Message preached Palm Sunday, March 29, 2015 from Hebrews 12:1-2
Theme: The ‘joy’ that was set before Jesus, as He endured the cross, encourages us also to endure for Him.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
This is the Sunday on which churches around the world commemorate the entry of our Lord Jesus into the city of Jerusalem to die for us on the cross. The people who greeted Him with palm branches and cheers, of course, didn’t really understand what it was that they were celebrating. In fact, many of those who cheered would—just five days later—be shouting, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” But we today have a greater understanding of what it as that He came to do. And we have even more reason to celebrate Palm Sunday than those who cheered back then.
We need to think rightly about what happened on Palm Sunday. If all we focus on is the cheers and the palm branches and the celebration, we will have completely missed the point. And to help our thinking this morning, I ask that you turn with me to a wonderful Palm Sunday passage. I believe that it’s important because it takes us beyond the external celebration of our Lord’s entry into the city, and into the things that motivated Him to endure the suffering and the shame of the cross.
That passage is Hebrews 12:1-2. It’s a crucial passage in the New Testament book of Hebrews. It comes after a long chapter in which the writer reminds his readers of all the great saints in the Old Testament era who were true heroes of faith—people who willingly suffered in this world for the promises that God made about the glories to come. The writer wanted his readers to remember those heroic saints; but most of all, he wanted them to keep their eyes on the greatest Example of all. And so, he told them;
Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:1-2).
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The writer of Hebrews is using the analogy of an athletic game. He was writing to Christians who were suffering persecution for their faith; and he tells them that, in reality, they were running in a spiritual race. In the original language of his letter, the word that he uses for “race” is one that you’ll recognize. It’s the Greek word agōn—the word from which we get the English word “agony”. If you’ve ever tried out for track and field, you’ll know that that’s a good name for a race—an agony. You are straining everything that’s in you. But you’re doing it all for a singular purpose—that is, for the prize at the end.
The writer wanted to encourage his readers to keep on running in the Christian race, no matter how hard it felt. One of the ways that he sought to encourage them was by reminding them of all those great saints who had run the race before them—that great cloud of witnesses that he describes in such great detail in Chapter 11. They could all testify to the glory that awaits the faithful runner at the end; and they all—as it were—sat in the heavenly stands all around these suffering Christians and cheered them on. “Don’t quit! Keep running! Keep striving! Keep agonizing! There’s a glorious victory at the end!”
The writer encouraged his readers to think about that great cloud of witnesses; and to keep running the race all the way to the end. He wanted them to cast off every hindrance—all the worries and cares and needless burdens of this world—that might have slowed them down. He wanted them to cast off every kind of sin that might continually come along and trip them up. And with all those things out of the way, he wanted them to run “with endurance” the race that was set before them. And as the greatest motivation of all, he wanted them to—above all else—keep their eyes continually focused on Jesus. Jesus is the “author” of their faith. He’s the one who is the beginning point of it. And He’s also the “finisher” or “perfecter” of that faith. He’s the one who brings it all through to final attainment and completion.
And I want to ask you this morning to pay particular attention what the writer says about Jesus at the end of verse 2; “who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God”.
What was that motivating “joy” that was set before Him? I think it’s helpful to understand this “joy” as a figure of speech. Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem didn’t led to an immediate feeling of joy. He entered to experience the cross; and the cross itself was certainly not a cause for joy. In fact, He recoiled from the dread of it. The Bible tells us that, as He and His disciples made their way toward Jerusalem, there was a sense of foreboding. We’re told that they felt amazed and fearful; and you can’t help but think that they picked up on the tensions our Lord felt as He told them that He was going there to be arrested and crucified. And even in the Garden of Gethsemane, He was sorrowful and deeply distressed. He prayed, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me . . .” We often—curiously enough—refer to it is His “agony in the garden”. The cross itself certainly wasn’t what He rejoiced in. Rather, what He rejoiced in was what the cross would accomplish. And the things that the cross would accomplish were the cause for His joy.
And it was the prospect of that joy that motivated Him to—as it puts it in the original language—endure “a cross”. The cross was the most shameful and horrible death anyone could have imagined. In fact, it was made even more horrible for Him, because as the sinless Son of God, He bore the guilt of all our sins upon it, and there suffered the full punishment of sin in our place. But it was what happened afterward that was the cause of His joy.
I’d like to explore with you this morning what that cause of “joy” was—what the things were that He looked ahead to, beyond the suffering of the cross, that motivated Him to enter the city of Jerusalem for us. And as we do so, I pray that we too will enter into that joy, and grow in our own motivation to be faithful for the Lord Jesus.
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Now; I don’t—by any means—suppose that I could mention all that was on our Lord’s heart as He looked ahead to the joy that was set before Him. But there are a few things that I believe truly stand out.
And the first thing that I’d like to suggest to you is that He took joy in . . .
1. THE FULFILLMENT OF THE FATHER’S WILL.
We sometimes think that going to the cross for us was strictly Jesus’ will. And of course, He did go willingly. But the thing about it that caused Him joy was that it was done in obedience to the Father. It was the Father’s will that our sins be atoned for, and that His own Son be provided as the substitutionary sacrifice on our behalf. And in going to the cross, He did His Father’s will.
You see; it was always the great pleasure of our Lord to do the will of the Father. In John 5:30, Jesus said, “I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.” And because it was the Father’s will that He go to the cross for you and me, it was His delight to obey the Father. You can see this very clearly in Hebrews 10:5-10. It points back to the Old Testament—quoting Psalm 40 as words that are prophetically attributed to Jesus—and tells us this about Him:
Therefore, when He came into the world, He said:
“Sacrifice and offering You did not desire,
But a body You have prepared for Me.
In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin
You had no pleasure.
Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come—
In the volume of the book it is written of Me—
To do Your will, O God.’”
Previously saying, “Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them” (which are offered according to the law), then He said, “Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God.” He takes away the first that He may establish the second. By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all (Hebrews 10:5-10).
To become that sacrifice for us, in obedience to the Father, was the joy of our Lord. Do you know what it says in Psalm 40:8—in this psalm that is being attributed to us as the words of Jesus? It says;
“I delight to do Your will, O my God,
And Your law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:8).
And do you remember what Jesus prayed to the Father—just after Judas went away to betray Him, and as He waited to be arrested and crucified? He said, “I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do” (John 17:4).
I put this motivation first on the list, because I believe Jesus Himself would put it first. It was His delight to do the Father’s will. He looked beyond the suffering of the cross to the joy that was set before Him; because by going to the cross, He would have completed the will of the Father for Him. And I suggest to you that we become motivated in our Christian faith when we follow our Lord’s example—and put the will of the Father first in our own lives.
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I believe that another thing that constituted the “joy” that was set before Jesus on that day was . . .
2. THE KEEPING OF PROMISES CONCERNING HIMSELF.
It was the joy of our Lord to keep the promises of Scripture, and to fulfill all the prophecies that they contain about Himself.
So many people today seem to think that Jesus didn’t care that much about what the Old Testament said. They sometimes even go so far as to portray Jesus as teaching the complete opposite of the things that were said in the Old Testament law. But that’s not true at all! When Jesus gave His great Sermon on The Mount—early on in that sermon—He said this:
“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled” (Matthew 5:17-18).
Far from not caring about the Old Testament promises, they were promises that He was utterly committed to keep. It was His joy to keep the word of God. He is, Himself, the Word of God in human flesh. And all you have to do is read through the Gospels as they tell the story of His life; and you’ll find that they repeatedly tell of the things that He did “that the word might be fulfilled”—as they then go on to quote the very Old Testament scriptures that He fulfilled.
It was Jesus’ joy to fulfill every promise made about Him in the Scriptures. And this would be especially true when it came to His sacrifice on the cross. Do you remember what He told the disciples after He had been raised from the dead and had met them in the upper room? They were all overjoyed to see Him alive; and He told them;
“These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.
Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:44-47).
So; that’s another aspect of the “joy that was set before Him”. He valued the integrity of every promised that was ever made about Him in Scripture; and in going to the cross, He would be fulfilling the word of Scripture completely. We enter into His joy as well when we make it our great priority to keep true to God’s word.
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A third thing that constituted the joy that was set before him on that day—a truly wondrous thing—was . . .
3. THE REDEMPTION OF GOD’S ELECT.
I want to speak very specifically right now to my brothers and sisters in Christ—those who have placed their faith in Him. Just consider very carefully Ephesians 1:4-6 for a moment, dear fellow believers! That’s where we’re told this about God the Father:
. . . just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:4-6).
Here, we see that—before the foundation of the world, according to His own good pleasure—the Father chose us in Christ for salvation. He predestined us before time to be adopted as His sons and daughters in Jesus. If I may put it to you this way, that gracious act of the Father to chose us for salvation came first in the order of God’s plan—“before the foundation of the world”. What a remarkable and wonderful thing that is! That was God’s work of love toward us before time began. But look at what happened later on in time. Verse 7 tells us this about Jesus:
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace . . . (v. 7).
In other words, Jesus came into Jerusalem in the course of time, in order to shed His blood and bring about the redemption of those whom God had chosen before the foundation of the world. The choice of the Father came first—in eternity past; and then the work of redemption followed in the course of time for the benefit of those He chose. Redemption serves the cause of election—and not the other way around! The apostle Peter said that we are
elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ . . . (1 Peter 1:2).
It’s not the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus that makes us the elect, dear brothers and sisters in Christ. Rather, we were elected “for” obedience and the sprinkling. Peter says this about Jesus; that . . .
He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you (1 Peter 1:20).
And this all means that Jesus came into Jerusalem, on that first Palm Sunday, in the fulfillment of a gracious plan of God the Father for us that was established in eternity—a plan in which the Son of God would die on the cross and bring about the redemption those whom the Father had chosen for salvation from before the foundation of the world.
No wonder it was our Lord’s great joy to accomplish that redemption for us! This is what it tells us in Isaiah 53:10-12;
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors (Isaiah 53:10-12).
Dear fellow believer; we won’t rightly understand the joy that was set before the Lord on that first Palm Sunday unless we see it as the joy He had in redeeming us! And if we see His joy that way, we’ll share in it too!
(And by the way—one more very important thing about this. No one should ever hesitate the least bit in trusting in Jesus as Savior out of a fear that they are not one of the elect. Just place your faith in Him and trust Him as your Savior. If you sincerely believe on Him for salvation, and remain true to Him to the very end, then it’s proof positive that you are—indeed—chosen by God! Jesus Himself promised in John 6:37, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out.”)
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Now; I believe that a fourth thing that constituted our Lord’s joy on that first Palm Sunday was . . .
4. THE PROSPECT OF HIS RESTORATION TO GLORY.
As the eternal Son of God—the second Person of the Triune Godhead—He possessed infinite glory before He ever came to this earth. And in order to enter into this world and take full human nature to Himself and die on a cross for us—without ever ceasing to be fully God—He had to temporarily set that glory aside. He showed unspeakable love toward us in doing that for us.
But on Palm Sunday—having set into motion the events that would lead up to His arrest, His crucifixion, His death, and His resurrection; having done the will of the Father—He looked ahead to the prospect of being restored to His glory. He would—just as our passage in Hebrews tells us this morning—very shortly return to heavenly glory and sit down at the right hand of the throne of God the Father.
And He rejoiced in this greatly! In John 17—the passage we looked at earlier—Jesus prayed this to the Father just before going to the cross;
“Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was (John 17:1-5).
What joy He must have felt in the thought of returning to the glory that He had shared with the Father! And may I point something out to you? He would return to that same glory—but not in the same condition. This time, He would return to that glory not only as full deity, but now also in full humanity! He would now sit at the right hand of the throne of God, and share forever in the glory He had with the Father as the God/Man. He set His glory aside in order to take the sins of humanity upon Himself, and then returned to heaven in order to raise redeemed humanity up to glory with Him!
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?
For You have made him a little lower than the angels,
And You have crowned him with glory and honor (Psalm 8:4-5).
No wonder He went with such joy!* * * * * * * * * *
And may I close with one more thing that I believe constituted Jesus’ joy on that first Palm Sunday?—something that I believe was His greatest of all causes for joy?—something that ought to be the greatest cause of joy for you and me as well? It’s the prospect of . . .
5. HIS ETERNAL UNION WITH US IN LOVE.
In that wonderful prayer that our Lord prayed to the Father in John 17—just before going to the cross for us—He said something that I would never even dare to think, if it had not been for the fact that Jesus Himself said it. He looked ahead to what would be accomplished through the cross, turned a glance to His apostles, thought also of us, and said;
“I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them (John 17:20-26).
That—most of all—was the joy that was set before our Lord! It was the prospect of redeeming us through His blood, so that we would be with Him forever—to enter into the fellowship with Him that He enjoys eternally with the Father; to behold His glory, and to share in the glory with Him that He eternally enjoyed with the Father; for us to be made perfect in one together in Him; and to know forever and ever that the Father loves us as much as He loves His own beloved Son!
That was what He prayed for to the Father. And what He told His disciples was this:
“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also (John 14:1-3).
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What a joy it was that was set before Him! What a joy it should be for us too! I don’t believe I could close things any better than by simply reading that wonderful Palm Sunday appeal once more. Let the truth of it grip your heart; and you’ll never lack motivation for the Christian life again!
Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:1-2).