Savior of All Who Want More

Palm Sunday is good news for the covetous

[This is another Palm Sunday sermon. It has been prepared for delivery during worship with a congregation that has been considering the Ten Commandments during Lent. Congregations without pastors, pastors too busy with other pastoral work, Bible study leaders, and others should feel free to use it as they wish. Just let me know how you may have used it. Thanks.]

John 12:12-19
Christians everywhere pray the Lord’s Prayer. In the fourth petition of the prayer, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” The Small Catechism explains that in this petition, we’re to pray for “everything required to meet our earthly needs.”

In the fifth, sixth, and seventh petitions, Jesus tells us to pray for our spiritual needs. We pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” “Lead us not into temptation,” and “Deliver us from evil.”

In all the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, in fact, Jesus teaches us to pray for one thing, really. We ask that God would give us and the whole world everything we need for this life and for all eternity.

The good news is that our Father in heaven has already given, continues to give, and will keep giving His answer to our prayer. The answer is Jesus.

In Jesus, we have everything we need.

We know that in our fallen world, the indifferent haves may prevent the needy have-nots from enjoying the daily bread God gives for all.

We know too that both legalistic and permissive churches prevent people from receiving their need of daily repentance and forgiveness of sin or from even seeking the sheltering grace of God in the face of temptation.

But the fact still remains that in Jesus Christ, God makes available to us everything that we need for this life and for eternity.

This is why Jesus tells us elsewhere in John’s gospel, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven…” (John 6:51)

I visited a friend recently just before he died. “Are you having much pain?” I asked. “Not right now,” he said, “but I’ve got medicine from the doctor in the next room if I need it.” Then I asked him how he and Jesus were doing. He told me, “Pastor came over and we talked about my sins and my faith. I’m ready to meet Jesus. My sins are forgiven because of Him.” My friend was telling me on the verge of his death, though he was dying, whether in the short amount of time he had on this earth or in eternity, through Jesus, he had everything he needed.

The temptation for us all, of course, is to think we need more than the God we know in Jesus.

We think He isn’t enough.

Or we think God is a big ruse that doesn’t exist.

Or, if we acknowledge God’s existence, we think He’s insensitively playing games with us, refusing to give us the things we think we need.

Of course, this wanting of more than our daily bread, this desire that takes us away from God and life with God, is what the Bible calls coveting.

Covetousness so threatens us with damnation, hell, and separation from God that two of the Ten Commandments deal with it.

The ninth commandment says, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house,” meaning we’re not to covet the homes and possessions of others.

The tenth commandment tells us, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, his workers, or his livestock, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” This command tells us not to covet the relationships or daily livelihoods of others.

Covetousness is about envy and resentment. Others have more than we have and it eats away at us. We can’t be happy with the life, the talents, the families, the situations God gives to us.

Covetousness is fatal to our souls, relationships, and life with God. When we covet what others have, we’re telling God He got things wrong. We become our own gods.

There’s nothing wrong with seeking justice in the world. Jesus, you know, never defended Himself though He did go all out in seeking justice for those He saw being exploited and misused.

But covetousness—craving what others have for ourselves—is as damnable as murder, adultery, or taking God’s name in vain.

We see covetousness on full display at Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on the day we call Palm Sunday. Four groups are seen reacting to Jesus.

First, there are the people who had been in Bethany a few days earlier and witnessed Jesus raising His friend Lazarus from the dead. They’re telling other people about what they've seen.

Second, there are the crowds gathered in Jerusalem from all over the Mediterranean basin for the Passover. They’ve come from everywhere and they’re abuzz about what the first group is telling them about Jesus.

Third, there are the disciples who accompany Jesus.

Fourth, there are the Pharisees. Pharisees were Jews who believed in a resurrection from the dead for those who obeyed all the commands of God perfectly and the pious rules–some 600 of them–that their traditions had added to God’s commands.

The covetousness of the Pharisees in our lesson today is easy to see. They say to each other: “Look, the world has gone after him.”

They covet the influence and authority that God and the crowds ascribe to Jesus.

They also don’t like His teaching, which undermines their legalism. They hated hearing about Jesus saying things like, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

They thought they’d worked hard to gain God’s favor and make themselves, as they saw it, righteous and worthy. Here comes Jesus telling people that, though they’re all sinners in need of repentance, God gives forgiveness and eternal life to all who trust in Jesus. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” He will say shortly after His Palm Sunday entry, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) Not through your obedience or works or looking good, but solely through Jesus!

The other three groups of people, the Bethany witnesses of Lazarus being raised from the dead, the Passover pilgrims, and the disciples of Jesus, each may have been coveting as they surrounded Jesus.

Some likely wanted Jesus to be an earthly king and provide them with the luxuries enjoyed by their Roman overlords.

Some wanted Jesus to do some miraculous sign because, like many Christians these days, they were addicted to spiritual thrills and goosebumps.

Some, like the disciples, are known for not being above seeing Jesus as their ticket to power and prestige. Remember, these are the guys who Jesus caught coveting designation as “the greatest.”

So, covetousness was likely a universal sentiment at the moment Jesus was welcomed to Jerusalem.

Let’s be honest. We all covet. We all suspect that we’re getting gypped, that God and the world owe us more. And, friends, I tell you that if we allow this sin of covetousness to take hold of us and control us, it will tear us away from God. Covetousness is a sin worthy of everlasting condemnation. Well might we ask then, with the apostle Paul, “Who will rescue me from this body [of sin] that is taking me to death?” (Romans 7:24, GNT)

The answer is Jesus. Jesus is the cross-bound King Who comes to us today, riding not on a war horse to conquer us, but on a donkey, the animal that represented for God’s people the simple peace and community that comes from life with God. And Jesus does so to conquer our common enemies: sin, death, and condemnation.

Jesus comes to you today, the fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy of the Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed King come to reconcile heaven and earth, God and sinners, your Lord and you. Centuries before Jesus’ birth, Zechariah foretold Jesus arriving in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday: “Fear not…behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt!” (Zechariah 9:9; John 12:15)

As our sinless Savior, Jesus, God the Son, refused to covet what other kings would expect–palaces, power, comfort. Jesus resisted covetousness for one simple reason: So that He could destroy the power of covetousness and all our other sins hanging over us, threatening to drag us into hell, away from the presence of God.

Friends, In Jesus Christ, all your sins, from idolatry to gossip, from using God’s name vainly to dishonoring those in authority, are completely and totally forgiven.

In Jesus, all YOUR SINS are forgiven.

In Jesus, we can say with the psalmist, “As far as the east is from the west, so far does [God] remove our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:12)

Your call now is to simply, daily acknowledge your sin and trust in Jesus as you follow Him, and then to share His saving Word that forgives sins with others.

The good news of Palm Sunday is simple. It’s Jesus, truly God and truly human, though subjected to temptations just like us, wanted YOU more than He wanted anything else.

If Jesus covets anything, it is YOU.

And He doesn’t want you so He can manipulate you or take from you.

He wants to set you free from sin, death, darkness, condemnation, and, yes, covetousness.

Jesus wants to be your living bread.

He wants to shelter you in His grace and love. He wants you to live with Him now and for all eternity.

So, receive Jesus again today, sisters and brothers, in His Word–sung, proclaimed, confessed–and in His Word–given in His body and blood, in, with, and under the bread and the wine.

Then, leave here today knowing that in Jesus Christ, you have everything you will ever need.

Amen