What Really Happened on Palm Sunday?

Well, it is the beginning of Holy Week, right? Palm Sunday, then Good Friday, then Easter. And I don't know about you, but I notice how TV stations dust off all the old religious movies this time of year, right? Movies that they'll never show any other time of year. They show them this week. And I've told some of you, I catch scenes from these movies sometimes when I'm channel surfing. And it's funny how often they can get things a little bit skewed. Like Jesus always looks what? Blue-eyed, blonde, and I keep thinking this guy is not Jewish, he is Swedish, actually.

You expect them to say, "Blessed are the poor and the spirit for theirs is the kingdom of the heaven, yah-hay-dee-hay-dee," you know. And they're all what I call low blood sugar Jesus. So peaceful. They're all about to pass out. I feel like somebody get this guy a muffin from the donut table, quick! It's low blood sugar Jesus. And I don't know if you've seen this one where he looks like he's a surfer from California. This is Jeremy's sister. This is from the ABC miniseries about Jesus' windblown hair. And you know like wearing sandals just like a surf dude. Kind of looks like he's saying, "I'm from above with a message from my father." You know stand-up paddle boarding? I kind of invented that.

But Palm Sunday, here is where there is just a swing and a miss every single time in the Easter movies. In the movies, the great crowd that the Bible says came out to greet Jesus is the size of like the cast of The Office. Because you know the budget is so small they cannot afford more extras. Like watch this Jesus movie. "The large crowd that had come to the Passover Festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem." Okay so he just said, "A large crowd right? Where is the crowd?" I can hear the sound effect record of people cheering like at a football game or something but it's actually, if you count and I have, it's about 16 people. And it's the same 16 people every time. Watch this. He turns a corner and they have apparently just run around and lined up again. Same exact people.

Or this scene from Jesus Christ Superstar where there are exactly 12 extras. Count them because I did. A great crowd? In fact the way the movies and a lot of art portray Palm Sunday, it never really makes any sense. Because why were the people doing this? It seems so random. You know, what's the story with the palm branches? And why a donkey? And most confusing of all you're left wondering, how did the exact same people yelling "Hosanna" less than a week later yell "Crucify him!" How are the same people honoring him then calling for his blood? Why would they do that? Never explained in any movie I've ever seen.

And so today, what really happened on Palm Sunday? Why did it happen? And what does it mean to you and to me? Grab your message notes that look like this from your bulletins because I don't know about you but when I was a kid Palm Sunday was a total mystery to me. All I knew was that it meant that we sometimes got a donkey in Sunday school. No clue about why it happened. So here's the way John tells the story in John 12. He says, "The great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. And so they took out palm branches and went out to meet him shouting, 'Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the King of Israel!' And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it as it is written, 'Do not be afraid, O daughter of Zion. See your king is coming seated on a donkey's colt.'

Now listen, this is rich in meaning if you know how to decode it. And John gives you all the clues to understanding it here in these short verses. So this morning Palm Sunday decoded. Let's just work our way through these verses line by line and answer our questions. First, how great was the crowd? How big was this crowd? Well did you notice John says the crowd that welcomed Jesus was, verse 12, "the great crowd that had come for the feast." This feast, this festival, was the Passover, an annual massive pilgrimage to Jerusalem. But how big was that crowd? Well archaeologists have found a record of, check this out, how many lambs were sacrificed at a Passover about five years before this one? And are you ready for this figure? It was about 200,000 lambs that were ritually slaughtered at the temple. Then the families took them home to eat for their Passover feast.

Now follow me here. According to ceremonial law at that time you had to have one lamb for 12 people. So I want you to do the math here. If there were 200,000 lambs and there was one lamb for every 12 people, that meant there were as many as 2.4 million people at Passover in Jerusalem. 2.4 million. Now how many of them were the great crowd that had come into town for the feast of that two and a half million? Well at this time the greater Jerusalem area might have had at most about a million and a half residents. And so the great crowd of pilgrims from out of town that had come for the feast must have numbered as many as a million people. It must have looked something like the Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage, which I'm showing you right now on screen. The pilgrimage to Mecca every year. This is the best modern visual aid that I can show you for the great crowd. This is a picture of about a million people right there.

So how great was the crowd? Up to one million. Now picture that. That's a little bit more than the 16 in that one Jesus movie. This would have gotten the attention of the authorities. Now let's zero in on the festival again. What was the festival? As I said it was Passover, which Jews still celebrate today. This is the annual celebration of Israel's liberation from Egyptian slavery. In Jesus' time they'd already been celebrating it for about 1,500 years. And the way they did it was every family sacrificed a lamb and then had a lamb dinner as a reminder that when Israel left Egypt the people actually put the blood of the sacrificial lamb over their doorposts so that the angel of death would pass over them. Hence the name Passover. By the blood of the lamb they were literally saved. This is the story they retold to Passover every year.

Now because it was also the celebration of liberation from slavery under the Egyptians, this day had turned into a day of national pride in Israel. The emotion was one day we shall be free again. I mean by this point in Jesus' life the oppressors of Israel were no longer the Egyptians but who? What country was had taken over Israel at this point? The Romans. That's right. So it was like one day we'll be as free from the Romans as we were free from the Egyptians. And in fact it became part of the Passover tradition to expect the Messiah to come into town on Passover. In fact historians tell us that on the final day of the Passover feasts the priests would traditionally leave the door of the temple wide open just in case the Messiah would show up that day.

Just one more thing. Palm Sunday a few days before Passover was lamb selection day. The lamb for each family's Passover sacrifice and meal would be selected on this day. More on that later. But that was the festival. Now why palm branches? I mean seriously what was it that made the people wave palm branches when Jesus rode into town? Well most scholars now believe it was a hot day and they were trying to cool Jesus off. Just kidding. April fools. I had to do one April fools thing today. The rest of this is all true but I had to see if you were listening. Some of you are going "It was a hot day trying to get down in your notes." Okay here's the truth. Palm branches were a symbol of independence for the Jewish nation. A symbol of independence.

Let me tell you a story about something that happened about 200 years before Christ. Check this out. A man named Judas Maccabeus had liberated Jerusalem from the Syrians and Judas Maccabeus minted his own Jewish coins for the nation to use in that time. And we still have some. They're very old. These were 200 years old in the time of Christ. But you can barely see his icon, his symbol there. Do you see it? It's the top of a palm tree. And on this one you can barely make it out but there's a palm branch there. And the palm became sort of a national symbol on their coins. In fact a few years, a few years after Christ the Jews led another rebellion and minted their own money again. And guess what symbol is all over the money? The palm. It's like the eagle is a symbol of America. This coin even says "For the freedom of Jerusalem" on the other side in Hebrew. And there's a palm.

In fact when the Roman army came in and wiped out the Jewish rebellion in 70 AD, they minted their own coins to commemorate this. And they all showed a Jewish woman with her head in her hands weeping under what? A palm tree. And there's a Roman soldier standing there with his staff and a stick in his hand basically saying, "Here is what I think of your palm tree, Israel." And so there was a ton of symbolism attached to the palm. It was like their national flag. It would be like a huge crowd waving Israeli flags in the middle of Iran today. It was a provocation. It was a revolution. It was saying, "Freedom to Israel! Liberate Jerusalem!" And it gets even more intense. Because what were they saying? What does "Hosanna" -- we throw that around a lot on Palm Sunday -- what does it even mean? Well literally it means "Save us now!" "Save us now!" In context they were saying, as Jesus came into town, "Liberator! Liberator! Liberator! Free us now!" from the Roman oppression.

The rest of the words are actually quotations from Psalm 118. "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." "Blessed is the King of Israel!" Scholars say that this was sort of their national anthem. It was one of four psalms that were sung every year at Passover. Okay, keep putting these clues together. Why a young donkey? Well John himself says there was a prophecy. The Messiah, the next Liberator King of Israel, will ride into town on a donkey. And the Gospels all make it very clear that Jesus deliberately fulfills this prophecy. He has his disciples go and find a donkey so that he knows very well what he is doing. He is hyping up the crowd. He's getting them all fired up.

And so put all this together, why would a giant crowd be giving Jesus the equivalent of a massive flag-waving, patriotic, ticker-tape parade like he was some hero they were welcoming? Well I'll give you one final clue. Almost exactly, it could have been to the year, almost exactly 200 years before Jesus rides into Jerusalem. That man I told you about earlier, Judas Maccabeus, had led the Maccabean Revolt. Now 200 years, it was the bicentennial. Kind of a show of hands here. Anybody, was anybody here alive in 1976? Anybody remember 1976? Remember the bicentennial fever that swept America? For a year it was like you could not find a shirt that was not red, white, and blue, right? Everybody was talking about it. They were telling the Revolutionary War stories all over again.

Well I have to think that the people were very conscious of what Judas Maccabeus did 200 years before. What did he do? Check this out. Judas Maccabeus came from the north from Galilee, just like Jesus. Many of his followers were fishermen too, just like Jesus. The book of Maccabees in the Apocrypha tells us that he talked of being sent by his father with his brothers to make a difference there in Jerusalem, just like Jesus talked of his father sending him. His message was that a new kingdom is coming, just like Jesus's message. And when Judas Maccabeus rode into Jerusalem 200 years before Jesus Christ, guess what the crowds were doing to Judas Maccabeus waving palm branches? Guess what they were singing? That same psalm.

And what does Judas Maccabeus do then? Well he goes right up to the Temple Mount. He walks into the gates of Jerusalem, strides up to the Temple Mount, and kicks out the foreign oppressors, the Syrians, who were a force that vastly outnumbered Judas Maccabeus and his followers. And he liberates the city. In fact the people acclaim him "King of Israel." By Jesus' time Judas Maccabeus was the national hero. So much so that the most popular boy's name in Jesus' day was, guess what, Judas. Last time that name was ever popular, right? Not one, but two of Jesus' disciples were named Judas. One of Jesus' own brothers was named Judas. Because if Moses was the George Washington of the history of Israel, Judas Maccabeus, he was the Abraham Lincoln. Judas Maccabeus was a national hero. And so two of Christ's own disciples are named Judas.

So why is the crowd doing all of this? On the bicentennial of the revolution, one reason they expected another revolution immediately. The people are thinking, "Here we go! Go Jerusalem! Go Jesus! Goodbye Romans!" And then what happens next? Well Jesus does something that nobody expected. Not the palm-waving crowds, not the disciples, not the religious leaders. No one. Just as Judas Maccabeus did 200 years before, Jesus accepts the accolades, strides up to the Temple Mount. You got to know that there were a bunch of just amped up young men following him. He's gonna get the Romans! And then what does he do? This is a recreation of what the Temple Mount looked like in Jesus' day.

The Bible says he came in from the Mount of Olives so that means he would have entered from the East Gate, coming from that direction, goes up the Temple Mount just like Judas Maccabeus did, and they clearly expect him to go to the fortress Antonia on the other side. This is where the Roman garrison was stationed and kick out the Gentiles from our mountain. But instead Jesus turns left and enters what they called the Court of the Gentiles. This was meant to be a place where people of all nations could come and pray, but in Jesus' day they'd all been squeezed out by stalls filled with animals and money exchange booths.

And what does he do? Matthew 21 says Jesus entered the Temple Courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and he said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer,' but you're making it into a den of thieves." Now what is this all about? What is Jesus doing? Remember how I said it was Lamb Selection Day? Well on this day the people, the pilgrims, started bringing in their lambs to the Temple Mount and the temple had official sacrificial animal inspectors because the Passover lamb had to be an unblemished lamb. And so all these pilgrims, some from miles and miles away, would pick out the perfect lamb from their flocks and they would bring it all those miles over many days travel.

And on this day the pilgrims would come into town and they'd take it up to the Temple Mount and the inspectors would judge whether or not their lamb was truly without blemish and worthy of sacrifice. But historians tell us that in this time the lambs were often judged to have some small flaw by the official inspectors. So now what are you gonna do? Imagine put yourself in their shoes. You have come from a great distance with your lamb and it's judged to be blemished. You can't go back and get a new one. What are you gonna do? Well conveniently you could buy a pre-approved lamb without blemish from the sacrificial lamb shops on the Temple Mount in the court of the Gentiles at jacked up prices. True story.

Oh one more hitch, you could not pay for that lamb with your regular Roman money because that was deemed to be impure since Roman coins had graven images. And so you had to exchange your Roman money for special temple money that you could only spend on the Temple Mount. And the exchange rates were terrible. It was a total money-making racket. And Jesus is outraged at this whole system. This is the one time you really see Jesus showing this kind of anger. The one time you see him showing, making a public stand against a social issue. And it's because the religious leaders are putting obstacles in the way of people to get to God. And Jesus instead of kicking the Gentiles off the Temple Mount kicks the religious system out of the court of the Gentiles to make more room for the foreign people.

And his followers, that whole huge crowd that trailed after him up to the Temple Mount, they are blown away by what he is doing and not in a good way. And then the priests come up to him and they say, "What are you doing? Don't you hear what the people are saying about you? That you're the king? What are you doing Jesus?" And Jesus tells them two stories. He goes, "Let me tell you a couple of stories." And they're both parables in which the priests are the villains. And then they go, "Jesus, you understand what you're saying?" And Jesus looks at the priests and says, "I tell you the truth. Tax collectors and prostitutes are gonna get into heaven before you." And he leaves.

So Jesus is deliberately confounding everybody's expectations of him in this moment. And then it just gets worse, the Bible says, than Jesus takes off. He just leaves. He goes to a small town on the other side of the Mount of Olives and they can't find him. So the people basically have declared a revolution, right? They've all flown their flag. They have said, just like they did 200 years before, "Get the Romans! Power to the people! Here we go to the Temple Mount! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" They thought he was leading a revolution and now he's gone. And in their mind, he leaves them holding the bag or the palm, as the case may be.

Because how do you think their rulers, like Herod and Pilate, typically responded to displays of national patriotism with grace and understanding? No, a few years earlier, one of the Herods had killed 3,000 men in Jerusalem that he merely suspected of treason in his mind with no evidence. 3,000 gone. And then there's Pilate, the Roman overseer of Jerusalem, an ancient Roman historian, Philo, says that Pilate was characterized by, quote, "vindictiveness, furious temper, and executions without trial constantly repeated." A few years after Jesus, there's a rebellion in Jerusalem and Josephus, the ancient historian, tells us that the Romans killed one million Jews in response to that revolution.

And so the people have got to be thinking, Jesus left us hanging. He hit a home run and then he didn't run the bases. In fact, he left the stadium. Jesus got us to cheer him as the new king, marking us as rebels, and then he takes off. Now what are we gonna do? We have to call for his head or we will all die. As one of the high priests said, "Don't you realize it's better for one man to die for the nation than for the whole nation to die for the actions of one man?" We have to turn him over to them and say, "Hey, we have no king but Caesar, except our abject apologies, but it was his fault. He said that, not us." And so now they have to find Jesus and they're desperate. They got to do it quick. And that problem is solved by one of his own disciples. One of the ones named after Judas Maccabeus. Judas.

Ever wonder about Judas's motives? I think the secret is in his name. The Bible doesn't say this, but I can easily imagine that Judas heard his whole life about the great hero that he was named for and he was so proud to be part of the new kingdom and that Jesus leaves them all in danger of a purge. He is angry, he's confused, and so Judas betrays him to save his nation. At least I'm sure that's how he was looking at it. And so that is how the palm trees turn into calvary's trees and even the disciples abandoned Jesus. Now we all know this was all part of Jesus Christ's own plan. He had to go to the cross that week and die for our sins. We know that he would be resurrected, but that's next weekend. Let's stay in Palm Sunday. The disciples didn't know that right now and they're confused and they're angry and they abandoned Jesus.

And my question is how do you apply all this about Palm Sunday to your own life? Well there's three faith lessons from this story that just jump out at me. Number one, and this is pretty important, Jesus is confusing. Jesus is confused. In fact this is almost the theme of the Gospels. Let's just face it, he just flat-out is. In fact I'm just curious, a show of hands, be honest here, how many of you in your life have ever been confused by what Jesus is doing? Can I see a show of hands? Because I sure have and you're in good company. Look at the next verse in John 12. At first his disciples did not understand all this. In fact so many times in the Bible it says things like, "And the disciples said, 'Huh?'" You know when Jesus is doing something?

Now this is not because Jesus wants to confuse you. It's because we give him an agenda that is not his. It's our own agenda. And then we get confused when he doesn't answer our prayers about our own agenda. See when I say Jesus is confusing I mean Jesus is surprising. And this is good news. Because it frees you from your petty ideas of what Jesus can do. Because Jesus is far greater than you can begin to imagine. And that leads right into a second point. Jesus has a plan. Jesus has a detailed plan. He may be confusing to you because you don't know the plan. But Jesus has a plan. John says only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him in prophecies and that these things had been done to him. At the time the disciples still think this is all a disaster. Like Jesus is making all the exact wrong moves. Jesus is botching it. Only later did they realize he had a plan the whole time.

See they thought that his to-do list was liberate city from Gentiles, install self as king. But what his to-do list actually looks like is freak out Romans by creating political disturbance so they see me as a threat and will crucify me. Check! Upset religious power brokers so that they are now against me too. Check! Alienate my own disciples so that they don't attempt to rescue me. Check! Get crucified for sins of world. Check! See it wasn't like Jesus died a tragic death but God being God made something good come out of it. No it was intentional. It was a deliberate plan and it was a poetic plan. I mean the sheer poetry of Palm Sunday happening on lamb selection day. The people selecting the ultimate Passover lamb without even realizing what they were doing.

The poetry of Good Friday happening on Passover itself. And then the Bible says at the very moment the lambs were sacrificed at the temple which was three in the afternoon on that Friday. This is the very moment that Jesus dies as the Lamb of God for the sins of the world. And so we are all saved by the blood of the lamb. When I see what Jesus did, I am just moved to praise God for his intentional love for me. He not only endured scorn, he provoked scorn so that his life could be laid down for me. And by the way this should put an end to any of the horrible things that some Christians have said about Jews over the years. Like you Christ killers, these horrible things. First of all only the Romans have the power to execute anyone but secondly it's so clear Jesus provoked this. He went into Jerusalem and poked everybody in the eye. He laid down his own life for Jew and Gentile.

This is very important. Jesus is confusing to us because we don't see his plan but he has a plan. A detailed intentional plan and this means I can trust Jesus with a big picture. That I can't see but he can see. Trust him with the big picture. You see you and I look at life like one of those connect the dots pictures. Do you remember connect the dot pictures dot to dots from when you were a kid? This for example is my Hello Kitty dot to dot book. I keep it in my office for when days really get tough and I need some personal R&R. It's just kind of relaxing for me but it's full of these dot to dot pictures of little Hello Kitty doing her favorite things. Like here's one of Hello Kitty driving her tractor. I don't know why she has a farm but she needs a farm and it's so obvious right? You look at this and it's clearly she's I don't even need to connect the dots but if you did connect the dots I can see clearly what the picture should be right?

And so many of us follow me here we look at our lives like a dot to dot picture and we tell God God can't you see how the dots ought to connect? It's so obvious to me. The next dot is instantly cure me of my addiction. That'd be awesome. Then the next dot after that is find me a mate. Good. And then the next dot after that is whenever I get sick cure me and when you connect the dots this way God it'll be a beautiful picture. And then when he doesn't we get confused like God you drew a line that goes over here and then another line that crosses the page and goes out that way. What are you doing God? It's not making any sense. And that's how the people felt on Palm Sunday. But you see God sees dots that are far outside the page.

God sees dots. If the page is our lifespan God knows of dots that are thousands of years before and after us. God sees ways to make a beautiful picture far more beautiful than we could even imagine. The people on Palm Sunday were like it's so obvious Jesus the dots are all lined up for you to be the next king for 20-25 years or so and God was no the dots are all lined up for me to save all the souls of humanity eternally. God sees the really big picture. And I want to show you what I mean. I want to show you a verse that I didn't really notice a detail about until this week when I was studying Palm Sunday. Is this the only time in the Bible when people greet Jesus with palm branches? No. In the future it'll happen again because John writes on the bottom of page one there in the book of Revelation. "After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude this vision of heaven that no one could count from every nation tribe people and language standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding what? Palm branches in their hands.

Here's the real Palm Sunday. And they cried out in a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the..." What? "The Lamb." One day in heaven an even greater crowd will have an even greater Palm Sunday as they worship Christ not for their earthly king who's gonna fulfill their little agenda, their wish list, but as the true Lamb of God. And they worship and say, "God we're not saying do my will but do your will. Have your way with me. Hosanna, you save me the way you see best. You connect the dots the way you see best and you and I can join this crowd when we worship Jesus that way today." Now by the way who is this crowd? In the next verse John asks the angel that question and the angel tells him these are all those who lost their lives because they followed Jesus Christ. These are the martyrs for their faith.

Now follow me here. You could really say that there are two Palm Sunday crowds. The first Palm Sunday there's a crowd of fans. Jesus, love your work. Big fan. Glad you're in town because we really have a great agenda for you here. Good plan for you. We love you. We have a wonderful plan for your life. The second crowd, that's a crowd of followers not fans. They followed him unto death. In fact I want you to write a phrase down at the top of the next page. Fan or follower. To me this is the difference between the two times crowds worship Jesus with palms in the Bible. The first crowd Jesus has a million fans. In heaven those are followers. Now which one are you? This is the story arc I see in Passion Week from fans to followers.

In fact to wrap this all up to give you the big picture here. When I look at the events of this Passion Week that we are now entering into today I see three phases of faith that so many believers go through. You start with the palm. You could call this the excited by God phase. Like the crowds big fans and we greet Jesus with joy as he comes into our lives. At last I know Jesus. I'm welcoming him. He's gonna make everything alright. All my problems are gonna be solved and I know exactly how. Yay Jesus! Here's my plan for you. It is so obvious to me that you would want to deliver me in this way. And then when he doesn't do my list just like the people I get confused. Jesus is not meeting my expectations and so I put him on the cross and I walk away.

This is called the disappointed by God phase. When you almost abandon Jesus like the disciples abandoned him at the cross because it all looks so dark. Listen. We can all have weeks like the disciples experienced here. Where what Jesus does is so confusing. You want him to do this and he does that. You think he's turning right and he turns left. You pray for peace and you get chaos. You pray for healing and you get death. You pray for solutions and you seem to just get more problems. And like the crowds at Palm Sunday you'll feel like, "What are you doing Jesus? I was praising you. I was welcoming you in. I was out there with the crowd shouting "Hosanna!" I put myself in the line for you here and you let me down. It's embarrassing.

Just like the people on Palm Sunday. You can get bitter that Jesus seems to lead you on and then doesn't come through and you get depressed and you lock yourselves away like the disciples did. But then the empty tomb. The empty tomb. This is when Jesus bursts out of the box or even the the tomb that you put in him in and the real Jesus, the risen Jesus, finds you even when you're in a locked room. Even when you're afraid. Even after you've abandoned him and said to him, "I don't even know if I believe you anymore." He finds you and he says, "You know what? I choose you. It was great that you were a fan but now come and follow me." And you could call this the surprised by God phase. When the real Jesus blows past all your expectations and you serve him not for how he fulfills your wishes like some genie but for who he really is.

Now this is never easy to go through these three phases. We've been helping my mom recently go through some of her boxes that contain letters my dad wrote to her like this one. And since I don't remember much about my dad, it's fascinating for me to see letters in his own hand. There's a letter that says, "Our love will live forever." There's a rough draft of a letter to his parents saying, "The doctors say I have cancer." There's a letter to a Sunday school class asking for their prayers. There's a letter that says, "I believe God will heal me." But God didn't. My dad died. I was four. I don't know why God allowed it. And my mom and I and my little sister, we all went through our own dark times that lasted for years.

But I can tell you that my mom and my sister and I, we have all felt the tap on our shoulder. I can't explain it to you, but we have all met the risen Christ. And we have each decided we want to follow Jesus no matter where he leads. Because the risen Christ promises a wonderful surprise. It's called the resurrection. But that's next week. The bottom line for me in the Palm Sunday story, God is in control and he is writing a story of grace. The crowds were trying to write one story, but Jesus was writing another story. Ultimately a better story. Not a story of politics or human kingdoms, but of his grace. And that is the story he is writing in your life if you have eyes to see. Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for the amazing example on Palm Sunday of how we can sometimes think you have one agenda when you really have another far better agenda. And I know that there are many here today in that disappointed by God phase, if they're honest. They thought you'd turn right for sure and you turned left and they're confused and hurt. Lord, I pray that you would this morning give them assurance that although it may take a while for us to see how all the dots connect, you can be trusted with the really big picture. And God, I pray that in each heart this morning each person would say to you, "Lord, save me. Hosanna. But change me. Save me in your way. Have your way with me. I worship you. In Jesus' name, Amen.