ZACHARIA CHAPTER 9, VERSE 9.
Close to the end of the Old Testament.
Zachariah chapter 9, verse 9.
Today is what we call Palm Sunday in remembrance of the day that Jesus erode into Jerusalem
and the crowds gathered around and began to lay the palm branches on the road as He traveled
into town on the donkey.
Thank you to Miss Angeline and Ernest for getting these palms for us today.
Zachariah chapter 9, verse 9.
Just one short verse.
When Jesus erode into town on that donkey, this was something that had been prophesied
over 500 years before that event took place.
We see this prophecy here in Zachariah chapter 9, verse 9.
We'll read the verse and we'll pray and get started.
Rejoice greatly, daughter Zion!
Shout in triumph, daughter Jerusalem!
Look, your King is coming to you.
He is righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of
a donkey.
Let's pray.
Father God, we come to you this morning and we thank you for these words and we thank
you that all these years ago that Jesus fulfilled this prophecy.
That your Son, dear Lord, the Savior of the world, the King of Kings, come riding into
town that day, dear Lord, to bring about salvation for all.
So God, I pray that as we look at your word today that we can just be blessed that your
Holy Spirit would speak to us, dear Lord.
That we would be free of worries and distractions and things of the world and that for these
few minutes, dear Lord, we would hear from you and listen to you, dear Lord.
I pray that you just let your Holy Spirit be among us.
Hide me behind the cross, dear Lord.
Take away any fear or pride that's in me and I pray that you would help me to do a good
job to preach and teach your word.
God, offer your glory that everything we do today causes us to seek you, dear Lord.
That it's your word that speaks to us.
That it's your Spirit that speaks to our heart today and I ask these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.
This prophecy in Zechariah, along with many others that we see in the Old Testament, is
a prophecy that was pointing God's people forward to something great that was coming.
To someone great who was coming, to the Savior of the world who was coming.
And this prophecy calls God's people to look for that day, to long for that day, to rejoice
in that day.
What does it say?
It says, rejoice greatly, daughter Zion.
Shout and triumph, daughter Jerusalem.
Look your King is coming to you.
Now certainly God's people, after hearing this for many years, for hundreds of years,
longed for that day that they would see their King, that they would finally have a good
King who would come in and who would succeed where all the other Kings of God's people
had failed time and time again.
They longed for that King that would come in, that would ultimately give them freedom
and deliverance, that would come in with power and strength and with a rod of iron.
And this prophecy pointed forward to the day that that King would come.
Oh, what a day of rejoicing that should be when we hear of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
When those crowds all those years ago realized and understood this Jesus who's been on the
scene doing these miracles and preaching and teaching.
This is the one this passage was talking about.
This is the King who was coming.
And so God's word called the people to rejoice.
And what does it say of this King?
It says that he is righteous and he is victorious.
This is the kind of language that you long for when you're looking for a King.
You look for one who's going to come in strongly with power, who's going to be righteous.
That is, he's good.
He does what is right.
He is strong in every way.
He's victorious.
He's going to give you deliverance from all your enemies, whatever your enemy may be.
The King who's coming is going to deliver you from your enemies.
And oh, what a glorious passage this is.
This King who's going to come riding into town righteous and victorious.
But then what does it also say about the King?
He's going to be righteous and victorious and humble and riding on a donkey.
Everything sounded pretty good in the first part of that, but that last part, that doesn't
really sound like a King.
Kings come in strong and victorious and righteous riding on a horse, but not so for the Son
of God, not so for the King of Kings.
This King was going to be far different than the other Kings of the world.
He was going to come into town in a much different way.
Most Kings, I suspect, would have come into town.
They would have had people in front of them and they would have probably been carried
and everybody would have known they were there.
Much would have probably sounded and they would have been adorned in the best clothes,
riding in probably a nice chariot or being carried by other people in some kind of gold
chair of some kind.
Who knows?
But I can just about assure you that Kings of those days would have come in and made
a grand entrance.
And perhaps many people in Jesus' day were expecting such a grand entrance.
But if they were, they didn't remember this passage or weren't familiar with it because
this King was going to come into town humble and riding on a donkey.
Now a donkey is not the kind of animal that you think of when you think of a fierce and
fighting and strong King.
You don't think about a donkey.
We don't think of donkeys as being powerful and strong.
You don't see a Ford donkey, you see a Ford Mustang.
We put horses on our cars.
We think of our Kings as riding horses.
You look at a Ferrari, what's on a Ferrari?
It's a horse.
That's what Kings ride.
Kings ride horses.
And I'll tell you, spoiler alert, I'm going to tell you the end of the story.
One day Jesus is going to come and he's going to be riding on a horse as a King should.
But when Jesus came all those years ago, he came riding on a humble donkey.
Jesus was humble.
Now I was surprised as I was looking at this and thinking about this this week and all
the passages that call Jesus humble in the New Testament and there really aren't any.
We look at Philippians and we and we see the humility of Jesus described for us.
But even though we may not see the words, okay, and Jesus was humble in the scriptures,
what we see is the life of Jesus and what we see time and time again is a humble Savior.
We see it from his humble birth.
We see it from his humble entry into Jerusalem here as he is riding on a donkey.
And what a beautiful quality of Jesus that we need to pay attention to.
We need humility in our life.
And maybe some of you today, you have humility in your life.
Maybe, maybe there are some today and maybe we have a little humility, but maybe we don't
have enough humility.
Maybe there are some today, if we're honest, we don't have any humility.
We are ate up with pride, but we need to look at Jesus and the humility of Jesus and who
Jesus is because pride comes before fall.
Pride gets us in a lot of trouble.
That's a big problem in our world today is pride.
And we have to be careful that we don't fall into that trap of pride, but that we follow
the example of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords who showed us humility time and time
again in his ministry.
You see, pride gets us in trouble because pride doesn't need God and pride doesn't care
about other people.
And when pride begins to take over in our life, why would we need God?
If we are proud, we can do all things ourselves.
Pride says I can do all things.
Humility says I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
And so we have to come to this realization in our life.
We have to come to this point of humility where we realize that it's not about us, where
we realize that we are not strong enough, that nothing we do is because of how smart
we are or because of how good looking we are.
Spoiler alert, you're not the best looking person in the world.
You're not the smartest person in the world.
You're not the strongest person in the world.
There's someone who is stronger than you and smarter than you and better looking than you.
And pride wants to tell us that we are the best that we can be and we are better than
all else and we don't need anything else.
And that will lead to a massive collapse in our life.
And we see it, I believe, in our culture today.
I believe we see pride running rampant in our culture today.
And when pride is fully grown, it turns into narcissism.
Narcissism is when we think that there is no one who is better than us.
And we, in a sense, make our own self a God.
And we get in a bad place when we fall into the trap of pride because pride says there
is no need for God.
But apart from God, we are hopeless.
And so we need to learn from the humility of Jesus Christ and we need to know that we
must humble ourself before God, that we must humble ourself before Jesus Christ.
Even Jesus, the Son of God, was humble in his life.
And oh, what a tragedy it is when we fall into the trap of pride, when we fall into
the trap of narcissism.
Because one, we have no need for God and two, we don't care about other people.
But neither of these things is how Jesus lived his life.
Jesus knew that he depended on the Father.
He trusted the Father.
He listened to the Father.
He prayed to the Father.
He desired to do the will of the Father because he was humble and he knew that he needed the
Father.
And so it is for us today.
We must humble ourself before God.
We need to acknowledge today, and maybe there are some in here that need to acknowledge
that you need God in your life.
You're not good enough.
You can't do it on your own.
But when you humble yourself before God, you will find strength and beauty that you never
knew existed.
Oh, how free it is when we realize that we don't have to be the best, that God is the
best, that all we can do is the best we can do.
That's what humility does.
Humility is freedom.
Pride keeps us in a trap.
Pride keeps us having to pretend like we're better than everybody else and show everybody
up in every way and act like we're the best and try to be the best and try to dress the
best and try to look the best and try to be the smartest.
And that is a lot of burden.
But boy, the power of humility is so freeing.
What freedom it is to realize that we don't have to be the best.
We just have to be the best that we can be in the Lord.
What a beautiful thing humility is.
It frees us from the sin of pride.
It calls us to recognize who we are before God, that we are unworthy, that we are unworthy
of the love of God and the grace of God.
Once we read the Word of God and see Jesus Christ and we see what God calls us to and
we realize our sinfulness and what it does to us, hopefully we can become humble.
Hopefully we will see the Word of God and we will humble ourself before God and say,
God, I need you.
God, it's not all about me.
It's all about you.
Perhaps some of us need to be reminded of that today.
It's not all about us.
It's not about how good looking we are, how smart we are, how wealthy we are, how well
dressed we are.
It's not about us.
It's about God.
And it's a very freeing thing when we humble ourself before God, when we realize that we
are not worthy.
Not to say that we are worthless.
Sometimes people look at humility in a negative way.
They say, oh, humility is that means you're weak and it means you think you're worthless.
That's not what humility is.
In humility, you understand your worth.
You realize that you are unworthy of God's love, but humility draws you to God because
you know your need to God.
Humility doesn't mean that you're weak or insecure.
I don't believe for a second when I read through the stories of Jesus in the scripture that
Jesus was weak or insecure or felt worthless.
Not at all, but yet Jesus was humble.
Jesus was humble because he knew his strength came from the Father.
In Jesus's humility, he had compassion for other people.
That's the real beauty of humility.
You see, pride doesn't need God and it doesn't care about other people, but humility relies
on God.
Humility puts the needs of others first.
That's what Philippians chapter 2 tells us.
It says, in humility, consider others as more important than yourselves.
Boy, wouldn't that message go a long way in our world today?
Perhaps it'd go a long way in some of our lives.
Perhaps we get too selfish and too proud and too focused on ourselves.
Maybe today we need to humble ourselves a little bit.
It's better that we come before God and that we humble ourselves today instead of having
to learn it the hard way.
Has anybody ever had to eat a slice of humble pie before?
It's not good.
I love pie, chocolate pie.
We had a lot of pies last week and they're good.
But one piece of pie that you don't want to eat is humble pie.
Boy, that will knock you down a lot.
Your fall is coming.
When we give in to pride, maybe it's for a moment, maybe it's been for a lifetime, but
when we give in to pride, our fall is coming because in our pride we think we're the best.
But ultimately there's somebody that's better than us and one day we're going to be shown
up and we're going to eat that slice of humble pie.
And hopefully we learn from that.
But oh, wouldn't it be a beautiful thing if we hear the word of God and we see the example
in the life of Jesus Christ and we humble ourselves today and not have to learn that
lesson the hard way.
We say, God, I cannot do this on my own.
God, I need you.
God, I am unworthy of your love, but I thank you for your love.
I thank you for your grace.
And God, I can't make it through another day.
God, I can't be better than everybody else, but God, I pray that I can be the best I can
be in you.
God, I pray that I would do your will, that I would live in obedience to you.
This is how Jesus lived.
And once we begin to trust God and humble ourselves before God and the image of ourselves
begins to come down, we begin to view other people differently.
When we're proud, we think we're better than other people.
We have to be careful about this.
I think this is something maybe that can happen and it can slip up on us, but we have to make
sure that we don't fall into the trap to think we are better than somebody because of something
we have or something they don't have or some way we look or some way they don't look.
We are not better than anybody.
But when pride sneaks into our life and we begin to think for a second that we're somehow
better than somebody else, we begin to treat them differently.
But when we begin to realize that we are not better than anybody else, that we are humans
and that, yeah, we're different and some of us have this and some of them have this and
some of them, some of us look better than others and some of us are smarter than others.
Yeah, those things are all true.
But that doesn't mean that we're any better than anybody else.
And the moment that we humble ourselves and realize, look, this person's a human just
like you and me.
This person may not look like me, may not act like me, may not talk like me, might not
have the education that I have.
Maybe they have more education, maybe they have less.
But the moment that we realize is that we're not better than anybody else and nobody is
better than us.
What a freeing thing that is.
The moment we begin to lay down our pride, then we can begin to have compassion for other
people in the way that Jesus had compassion for other people.
Perhaps there are opportunities in our life that God has called us to.
And perhaps our pride is what has kept us from being involved in some of those opportunities
and fulfilling those things that God calls us to.
Perhaps today we need to humble ourselves.
Humility, as the Bible says, is considering others as more important than yourself.
So perhaps we need to think twice before we speak.
Pride speaks.
Pride speaks right on up.
Pride lets you know what it thinks.
But sometimes humility takes a back seat.
Perhaps humility doesn't speak until spoken to.
Perhaps we have pride in our life and we don't even realize it.
Maybe it's just there in some ways and maybe just simply thinking before we speak is a
good thing for us to consider.
How is it going to affect someone else if we consider others as more important than
ourselves and then even in the way that we speak with people and the things that we say
to people, maybe we need to think twice and say if me saying this thing is going to hurt
somebody else.
If I tell somebody else about the wonderful time I had on vacation, is that going to make
them feel bad because that's somewhere that they want to go?
Maybe we just kind of keep our mouths shut.
Not the same thing wrong with going on vacation, but maybe there are things that we do and
we experience and maybe we do it to stick the knife in.
Maybe you know somebody really loves some actor and they want to meet him so bad and
you meet them and you can't wait to get back and tell them, hey, you know, I got to meet
so and so and I got their autograph and their picture.
Well, that's going to make them feel bad.
You don't want to make them feel bad so maybe you just don't even say that.
Maybe little things like that are just small examples of humility, of considering other
people's thoughts and how they're going to feel.
If I tell this person this or if I tell this person that or if I say this thing, is it
going to hurt somebody?
Is it going to make me look better?
That's what pride does.
Pride is not afraid to hurt somebody else because it makes you feel good.
Maybe sometimes we just need to take a step back and say, you know what, I'm going to
be concerned with others.
I'm going to have compassion on others.
That's what love does.
That's what Jesus did.
There's no better example of humility and considering others as more important than
yourself than Jesus Christ crucified.
If Jesus, he could have said, look, look, I'm the son of God.
I'm more important than these people, but instead he humbled himself to become obedient
to the point of death.
Death on a cross, Philippians chapter two tells us why.
He humbled himself because he considered others as more important than himself.
And that's the example that we are called to follow.
Jesus gave everything for you and I.
That's true humility.
Jesus did not come into town riding on a horse.
He did not come in with trumpets blowing.
He did not come in making a big deal.
Not only this day, but through his whole ministry, Jesus just went around and did the work of
God.
He didn't make a big deal about anything he did.
He was just an ordinary guy.
Isaiah chapter 53 verse two says of the Messiah that'll come, he's not really much to look
at.
He's just a normal and ordinary and humble guy who won, loved God and had compassion
on people.
You and I.
That's the example that we need to live by today.
That's what we need to focus on in our life is to have that humility of Jesus and oh what
a difference it would make in our world today.
Our world doesn't really teach humility, but it would be a lot better place if it did.
Our world today focuses on you be you do what you want to do.
You can be anything.
Nobody can tell you different.
Whatever you do is right.
Do it and be proud of it and let everybody else celebrate it.
That's what our world tells you.
But that's not what God's word tells us.
God word calls us to humility.
It calls us to love God and it calls us to love other people and we see that time and
again throughout scripture.
But we can't do either of those things if we're proud, but we can if we're humble.
Perhaps today some of you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and maybe your
pride is the reason why.
Many times we are so blessed we don't have a need for God.
People will say I've got money, I've got a job, I'm doing pretty well.
What do I need God for?
You need God for the forgiveness of your sins because there's more to this world than money
and clothes and houses and jobs.
We need humility.
We need to humble ourself and recognize the humility of Jesus Christ who humbled himself
and gave his life on the cross so that we could be forgiven.
Maybe today you have put your trust in Jesus Christ but maybe you struggle with pride.
Perhaps some of us struggle with it more than others.
Perhaps some of you don't struggle with pride at all, but there's always that tendency.
Everything we do when somebody says oh that's a good job we have to be careful.
We have to be careful with those compliments that we don't let them go to our head and
cause pride to come in our life.
Perhaps some of us are struggling with pride today.
Maybe there are some things in our life that maybe we didn't realize and maybe you do realize
today or maybe you need to pray about it and say God show me those areas.
Let me see if there's any areas in my life where pride has begun to creep in and ask
God to help you to be humble and he will.
But be careful with that prayer.
That's always such a scary prayer to me.
God help me to be humble because oftentimes the way that God humbles us is by giving us
a slice of that humble pie.
Sometimes it takes those types of situations to get our attention, but we need to seek
humility that we would be those who live in humility.
And Jesus came that day all those years ago riding into town humbly on a donkey and there
was a group of people there who humbly came before Jesus and laid down their palm branches
in the road.
And just as Zechariah 9.9 called them to they praised the Lord.
They greatly rejoiced in the Lord because Jesus was coming and they knew that Jesus
was coming and they made it a point to enter into the presence of Jesus and to humble themselves
before Jesus that day.
We have to make it a point to enter into the presence of God today.
You have to make that choice.
We need to do all we can to seek God's presence and to seek God's word in our life.
Before Michelle and I got married, I discovered that every night she would go work out at
the gym here in Liberty and then she would go to the Tasty Freeze to eat ice cream after.
That's what we do, right?
We work out, we eat ice cream.
But I discovered that and being one who wanted to be in her presence, guess what I did as
a man?
I decided, well, I'm going to end up at Tasty Freeze about the same time every night.
So every night I would go at the Tasty Freeze in hopes that she'd be there and most nights
that she was there.
Why?
Because I desire to be in her presence because there was beauty in her presence.
She was beautiful and she was smiling.
We'd sit across from that table and I would pretend like I was just happy to be there.
But really I came because I wanted to be with her.
But I had to make that effort.
And all those people that came that day.
Now there were plenty of people in Jesus' ministry and even some people that day that
did not believe who Jesus was, that did not acknowledge who he was, that denied who he
was, that thought all this man riding in on a donkey was a bunch of junk.
But oh, there was another group of people and they knew Jesus was going to be there
and they knew the beauty of Jesus and the presence of Jesus and the glory of Jesus.
And they made a point to come to where Jesus was.
And they made a point to humble themselves before the one who would humble himself for
them.
Perhaps today we need to take our palm branches of pride and our palm branches of sin and
our palm branches of selfishness and we need to say, Lord Jesus, I see you in these words
and I want to be in your presence.
I want to be in your beauty.
Lord Jesus, today I humble myself before you and I lay these things down at your feet.
Don't carry your sin with you today.
Don't carry your pride with you today.
Leave them at the feet of Jesus.
Lay them down today and let us rejoice that Jesus Christ has come.
Let's pray.
Father God, we thank you for these good words and I pray that you just would bless the reading
of these words today, God.
I pray that you would help us to rejoice in who Jesus is, that he is our King who is righteous
and victorious, dear Lord.
But dear Lord, let us not overlook the fact that Jesus was humble.
He came in humbly that day riding on a donkey because, well dear Lord, that's who he was.
He came in humbly and he continued to live humbly all the way till his humble death on
the cross, dear Lord.
I pray, God, that if there are any in this room today that have not experienced the love
of Jesus Christ, that maybe today through your word they realize that they need him.
God, maybe today through your word they realize that it's the King of kings and the Lord of
lords that came down that street all those years ago, dear Lord.
And maybe today they're going to put their faith in him.
I pray that they would, dear Lord, if there's any in this room that do not know Jesus.
I pray, God, that they would gather up their palm branches of pride and sin and selfishness
and whatever it may be, dear Lord, that whatever we have that we would lay it down before you,
that we would lay it at the foot of the cross today, dear Lord, to know that all of our
sins have been nailed to that cross, dear Lord.
I pray that if there is one today that's still holding on to their sin, that they would humbly
bring it before you today.
God, maybe there's some here today and even though they're yours, maybe pride is creeping
in in some way.
God, I pray that you would help us to humble ourselves before you today.
Whatever sins may be in our life today, dear Lord, we need to repent of those things.
That is, we turn from whatever that sin is and we turn to you.
So God, let us be those who, as we gather in this place today, we enter into your presence.
We know that you are here.
We know the goodness of Jesus Christ.
And God, I pray that Jesus would not pass by today without us humbling ourselves before
him, without us coming and rejoicing in him.
Dear Lord, all those years ago, there were some and Jesus passed right on through and
they missed him.
God, I pray that there are going to be none in this room today.
God, if there are some who have put their faith in you today, that have decided to put
their faith in Jesus Christ today, I pray that in this song of invitation, they would
come down front, that they would let us know, dear Lord, that we would rejoice with them
today and that we would baptize them just as your word commands.
God, maybe there are some today that are just struggling with pride.
I pray that they would give it to you.
I pray, God, that you would help us to be humble, that when we leave this place, we'll
leave this place with a heart of humility, that this week we seek to consider others
as more important than ourselves.
We seek to have compassion and love just as Jesus did, dear Lord.
Let us see that example and let us live it.
I ask these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.