Jesus Enters As A King

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Welcome to Thrive. It's good to have you here. We are coming towards the end of our series called Come Follow Me. Today is Palm Sunday, and we celebrate with the crowds as Jesus journeys from Bethphage, and we'll walk in the Gospel of Matthew right into the heart of the city to the temple where he cleanses the temple and heals the blind in the lane. And this series has been great. I've really enjoyed it. It's kind of, in a sense, basic, but it's really about what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus Christ? What does it mean to follow him? Now, James has already mentioned we've got a lot of great things going on. First of all, I want to say a big thank you to David, to Sarah, to the student leaders, all of y'all were amazing. We put on a brisket and badges barbecue, and Mission Barbecue was so kind as to donate all their food and time. Can you believe it? Yeah. And we had about 150 students, I think, and 12 to 14 officers. I couldn't kind of keep a count. They were kind of coming and going from the FGCU Police Department there, and just celebrated and tried to make community connections between the students and the officers. And the good news is, too, we're going to do it again, guys, right? So Lent started 40 days before Easter, and 40 days for the 40 days that Jesus was in the wilderness. 40 is a big thing in the Bible, if you've ever noticed, right? But he was in the wilderness for 40 days as the children of Israel were in the wilderness for 40 years. And in a sense, Jesus recapitulates. What a word, right? He recapitulates the history of Israel, but does it right. They in the wilderness fell into temptations and trials and failed time and again. Jesus in the wilderness faces temptation for us and overcomes them all. He comes out of the wilderness, and immediately he calls his disciples. And we started that series off with how Jesus called Peter, James, and John by and Andrew by the waters of the Sea of Galilee. And here's the reality. They may not have realized it at the beginning, how revolutionary it was, how also difficult it would be. Most of you in life, right, in your journeys that you started out, you thought, this is fantastic, you know, new jobs. Anybody think, this is just fantastic, I'm loving it, and then you find out how difficult it is? How about marriage? Was it just like, you know, awesome, and then it's like, wow, yeah, this is harder than I thought. Yeah, marriage is a great thing because it beats the narcissism out of you. And then another great thing is children. They'll make sure the narcissism is beaten out of you. You just get them to, you know, right? And we don't realize sometimes just how difficult life can be. Maybe that's good. I bet Peter, James, John, Andrew had no idea what their life would be. But they were attracted to this magnanimous, magnificent, magnetic person, Jesus of Nazareth, who called them by his grace. Just as God called Abraham, just as God called the prophets, now he called these apostles, and he calls you. Now, what does he call you to? We're in Matthew chapter 21, verses 1 through 14. You can follow along in your Bibles on the screen or with that QR code in the Bible notes. Let's turn to that now. Now, when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, The Lord needs them, and he will send them at once. This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophets, saying, Say to the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden. The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest. And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, Who is this? And the crowd said, This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee. And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. And he said to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a robber's den. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. Now I'm kind of saying something that probably, in some ways, it's probably not that radical to you, okay? But it is rad...