal from that court.

That trial isn’t so much for God as it is for us. He already knows every individual outcome. We, and everyone else who ever lived, will be the ones learning for certain where each stands at the last judgment. Jesus tells us that as far as God is concerned, we are all living under our verdict right now. As people who believe in God’s Son, you are living under his love in your salvation every day. But anyone who does not believe “stands condemned already.” Such people are simply killing time until the final sentencing.

Yet, so long as there is life, there is time to come to faith and change God’s verdict. So what stands in the way? So many people who know what is at stake, who know who Jesus claimed to be and what he came to do, resist believing in him. Jesus gives us a little peek into their hearts: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God” (John 3:19-21).

People fear what the truth of Jesus will expose about them. That’s not just those who are guilty of some scandal. Most of Nicodemus’s colleagues among the Pharisees lived externally moral lives. Yet Jesus exposed the corruption inside of them–selfishness, lovelessness, arrogance. Two years later he was warning them, “If you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.” They didn’t want to be common sinners in need of God’s grace and Jesus’ saving work.

American founding father Ben Franklin wrote a rather famous letter just weeks before his death. In it he confessed his doubts about Jesus’ divinity and general disinterest in the topic. When he died, he confessed, the question would be answered for him. No doubt he wasn’t more concerned about Jesus in life because that would have meant confronting his many affairs and promiscuous lifestyle, among other things. How many multitudes today don’t simply avoid the light because that would expose and overturn a belief system or lifestyle that is comfortable and cozy with our culture’s broken moral code?

“But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light…” because they can take credit for being so good and superior themselves? No, “so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” We have to give credit where credit is due. Faith in Jesus brings real change in those who believe. But any good that comes to light is God’s own work in us, evidence of faith, not a reason to think we don’t need to be saved by God’s one and only Son.

I need what Jesus is giving: not just advice, not a vague sense of inspiration, not a solution for some trouble spot in my life. I need rescue from sin. I need the love of God. I need a life that never ends. That’s why God gave his one and only Son, and why we believe in him.

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

A church leader from a century ago called the God who sent poisonous snakes into the Israelite camp “a dirty bully.” Apparently he missed the part about Israel criticizing God, and the Lord arranging for them to be saved. Too much emphasis on morals, and God becomes the Gestapo or a terrifying Judge. Too much emphasis on practical living, and God becomes a glorified personal trainer or divine customer service representative.

When dying people see the God who saves them, then he becomes Love personified.  “God so loved the world,” Jesus says. “This is how much God loves you.” If you want to know how he really feels about you, if you want to know what he is really like, this is where you see his heart. In terms of love he is something immeasurably more than a devoted friend, an adoring and attentive parent, a faithful spouse and passionate lover, though he uses all those pictures to illustrate his love. No one else’s love ever duplicates the One who saves those who believe.

He gave his one and only Son. That sounds noble and genuinely affectionate at first, but perhaps not unique. Have you ever seen Saving Private Ryan? A woman sends four sons into combat in World War II. Three of them are killed in the war. The Department of Defense commissions a squad of soldiers to find the fourth brother and send him home before he becomes a casualty as well. Several men in this squad die in their attempt to carry out this mission. So the bereaved mother in this story, partly based on true events, gives up three sons to save others from Nazi oppression, and members of the squad give up their lives to save a fellow soldier. History and literature are full of examples of people giving up their lives, or people they love, to save others.

There are a number of differences we might point out, but this one is the key: In no other case I know was death a part of the mission. It was an unhappy side effect. It was a known risk. But it wasn’t the purpose for sending them. In the movie, in every other case I know, the hope is that everyone will make it back alive.

God sent his Son, his one and only Son, into the world to die. That was the plan from the beginning. He must be lifted up on that cross for his plan to work. What we needed was someone to die in our place, a payment for our sins. Anything short of Jesus’ death, and no one is saved. So God gave us his Son, because he loved us this much. No one will ever love us more. His love made the ultimate sacrifice to save those who believe.

John 3:14 “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”   

I took my car to my mechanic because I spotted a little puddle of antifreeze on the garage floor. The car wasn’t overheating. I suspected a hose might need to be replaced. An hour later he calls me and tells me I need over a thousand dollars worth of repairs. The radiator is leaking. The water pump is shot. Those weren’t the answers I was looking for.

One night a man named Nicodemus went to Jesus to get a few questions answered. He wanted to understand better who Jesus was. “We know you are a teacher from God,” he said. “No one could do these miraculous signs unless God were with him.” Nicodemus himself was regarded as a knowledgeable person of faith. “You are Israel’s teacher,” Jesus called him. But what Jesus tells the man is a challenge to his entire faith. His Jewish heritage, his Biblical knowledge, isn’t enough to save him. Nicodemus needs a second birth. He needs to be born of the Spirit. He needs to lay aside his religion based on externals and put his faith in Jesus if he wants eternal life. Those weren’t the answers Nicodemus was looking for.

But this is the information Nicodemus truly needed to know. Jesus starts with a picture Nicodemus could understand. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” Jesus’ picture suggests that the real problem is worse than people think. When Israel grumbled about the free food the Lord had been feeding them in the desert, the Lord sent poisonous snakes into their camp, and they were biting people, and some of them were dying. When the people repented, God had Moses make a snake of bronze, put it on a pole, and anyone who looked at the snake with faith in God’s promise was healed. It was a matter of life and death.

Jesus tells us that he himself, the “Son of Man” had to be lifted up as well. In his case it wasn’t a pole, but a cross on which he was lifted. The bronze snake was just a statue that hung there, but Jesus hung on the cross to die. Again, it was a matter of life and death, “…that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” In other words, without him being lifted up, and without faith in him, there is no eternal life. There is eternal death. That’s not the problem, nor the solution, Nicodemus expected to learn about when he came to see Jesus that night.

But none of the answers to any of his other questions would make any difference if he didn’t know this answer to this problem. The same is true for us. Jesus is the answer for sin. He is the answer for salvation. He is the answer for death. Put your faith in him, and no matter what else you may wonder about in life, no matter what else may happen, eternal life is waiting in the end. Question answered. Problem solved.

1 Corinthians 1:22-24 “Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Christ crucified may be mocked. It may be rejected. It may be neglected. But it hasn’t lost its power. The night I went to see Mel Gibson’s movie about Jesus’ crucifixion, The Passion of the Christ, after it was over, the only sound in the theater was the muffled sobs of people weeping. The impact was unlike anything I had ever seen at the movies. Reports around the world told of criminals turning themselves in after seeing the movie and being led to repent.

The presentation of Christ crucified doesn’t have to be so dramatic for the cross to work its power. Pastor Curtis Lyon wrote a book on Christian counseling called Counseling at the Cross. In it he describes the process of taking people on a personal trip to the cross, walking them through details of Jesus’ suffering, talking them through the truth that Jesus carried their sins to that cross, paid the full penalty for their sins there, left nothing unaccounted for, that all was forgiven, the reconciliation with God was complete. He describes one woman paralyzed by fears and consumed by anxieties created by her feelings of guilt. Even with heavy prescription medications she could not sleep. After Pastor Lyon took her on a personal trip to the cross, she finally, fully processed what it meant. She was so immediately relieved that after months with hardly any sleep she fell asleep right in his office and had to be carried home.

This power isn’t limited to new Christians. Christ crucified is preached to us in our baptisms. “All of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death,” Paul writes the Romans. It is preached to us in the Lord’s Supper. “Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes,” Paul writes later in this same letter to the Corinthians. My wife once came home after a midweek service in Lent and told me that for the first time she can remember she was able to sing the hymn My Song Is Love Unknown without getting choked up. Why is that so hard to do? This hymn walks us through the scene at Jesus’ trial and cross. Because “To those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks,” the cross is still, “Christ the power of God and Christ the wisdom of God.” It is still a power that feeds and grows our faith.

Focusing on that death makes perfect sense. “For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” There is seemingly nothing more foolish or weak God could do than become a man and die. Yet no greater power or wisdom has ever been unleashed on the world than Christ crucified on the cross. It has canceled every sin. It has reversed the effects of death. It has crushed the power of the devil. It has changed more hearts and won more followers than any other message ever preached. It has moved millions to forsake everything they owned, or go to prison and death with songs of praise on their lips.

How? All for the love of the one who loved them even to death on a cross. That’s its power. That’s what saves.