Do You Want Palm Sunday or Good Friday

Missions:
Do You Want Palm Sunday Or Good Friday
John 12:12-19

Introduction:
I have a confession to make, in the last few years I have preached about leadership in the church, the sinfulness of sin, the suffering and affliction of Christ and the believer, the sovereignty of God, election and perseverance, evangelism, the hope of the resurrection, the reality of hell and Satan…

I have been very doctrinal and that is not the thing I want to confess, you all know it and I am not ashamed of that. What I have to confess is that I have not been preaching all this with a view to Missions; in fact, I doubt that I have not even preached a single sermon on the topic of missions. Today I want to remedy that- so let’s turn to our text and then I will explain why this has become such a conviction to me; Read John 12:12-19

A cistern monk was once asked, “suppose when you die, you realize that the atheists were right and there is no God?” This monk gave and answer that would please many evangelicals and get a hardy amen from most spiritual minded Canadians; he said, “even if I were to die and find out it was for nothing I would still say that my life was better living as though there were a God- all this that I have sacrificed has made my life better!”

But that’s not what Paul said. Look at 1 Corinthians 15:30
why do we stand in jeopardy every hour? 31 I affirm, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. 32 If, in the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantage is it to me? If the dead do not rise, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!"

Paul certainly wasn’t a 21st century Evangelical, otherwise he would be saying, “If Christ is not raised, so what, it’s been a pretty good ride- I got to go to church every Sunday and according to recent statistics from sociologists, Christians live longer, they are healthier, and they have more money.” Isn’t that what it’s all about to be a Christian?

I think you’re like me and you prefer Palm Sunday to Good Friday (this is my flesh speaking) because Palm Sunday is such a happy day- you can picture a beautiful spring morning in Jerusalem, the world is at piece, the tulips are blossoming, there’s the sweet smell of approaching summer and retreating winter. The people are out in the streets to greet Jesus, this miracle worker, riding humbly on a pony- they’re waving palm branches and singing Hosanna and smiling and laughing- full of joyful expectation.

Don’t you wish it could be Palm Sunday ever Sunday? I think that’s what the disciples kind of hoped. See in verse 16, “they didn’t understand these things until after the resurrection.” It was willful ignorance- Jesus told them he was going to die but they didn’t want Good Friday, they wanted Palm Sunday. Are we any different?

I want to zero in on something that the Pharisees said, because it has so much for us- look at verse 19, “behold…” remember John the Baptist at Christmas say “Behold the Lamb?”.. “Behold the world is gone after him.”

I think the Pharisees were speaking prophetically here because the fact is that the whole world had not gone after him. In fact, with the exception of maybe a few hundred thousand Jews and Samaritans as well as a handful of Romans and Syrians, the whole world didn’t even know that Jesus existed.

I think the Pharisees saw the Greeks who in verse 20 came and requested to speak to Jesus and it worried them. Nevertheless, the Pharisees knew something that maybe even the disciples did not, that is, that Jesus teachings were universally popular. I mean that he was not just relevant to Israel, but to the world. And the Pharisees were threatened by it, so they plotted to put him to death, “it is better that one man should die then the whole nation suffer” the high priest said, speaking prophetically.

The world has changed a lot since the first century. Jesus the seed that was put into the ground and died and then sprouted has become a tree that covers almost the whole world. There is a church in almost every nation on earth- even the most repressive nations like North Korea and Afghanistan have churches. But the seed had to die first for this to happen.

But according to the Joshua Project which is an international Evangelical Missions think tank, of the 15 881 ethnos… nations… people groups on earth, nearly 42% or 6 700 people groups do not have a significant Christian representation (that is less then 2% evangelical Christian or less then 5% Christian of any flavour).

Now it’s not all bad news. In the last century Evangelicalism has grown three times faster then the growth of the world’s population and the center of Christianity has moved from the West (North America and Europe) to the majority world, what used to be called the third world- places like Asia, and Latin America.

Christianity is more of an Asian religion today then it is a Western Religion and that is a testimony to the pleasure of God and the labour of missionaries from the West; People like William Carey, Hudson Taylor, Lottie Moon, Henry Martyn, and the many unnamed missionaries who answered the call and gave life and limb to preach the gospel.

All you have to do is look at the activity of God in the last forty years to see that His favour has shifted from the West and He may be giving us over to our depravity or else a great revival must loom on the horizons.

Not so in Africa. In fact, the period from 1945 to 1970 has been described as the unbelievable years because of the massive of growth of Christianity in Africa- some estimates put it as high as 50% of sub Saharan Africa are Christian. “Behold the Africans are going after him.”

Did you know that in 1900 there were something like 250 000 Protestant Evangelical Christians in Latin America? Today by some estimates there are over 40 million Evangelical Christians in Latin America. There are more Christians in Brazil then in Europe.

And look at what God has been doing in the Orient. Korea is one example- it is very near and dear to us. In 1885 there was not a single Protestant Church in South Korea. The church in Korea was built on the blood of the martyrs like Robert Thomas who even while being bludgeoned to death continued to extend his arms to offer Bibles to the very men who were killing him because the love of Christ compelled him. Because of Resurrection Sunday, not Palm Sunday, he lived for Good Friday.

Today seven of the ten largest churches in the world are in South Korea. The largest church in the world is in Seoul- probably with more Christians on its membership list then we have in all of British Columbia. Nearly 40% of Seoul is Christian- over 25% of South Korea. And Korea sends more missionaries then Canada and is about to overtake the US as the number 1 missions sending nation on earth.

That’s an astounding picture of the sovereignty of God when we put that statistic next to Japan who has less then .1% Christian especially considering the enormous missionary effort that has gone into not Korea, but Japan.

In China, where Christianity has been suppressed and cruelly afflicted by the communists, some conservatively estimate underground Church to be over 100 million people. Right now in China, Kim Kyung il is in prison where they eat raw rats to survive.

What was his crime? After escaping North Korea a second time he went to work preaching the gospel to other Korean expatriates in China. He will likely be sent back to North Korea where Christians are summarily executed if they don’t recant. This is a man with a wife and kids. Is he a palm Sunday Christian?

In the last decade much of the missionary thrust has been into Eurasia- places that were off limits until the late 1980’s. Places like the former Yugoslavia, Rumania, Azerbaijan, and Albania. Who could have ever foreseen the break-up of the Soviet Union and the massive missionary work that has followed?

Even pastor Romeo and Margit were touched by American Missionaries, who loved the Hungarians so much that they came half way across the world to preach the good news. And now the Gerhardts are here to lead our missions work and we have an opportunity to be a part of what God is doing in Hungary.

That’s the point, the gospel isn’t just for Israel- it’s emasculated if it’s just about Palm Sunday. The gospel for the world and it’s all about Resurrection Sunday but it has to go through Good Friday to get there it can stay in Palm Sunday forever.

Remember when Saul, once the worst persecutor of Christians, became a Christian on the road to Damascus and God sent him blind to a certain house in that city. At the same time God spoke to Ananias and told him to meet Saul at the house, but Ananias understandably resisted because he knew about Saul’s murderous hatred of Christians.

God said go anyway, because I have a message for Him that I want you to tell, say to him that “he is a chosen vessel of mine to bear my name before the Gentiles… for I will show him how many things he must suffer for may name in order to bring my message to the world” (Acts 9:16).
How many remember Graham Staines? (tell the story).

If we want to get the message to the world, we cannot stay here at Palm Sunday- Good Friday is coming whether we like it or not- it’s coming for us. Will we embrace it? Or will we run from it and try to cling to Palm Sunday fleeting as it is?

Towards the end of his life, Paul looked back on his suffering- look what he endured (Read 2 Cor 11:23-24)

Do you know what 39 lashes feels like? Think about it. The reason they stopped at 39 was because they believed 40 lashes would kill you. Imagine the open would on Paul’s back. They didn’t have medicare back then, no pain killers, no sterile bandages, no missionary furlough. Can you imagine how long it took for his back to heal and then the scars only to have it happen again… four more times? (finish reading to verse 27)

No wonder he thought Christians were miserable if the message of the gospel weren’t true. It gives a whole new understanding to the meaning and depth and source of Paul’s joy when he wrote about his Palm Sunday:
7 …these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him… 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death (Phil 3:7-10).

Tell the story of David Brainard.

So what are we going to do with Palm Sunday? Will we participate in the realization of those Pharisees’ worst fears? Look, the whole world is going after him. I know you’ve gone after him if you are a Christian, will you go with him into the world if he calls you to?

Are you willing to count this life as not worth clinging to for the surpassing excellency of Christ? How much are you willing to suffer for him so that you would say, “if I am wrong I am most miserable” rather then “it’s been a good life anyway”?

Will you suffer with George Elliot and Henry Martyn and Kim Kyung Il? Will you persevere with Gladys Staines who lost her sons and husband? Will you risk defiling the Koran and disappear into a Pakistani prison like
Ahmjad Massi …if you are called to it?

How about something a little less violent… like going to the 6 million Aids babies in Africa and risking catching their disease for the sake of showing them the love of Christ. Or what about the children of prison inmates in our local Jails, the homeless people who meet in front of the MCC thrift store every night at 6:30- what about the single moms who make up as much as 30% of the population of Whalley. How much will you suffer for them?

I’ll close with these words from the book of Hebrews 11:8 “8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out… he went out, not knowing where he was going”