Well, happy Palm Sunday. Good morning. I, I love the Palm parade. I, I think it’s one of the coolest things that we do every year. I love that you can see the difference, even at a very young age, between an introvert and an extrovert <laugh>. And so you have some of those kids that they are going to town. Like this is their moment. And then some are like, please don’t ever make me do this again. And it’s just, it’s interesting how that happens. At a very young age less than a year ago, there was a study that they did where they asked a bunch of different people, they asked this simple question. It was, what does financial success look like for Americans? So they interviewed all kinds of different people, but specifically they interviewed a bunch of different generations. Simple question, what does financial success look like?

And so when they started with baby boomers, here’s what they found. The average baby boomer said that when you retire, that they wanna have a million dollars. And success would be making a hundred thousand dollars a year. Where my baby boomers at in the room. Let me hear it all right? Yeah. Not as as loud as he were at the nine o’clock. All right, then you got Gen X. Where was Gen X at? In the room. Alright, so Gen X they were raised on movies in the eighties and clearly they decided they needed more than a million dollars. They wanted 5.3 million upon retirement. And they decided we need $212,000 a year in annual income. That’s what success looks like. Interestingly, when it comes to millennials, where are my millennials at?

I always tell people I’m a millennial when I want to be. ’cause I’m like at the very edge of the oldest millennial and millennials. Slightly higher net worth, but lowered the expectations for financial success when it came to annual salary. And, and here’s my theory, it’s because millennials had the worst luck of timing. Like they graduated and couldn’t find jobs. ’cause There was a recession and then there was a housing crisis, and then there was all these multiple things they had covid to deal with. So millennials lowered expectations, but millennials were around for the internet, social media. But it kind of came on the tail end of millennials, which is different than this next generation, gen Z. Any Gen Z in the room right now. Alright, alright. So Gen Z, their expectations a little higher. <Laugh>,

They they grew up not just with a smartphone, but they grew up with social media. And primarily social media is one thing. It’s wealthy, rich, famous people showing you a life that you don’t get to have. That’s primarily when you look at TikTok and Gen Z, they see a lot of that. And so naturally I think that caused Gen Z to say, well, I think financial success is having $9.5 million in net worth and making $588,000 a year. Now, there’s one challenge with that. And if you’re in Gen Z in the room, I just want you to really pay attention to this next part of the graphic. This is what actually the average is <laugh>. So the average American net worth, when they retire 1.1 million, they make $64,000 a year. And so, so here’s the point. If you’re in Gen Z and you think that this is success, you are more than likely gonna end up closer to this.

And in life. Here’s the truth, that the gap between our expectations and our reality always equals disappointment. That when you have these expectations and you say, okay, this is what I think success looks like, and this is what I’m gonna chase after, and this is what I want and this is what I desire. And then reality steps in and you don’t achieve what you expected you are going to achieve. That difference in that gap is disappointment. We’re left with frustration. Palm Sunday is a day that had high, high expectations of what the crowds thought Jesus was going to do, and then there was reality and it caused a lot of disappointment. If you’ve got a Bible turn with me, we’re gonna look at John chapter 12. But to understand what’s happening in John chapter 12, we need to understand the context of what just happened in chapter 11.

So John, chapter 11, really important story, not just a story that we teach and we talk about, but also an important historical moment for what happens on Palm Sunday. And that is that in John 11, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Now, Lazarus was in a grave, in a tomb for three days. If you’ve ever seen the Princess bride, Lazarus was dead, dead, not sort of dead, not almost dead, dead, dead. Like completely, utterly dead. Three days. And then Jesus shows up and tells Lazarus to stand up and come forth. And it wasn’t just a few people that saw it, there was a crowd that saw it. And then Lazarus is walking around talking to people. And so that moment, that event caused the word of what Jesus had done to spread like wildfire. Then we pick up in John chapter 12, starting in verse 12.

It says this, the next day, the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel. And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it just as it is written, fear, not daughter of Zion. Behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s cult. His disciples did not understand these things at first. But when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead, continued to bear witness. The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they had heard he had done this sign.

So the Pharisee said to one another, you see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him. So you gotta understand there’s this picture where there’s this parade. And the parade primarily is happening because Jesus has been doing all these teachings, all these miracles. He’s this huge figure, but all of a sudden he raises Lazarus from the dead. And this is this watershed moment where people have decided, this is the moment now where Jesus on this special occasion is coming into Jerusalem, but the historical backdrop of what they’re expecting is a little bit different than what Jesus was bringing. And so here’s some context to the parade. So Jesus enters during Passover week, that is the most important Jewish festival and holiday that the city Jerusalem would always swell because you had pilgrims Jewish people that were going to Jerusalem for their religious feast.

And it would for sure swell by hundreds of thousands. Some scholars would guess that up to 2 million people came to Jerusalem. So it is packed. Now, they also were familiar with having parades. This wasn’t like the only parade that they would ever have. It’s interesting when you look at human history, for whatever reason, we’ve always done parades. We did a parade today, July 4th, we do parades. Thanksgiving, we do parades. You go way back in history. They were doing parades. Why? No clue. But parades have always been a big thing. <Laugh>, the roaming governors would regularly ride in j into Jerusalem and have a parade. But their reasoning was different. Even Pontius Pilate, governor of of Rome, he would come in and his point was he was riding in on a warhorse. He was bringing all of his soldiers and he was trying to show them Rome strength.

He, he was trying to indirectly let them know, Hey, if you tried to revolt, if you tried to wage war on Rome, we would stomp you like a bug. Now what’s interesting is that when a Roman governor would come into Jerusalem and do a parade, they prayed through, they would come on a war horse and they would come from the west. Jesus comes into Jerusalem, rides a donkey, and it says that he came in from the East. So already Jesus is trying to help everybody to understand, Hey, I’m not what you think that I am. And yet the people don’t care. ’cause There was this other backdrop to the parade about 200 years before Jesus, there was this other really important historical Jewish figure. His name was Judas. When we see the name Judas in, in the gospels, it’s a very common name. We think of Judas, a Escar who betrays Jesus.

That’s why nobody names their kid Judas anymore. But in the first century, everybody named their kid Judas. And it was because of Judas Maccabeus. The, the books first and second Maccabee are written about this guy, Judas Maccabeus. He was known as Juda the Hammer, which just as a side note, that is the coolest name, <laugh>. Like if you are a dude in the room, like, like that’s what you want your goal in life. I just wanna be called Kurt the hammer. But that’s not gonna happen. So the, the books of first and second Maccabees, they’re in the apocrypha. We, we would say they, they’re not scripture, they’re not God breathed, but they do have historical value. Those books help tell the story of Judas. He was a Judas priest who led a military revolt against the empire. So it, it’s from the years 1 67 to one 60, he leads this big revolt.

But the, the big climax of it is in the year 1 65 where he takes back Jerusalem. Now, they had taken some false idols. They had built an idol to Zeus inside the temple. They had done some things to defame the temple. And so for Judith, this was like, Hey, you’ve crossed a line. He’s making this gorilla warfare. It’s a long war, but this is the moment where he cleanses the temple. He takes it back. And as a result of this, what happens is he parades into Jerusalem and the people waved palm branches to celebrate victory. That’s where this idea of palm branches comes from, comes from Judas. So he comes in after military victory, they wave palm branches, they cry out victory like, hey, he is the man, the, the festival of Hanukkah is celebrating that he took back Jerusalem. That’s why they celebrate Hanukkah in December, because that’s the time of year when Judas took back Jerusalem.

So that’s the backdrop for Jesus parading into Jerusalem. So putting those things together, what does it mean? It means that the people expected something very different than what Jesus was bringing. When they were crying out Hosanna, they were saying, save us. We prayed. They were putting down palm branches because it represented victory, but they expected Jesus to deliver them from Roman rule. They expected Jesus to make war. Additionally, they expected the kingdom of Israel to be restored, that he was gonna bring back their great nation and that he would then reign from Jerusalem, that he would sit on a literal throne in Jerusalem and become their king. That’s what they thought the Messiah was. Now imagine if you’re one of the disciples, the Jesus is on a donkey and he’s, he’s in the front for sure, but behind him are the disciples. And you’ve got hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people.

They’re just crying out at the top of their lungs. They’re so excited, they’re so thrilled. And, and probably as the pray goes on and on, there’s just this fervor and there’s this excitement and they’re looking at each other like we’re a big deal. Now they’ve been following Jesus for three years. Some of these people are just showing up to the party, but they’re looking at each other. They’re thinking, Jesus is the Messiah. This is the moment he just raised a guy from the dead. Now he’s gonna conquer the world and we are gonna conquer the world with them. They’re probably high fiving one another. I mean, the emotion of that moment had to have been high. And then holy, we Kevins, and, and if you’re coming in from the mindset of a disciple after that parade, what you think is about to happen is not what actually happens.

So Holy Week timeline looks like this. You have Palm Sunday, the parade, they all come in emotionally, they’re sky high. Then on Monday, Jesus cleanses the temple. They’re probably scratching their head. They’re like, well that’s, that’s not a way to make a lot of friends and win the people. But remember, Judas had cleansed the temple 200 years before. So maybe, maybe that lines up. And then he spends all day on Tuesday teaching, but he’s not teaching about taking up arms and fighting Rome. He doesn’t even mention Rome. He’s teaching them how they should live, what his kingdom looks like. Then on Wednesday, there’s no teaching from Jesus. That’s silent Wednesday. That’s the day that we do hear about the betrayal being planned between the Pharisees and Judas. And then on Thursday they go into the last supper and the last supper. Everything that you would’ve guessed from the disciple’s perspective to happen at the Last Supper is not what happens in the Last Supper.

They’re expecting this in Jesus completely goes like this. And the whole time they had to have been looking at each other like, what is going on? You ever had moments in life where you realized something, you had this moment of epiphany where what you thought was going to happen or what you thought was true ended up not being the thing? We had some kind of cool, it happened this week. We have these owls that showed up and we’ve had owls living at different places at different times. But there’s these two adult owls, a mom and a dad owl, and then there’s these two baby owls. I say baby owls, they’re not like this. The baby owls look like grown owls. The adult owls look like monsters and they, they’re actually in that tree. So, so when we’re done, don’t go outside and scare off the owls.

That would be uncool. But, but you can look through the window and they’re in that tree right there. If you, if you came in this morning, you probably saw some people taking some pictures and owls are majestic and beautiful and creepy all simultaneously at the same time. But it reminded me of a story of a guy named Neil Simmons. So Neil Simmons this is the kind of owl that you would expect to find over in England. He, he lived out in the suburbs outside of London kind of on, on some farmland. And he would watch the documentary and read a book about s and it kind of intrigued him about s and so he, he kind of became an amateur owl watcher. And so what he started doing is at night he would go out into his backyard and he would go out to his fence and he took a journal with him every day. And he started trying to, to draw

Owls, call

Owls to come live in their area. And so he would make owl noises, he’d watch the documentary, so he just replicated the noises. So he’d go, Woohoo,

Woohoo, woohoo, woohoo.

And he would try and mark down every time he was doing it, mark down if he thought that he had heard something in response. A whole year goes by, a guy goes to his backyard almost every day for an entire year making owl noises,

Woohoohoo.

Then all of a sudden, about a year into it, the owls start hooting back. And I mean, he’s thrilled. He’s

He’s so

Excited. So he’d go,

Hoo,

And he’d hear in response

Woohoohoo.

And so I mean, he goes in and he tells his wife, Hey, you would not believe what happened.

I, it worked.

I’ve drawn owls to our area and now we’re

Having a conversation with each other. And so

Literally for an entire year,

He goes out

Every night making Hootie hoo hoo noises and hearing back some hoo noises. And so he’s marking it down in his journal every time and he’s just on cloud nine. He thinks this is the coolest thing in the world until one night his wife, Neil Simmons wife is having coffee with their neighbor, Fred Kos, his wife, and they’re having coffee. And Fred Corn’s wife says, you wouldn’t believe what my husband does

<Laugh>

That every night he goes into our backyard and he makes owl noises and he believes that he’s talking to owls. And then he’s been drawing them into our area, <laugh> and

Neil Simmons’ wife said, no way. Get out of this world. You wouldn’t believe the

Coincidence because my husband also

Goes

Out into the backyard every night and makes owl noises. And then

They had a moment as wives where they both look at each other and the

Ball all of a sudden drops and

They die

Laughing. And they say,

Just

Wait until I get to tell my husband. And

Can you imagine if you are

Neil Simmons? And you

Literally spent a whole year

Making al

Noises and then a whole second year making al noises

To another grown man

<Laugh>

Who’s making al noises back

To you. Like imagine when that bubble bursts

And pops,

The

Feeling he’s got to have. He was on cloud nine. I have recruited, and I’m talking to ALFs, we are buddies,

Probably

Should have figured out that he had never, never seen one <laugh>. I just imagine the disappointment, what he thought was happening, totally opposite from what was actually happening. And, and that’s the last supper, the last supper, everything that the disciples expect. Everything the disciples think is not what Jesus is talking about. So, so the upper room, the whole discourse of the upper room, it’s actually pretty long. It’s chapters 13 through 17. And and I’d encourage you to sit down and read it, read it from that context of the disciples. So, so you can kind of imagine that they’re sitting at this table, and if you’re here last week, they wouldn’t have literally been sitting, he would’ve been reclining at a table. It could have been one big table, maybe it was multiple tables around the room. They would’ve all had those four glasses of wine. They would’ve had the Passover meal in front of them.

But everything that Jesus does at the table just seems to contradict the feeling that they would’ve had after the parade. It starts out in John chapter 13 and John chapter 13 is this famous story about Jesus washing his disciples feet and the point of Jesus washing his disciples feet. What he tells them over and over and over again is, if you’re gonna be my followers, if you’re gonna be my disciples, you too have to wash other people’s feet. He’s telling them that you need to love other people and serve other people. And, and so likely the disciples are looking at each other and say, well, that that just seems a little incongruent with what the mood and the feel had been around the table. And we know that it wasn’t jiv exactly right with the disciples because of what Jesus says in John chapter 14, starting in verse one.

This is right after he washes their feet. He says, let not your hearts be troubled. Now, why does Jesus say, let not your hearts be troubled because their hearts were troubled. There was something about the mood at the table where what Jesus is saying isn’t clicking and they’re thinking to themselves, I, I don’t quite understand what’s happening. And then Jesus goes on and makes it even more confusing. He goes on in John chapter 14, verse one says, let out your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me and my father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am you may also be. And you know the way to where I’m going.

Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. That still doesn’t seem like it makes sense if you’re a disciple. Like you think Jesus is about to take over Rome and be a king and sit on a throne and he’s talking about leaving and going ahead and preparing a place in his father’s house. And so it’s just not quite making sense. And then you have as a part of the Passover meal, this, this moment that happens in chapter 16, that would’ve coincided with Jesus giving us the Lord’s supper, picking up that cup of redemption. And in their mind the backdrop of the Passover is that this is when God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, out of captivity.

And so they’re thinking this is the perfect moment for Jesus to tell us that he also is gonna bring Israel out of the captivity of Rome. But instead of talking about this cup of redemption, he talks about pouring out his blood and it becomes a cup of wrath that Jesus would take on our behalf. So it just doesn’t feel like it’s making sense. And and the backdrop around that, this is the moment he’s talking about the cup and that’s when chapter 16 would’ve likely been happening. And he says in John chapter 16, starting verse 16, Jesus says A little while and you will see me no longer and again a little while and you will see me. So some of the disciples said to one another, what is it that he has said to us a little while? And you’ll see, not see me and again a little while and you’ll see me and because I am going to the Father.

So they’re just confused. They’re like, I have no clue what Jesus is talking about right now. So they were saying, what does he mean by a little while? We do not know what he is talking about. Jesus knew that they wanted to ask, but apparently nobody asked. So he said to them, is this what you are asking yourselves? What I meant by saying a little while, and you will not see me again a little while and you will see me truly, truly I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You’ll be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she is sorrow because her hour has come. But when she’s delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish for the joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you.

Now, imagine being one of the disciples, I imagine how different the mood had to have been in that moment at the table compared to what it was on Sunday at the parade. It just doesn’t seem like they mesh. The Jesus is talking about sorrow and pain. He’s saying that the world’s gonna rejoice, but you are going to hurt. And there had to have been a a part of them that was just disappointed. They didn’t understand, for one, but they also had to have just been disappointed. This isn’t the way we thought this was going to go. Let me, let me ask you a question. Are you in a season of disappointment? See, part of the human condition is that if you are not in a season of disappointment right now, just hang on. ’cause Eventually you will go through a season or multiple seasons of disappointment.

And what does that come from? It often comes because we have expectations on life of what we think our life is going to look like, and then the reality sets in and there’s a gap between those expectations in our reality and we’re disappointed. And so you were a kid and you thought what your adulthood would look like and what your salary would look like and what your house would look like and what your car would look like. And if those things don’t add up to be what your dreams were, you can get a little frustrated. Or maybe you’ve got a relationship and you have expectations on what your perfect life was gonna look like and then you had a relationship. Maybe it was a marriage, maybe it was a relationship with a child or a parent. Maybe it was a relationship with a friendship. Maybe it was something with your career and those things dissolved and fell apart and now you’re just disappointed. And here’s what often happens when we face disappointment, is that we need someone to blame for that disappointment. So we look around and we don’t wanna blame ourself. And so oftentimes we project our disappointment, our frustration on God.

And here’s the question when it comes to our relationship with Jesus, is that there’s a difference between the Jesus of my expectations and the Jesus of the cross. That’s what we see with Jerusalem, that what do they want from Jesus? We want you to conquer Rome, be a king, sit on the throne. And Jesus doesn’t do it. Jesus goes to the cross instead. But here’s what we also need to understand. The least loving thing Jesus could have done would’ve been to give the parade people exactly what they wanted. I mean, could he have become a king shirt? Would it have been easy for Jesus to become an earthly king with an earthly kingdom? Absolutely. He could have done it like that.

But how momentary would that have been? He gives them exactly what they want, and yet it misses the picture of eternity. Instead he goes to the cross. And in the moment it seems terrible and awful. And yet for all eternity, he was created a kingdom that would have no end. He was redeeming you and me, God’s people, his creation back to himself, the work of the cross, challenging to understand at the time, but in hindsight, a beautiful masterpiece by God. It’s interesting when you think of the table and the disciples and the emotions that they would’ve been feeling, Matthew tells us that all the disciples scatter from Jesus in the next 24 hours. He gets arrested, he gets tried. You have the famous encounter with Peter where Peter denies Jesus three different times. And we always leap hate on Peter because of that. And yet most of the other disciples, it doesn’t mention ’em, they weren’t even there.

So Peter at least showed up for the trial before he runs off. And so all the disciples abandon Jesus except for one. There’s one disciple. We see presence at the foot of the cross. And that disciple was John. And so it leads to this interesting question. What was different about John? Why was it that 11 disciples run away and disappear, and yet John stays faithful? John’s an interesting disciple to look at because he’s a little bit different than the other disciples. Likely he was the youngest of the disciples. He also had this really close friendship, personal relationship with Jesus. Him and Peter and James seemed like they had a closer relationship than the other disciples. But what’s fascinating about John’s gospel, the gospel of John that he wrote, he never mentions his name. He never mentions the name John. The only time he mentions the name John is when he’s talking about John the Baptist.

Now you look at Matthew, mark and Luke and John gets mentioned all the time. And yet in John’s own gospel when he’s describing himself, he never uses his name. Instead, he uses a different phrase. John describes himself simply as the disciple whom Jesus loved. Now, what’s interesting is the first time that that phrase appears is in the upper room. It’s in John chapter 13. That’s part of this upper room last supper experience. So right when things start to twist in the story, things start to get more tense and challenging in the story. That’s when he starts using the name for himself, the disciple whom Jesus loved. And then these later chapters that’s at the foot of the cross. And after the resurrection and in the tomb, he refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. What does he mean by that? You could speculate a lot of different things.

Some people say, well, he, he was trying to make it sound like he Jesus loved him more than everybody else. But that’s just not true. If you look at the rest of John’s right, John talks about love more than anybody else. In his letters, he talks about love. The most famous verse in all of scripture. John three 16, he talks about love for God so loved the world. So I don’t think he’s talking about that God loves him anymore. I, I think the difference is in identity. The John, he, he realized that his identity was wrapped up in his belief, in his trust, that Jesus loved him. Now, we can put our identity into a lot of things. Oftentimes people put their identity into their work, into their family, into their health, that sometimes we put our identity into our hobbies. The challenge with our identity in almost every earthly thing is that it can be gone tomorrow.

So you put your whole identity into your career and then your career ends. And then what’s your identity? You put your whole identity into your marriage and then your marriage ends. And what’s your identity? I, I’ve known a lot of professional athletes and their whole career was wrapped up in that. And athletes tend to retire young. And then all of a sudden it was this, the bottom falls out. Who am I? What is my identity? And so when everybody else runs away, John shows up. Why? I think the reason that he’s hinting to us and when he starts using the name is because his identity was found in Jesus that I’m the disciple whom Jesus loved. That’s who he was. And so in that moment, did he understand what was going on? No. Was he happy standing at the foot of the cross, seen someone he loved his best friend, be crucified, his Lord and Savior be crucified?

No. But he had a trust. And that trust came from an identity where he said, I am loved by Jesus. That’s who I am. And so even though his world fell apart, he was secure in that understanding and that knowledge. My challenge for you today, my challenge for me today is that we are going to have seasons of disappointment. And maybe you are in a season of disappointment right now. And my question for you would be, where do you find your identity? ’cause Here’s what Jesus is trying to to get us to understand on the cross. The next Sunday, we’ll celebrate Easter, the resurrection of Jesus. And that is a profound moment, profound celebration, but not skip past it. Jesus loved us so much to go to the cross for us. And if we would find our identity in that, then then scripture tells us we will find sorrow and we will find pain and we will find challenge and we’ll find difficulty.

But none of it is too big for our God that if my identity is found in Jesus, then Jesus is enough, even when it doesn’t feel that way. And for John, I’m sure it didn’t feel that way, but Jesus was enough. And I promise, whatever you’re walking through right now is still enough for you today. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, I just thank you so much during this Easter season, God, that we can turn our hopes, our focus on you, that in this world we naturally create so many false expectations and we can wrap our identity into so many different things. And all those things can fall apart and disappear. But we know that you never will. And so God, I pray for anyone going through a season of frustration or disappointment. I pray that right now you’d be with them. And I pray for anyone that does not know you, that today can be a day that they say, I want to find my identity in Jesus’s love for me. I pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus.