And God, we come this morning to thank you for your mercy, your love and grace.
We thank you for the blessedness of all the families who have become a part of this body of Christ
through confirmation and joining of the church.
We thank you, God, for your grace and your mercy and the spirit of baptism.
And we ask that you guide us this day with your spirit, through wisdom and in truth.
That I ask that you move me behind the cross, that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart
may come forth and be pleasing unto you.
Cover us with the Holy Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit, come, reign and rule and have your way.
And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Every now and then I get a little joke on the Internet, and last week I had one,
but I left it so I decided this week I'd share one that one of my teenagers from a while back sent me.
And it simply says, an elderly woman returned from her home.
One evening she had been at church.
And she was startled when her door was open because she saw an intruder.
And she said to the intruder that was robbing her house, she yelled to him,
X, 238, which simply says,
repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins will be forgiven.
Well, with the word of Jesus being spoken, the burglar stopped in his tracks.
And the woman calmly called the police, and he arrived really quickly.
But he said to the burglar simply, why did you just stand right there?
Who were you thinking of?
The old woman, she simply screamed scripture at you.
He said, oh no, she didn't. She said, she had an X and two IAs.
Don't be ashamed to proclaim the word of God.
Even if somebody misunderstands what you're saying, the power of God still is a mighty word of God anyhow.
Amen?
X, 238.
Amen.
Just say the word of God and people's lives will be changed.
Well, today we're talking about the word of God in a different way.
We're basically inviting everyone along the way to know that God is a good God,
that God has come into the city on the back of a donkey to proclaim his kingdom and also to be glorified.
So this morning I say to you that simply the title of the sermon is,
Proclaim the Name of Jesus, Hosanna in the highest.
I want to share with you a reading, and I hope that I've marked it,
and it's simply called Upon a Donkey's Back, and it comes from a book that's called Let Justice Roll Down.
And some of you who are familiar with donkeys know that donkeys, you need to ride them slow.
You need to be patient with them, and they have a mind of their own.
But if their mind is made up for Jesus, they'll bring them into the kingdom.
And it simply says, Upon a donkey's back, the King of love rode by this morning.
There was no turning back whatever they may cry.
The prophets dreamed, the promise came, the home they sang comes forth to redeem.
The people thronged around him through clothing in the way, and simply said,
Hosanna, Hosanna, Lord. They shout and fill palms as he lay.
How could they know that he would come, God's only Son, to be raised so low?
And to Jerusalem, the face of the power of sin, the child of Bethlehem, the humankind rode in,
knowing that the cross he would face soon, that he must take the place for you and for me.
Think about it. How easy it would have been for him to turn and run away.
How could he, and would he, had said to the people living yet that day,
but instead of fleeing, he knew he needed to die.
He needed to be crucified so he could rise yet again.
Now the Lord is alive today, right here, right now,
to remind us that we had dared not to ride alone, but to ride because he cared.
So I say to you this morning, let us be helped by the light and the King that rode in on a donkey.
Amen.
Proclaim Jesus. Proclaim Jesus. Proclaim Jesus.
Imagine instead of it being the century that it was, we stand beside the road.
Maybe we would stand on both sides of Gulfway Drive.
Maybe we would even stand right here on Texas Avenue since this is the great state of Texas.
Or maybe if we saw Jesus coming down, this whole community might be converted into Jerusalem.
But if you saw him, what would you tell your neighbor?
Hey, I think he's the one. I think he's the one they've been talking about.
Or maybe since we're disciples for Jesus Christ and the number that we are,
we would know who he was and we would simply be prepared to proclaim,
Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
So you see, it is important for us to know that even those who didn't know the Lord were curious.
They looked. They peeked. They arrived and said, what's going on?
He must be a king because he asked for the donkey to come.
But you must be a king because I see people getting the palm and they're waving and proclaiming him.
But the scripture says in the book of Mark that was read so diligently by Miss Mitchell,
Mark 11, 1 through 3, simply says, when they were approaching Jerusalem,
at Bethlehem, Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he said to of his disciples and said to them,
go into the village of Kedemah and immediately as you enter,
you will find a cult that has never been written untired and bring it to me.
And if anyone says to you, hey, what are you doing over there?
Just say to them, excuse me, the Lord needs you.
And I'll get it back to you just as soon as he's done.
So the important thing about proclaiming Jesus is that Jesus was already aware through God.
Well, you see, there was already a known factor that he would come into Jerusalem,
need a donkey, and a donkey that had never been written would be sitting there waiting for him.
Have you ever been somewhere and you just see how things just tie together?
The person is waiting at the airport already. You didn't even have to call him.
Things are already set. Your ride is sitting out of school.
You said you would be out there at 3 o'clock. 3 o'clock, the foot is on the door.
Everything is set. Things just come together because there is an awareness already planned
before you ever came on the scene.
For Jesus knew that there would be a great proclamation when he arrived.
He also knew that there would be things that needed to be set up.
The donkey needed to be in place.
He knew that his disciples would encounter some problems,
so he told them what to do before he even got there.
He said if they give you any problem, tell them the Lord sent you.
That's good news.
Have you ever been somewhere and you just want to say, excuse me, but the Lord sent you?
He said I might encounter a little challenge,
but he said just say the Lord sent me.
So proclaim the name of Jesus and know that the awareness comes through a gift of God.
Then Jesus gave his disciples some instruction.
Can you say instruction?
You know, people have never been to school,
and you arrive in the classroom and the teacher has no instruction
because that's a substitute teacher.
And sometimes substitute teachers are tougher than the real teachers,
so don't play a hater substitute teacher.
Because every now and then a substitute teacher knows that if I do well as a substitute,
I'll become a long-term son, and then I'll become a long-term teacher,
and then I'll be over your brother in three years from now.
So don't ignore substitute teachers.
And they'll come in assuming that they don't know
because they get instructions to teach just as others get instructions to teach.
Or imagine going on a job and the first day you don't have any instructions from your supervisor.
Supervisors will simply look at you and say, you know why you got hired?
Just do what you do.
Some of us would take that as a free ride to just kind of sit down and make a few calls.
But obedience unto God says even if there isn't someone telling me like that,
there is instruction somewhere that I already know about.
And I need to be obedient to the Most High God.
Jesus told his disciples that day
that they would encounter someone and if there was a question, just tell them the Lord needs them.
Then when they got to the city and they found the call and they untied the call,
the person said, hey, what you doing?
And they were allowed to take it because they used the instructions that Jesus had given unto them.
So the other next point is not only to be aware,
but be obedient to the instructions that the Lord gives you through your parents,
through your teachers, through your loved ones, through your leaders, through your partners,
through your friends, through your relatives, through yourself.
And God speaks to each of us and we are asked to acknowledge that God not only prepares us,
but He gives us the spirit of understanding.
For you can't struggle sometimes one way or the other
because maybe something is told to you and you don't understand.
But what happens if you don't understand and you still can't get it and you don't ask anybody,
then you're left in a level of misunderstanding.
But if God gives you instructions and you don't understand,
go back to the one who asked or gave you the instructions so it can be clear
because it's important on your spiritual journey.
Though you have yet finished confirmation class, your spiritual journey is forever.
Your membership into the family of the body of Christ is a forever journey.
Though this mission season we repent and we reflect and we look unto the cross
for the power of the Holy Spirit and for the understanding of salvation,
we have to continue to look.
For Jesus gives instructions all the time.
And we thank God for His grace and His mercy that endures forever.
During the class yesterday I had a chance to meet with the persons who were joining the church.
And we had a great dialogue about who we are in Christ.
Then we got into a discussion about grace and our fix of it,
how grace is such a grace and blessed gift from the Most High God.
But we still have to be willing to receive it.
But He gives it to us openly. He gives it to us freely.
But we still have to be willing to receive and we receive by hearing and hearing the Word of God.
We talked also about gifts.
God gives all of us different gifts. And you see during that time when Jesus was talking to His disciples,
He only sent two into the city.
Ten were still with Him.
Maybe the two that He selected, He knew they could follow the directions all the way through.
And maybe the other ten that were still left behind, maybe that wasn't their gift.
But all given different gifts to walk in the kingdom to be the body of Christ.
Proclaim Jesus.
Know that He gives us instruction.
Know that He calls us into an acknowledgement and awareness that He is God.
Then the third thing I'll say, as Jesus went into this process,
knowing that this was the Sunday that He would be proclaimed the King,
that He would accept this person.
And that's why I encourage you to read again the book of Mark
and also to go back and read the Psalms 118, 27 through 29
to particularly look at that it says unto us that the Lord is God.
And He has given us the light that we would line the festival processions with branches
and hold up the altar because we know the will to give thanks unto God.
Jesus changed the house of David.
Jesus understood His limits. Jesus understood His purpose.
But if He never got on the colt, never rode into the city, never was proclaimed,
never stood there and allowed Himself to suffer, where would our salvation be?
I hate to turn on the video station WIFS, but what's in it for me?
What's in it for us? What's in it for salvation?
Why is the cross important to each of us, whether we're tiny little babies
or whether we're seniors of 101 years old?
Because the Lord thy God that we glorify and call Hosanna
took the pain, took the sin, for He was fomless
and He accepted the sins of the world not only for that moment, but forever.
When you gravitate and hold on to the fact that He died, make it personal.
He died for your regular behind, died for my regular behind, died for our craziness,
died for our selfishness, died for our sin that we may have lost.
I'm going to do that.
We should never repeat a crime.
I don't care how good you did, how great you did, how awesome.
You are to press forward for the glory of the most high God.
You must forward Him to the cross because it's at the cross,
at the cross that we can truly proclaim that He has called us to be aware of who He is.
He has called us to acknowledge who He is.
He has called us to accept His purpose, His purpose in our hearts that we be His children.
Why is it important?
Psalm 118 reminds us that His steadfast love endures forever.
But it is through thanksgiving, it is through praise, it is through proclamation,
it is through blessing the name of the most high God that He comes through us and through us
through many different angles.
We saw, we spent this week in the hospital praying under God that He would save the loved one's life.
Some of us went to school saying, help my children.
Some of us prayed when our children got on an airplane and went to a place they'd never been before
that He would send them back safely, renewed and restored and reconciled under Jesus Christ.
Some of us went to a job that was tough.
Some of us went to the hospital.
Some of us went to a plant.
Some of us went to a port off an independent school district building that is having a difficult moment
and the Lord said, I will use you to be my proclamer.
Some of us went to the city.
Some of us just went up and down our streets, helped one person here, then another.
And some of us just called it dear old friends.
But whatever we did, did we proclaim that He is Lord?
Did we proclaim the blessings?
Did we journey to the cross?
As I began the Lenten season back in the beginning of March
and as we were in preparation with the Lenten team and we talked about what the theme would be,
we journeyed to the cross with the theme that kept coming up over and over and over.
The journey is getting close.
The cross is more in our view today than it's ever been before.
We could see it right in front of us, but in the meantime we are saying Hosanna, Hosanna.
Blessed be the name.
Proclaim God.
Know that He sees you and knows you and loves you and forgives you
and is waiting right there to just receive you into His arms.
The cross so loved the world that He gave us only because of Him.
I love the Lord.
I'm glad He heard my cry.
I love each of Jesus.
I love the journey because it's through this period that we begin to understand over and over and over
just how awesome God is.
Complements.
I didn't understand how awesome He was at 12.
I'm just saying God that He didn't let go of me in my foolishness.
I thank God that through my 40 He looked in the left and looked to the right and said,
I will still hold on to it even if He's trying to run hard.
I thank God that when my Sunday school teacher would ask my mother how that girl was doing,
that my mother didn't lie.
She says she still needs prayer.
I'm glad that our teachers and our Sunday school directors and our choir directors
and our extra mamas and extra daddies didn't stop looking after us and give us a little reminder.
Girl, fella, young man, hey you, whatever they call you, God still loves you.
Inspire who we are.
But today is a new day.
God has deposited truth in you right now.
It's being scared of.
You're going to be a little new tomorrow when you go to school.
Yeah, y'all are still talking to one another.
Y'all are still kid-cared.
Y'all are still calling one another.
But maybe you won't call yourself out of your name.
Maybe you won't talk, Lord.
Maybe you won't call nobody something that shouldn't be called
because the guidance and the love of Jesus Christ was hooked out of under your skin.
This is a new life.
I'm a thorough best-seller for you.
His death-ass love endures forever.
So I say to you this morning, if your relationship with Jesus Christ needs a little tweaking,
His death-ass love endures forever.
If your situation on the job needs a little adjusting, go on in your prayer closet
because His death-ass love endures forever.
If you need a little help here, there, and everywhere, with the marriage, the kids, the cats, the dogs, the house,
the children, people, whatever it is, His death-ass love endures forever.
If somebody's on a sickbed and you just say, I'm not sure about that miracle,
I don't know what to say to them, I don't say the same thing that woman said,
I say to you talk to the Lord.
Proclaim.
Here's the Lord, my God.
For Christ is windy, proclaim Him.
You can feel it.
It's like the earth moves.
I don't care whether you've been on a roller coaster.
It's still like the earth moves.
It's like something I can't even describe.
God say to you this morning, what a mighty God we say.
He's awesome.
Continue to proclaim Him.
Journey to the cross.
Know that He suffered for you and for me and for everything that's going on.
He knew it before today.
He proclaimed it before now, and He professed that He is our King.
And I'll take Him at His word.
I'll look at the situation and say, I'll take Him at His word.
Maybe you can be quiet.
Maybe your life is totally calm and nothing is going on.
But I say to you this morning, I proclaim the Most High God.
I proclaim the Master King.
He is my Jesus.
He is my Lord.
He is my salvation.
He is my all and all.
If I could say it so and I'd tell you about it, but I'll tell you like another person before.
He is my King.
Hosanna.
The doors of the church are open.
If you need a place to walk out for soul salvation, this is a good house.
If you've already gone and you haven't committed yourself to ministry, this is a good place.
If you don't know Him, then deliver of your sins, the death of your soul, the King of all.
Hosanna.