Sermon, Sixth Sunday of Lent and Palm Sunday

You can also watch this message here: https://youtu.be/-nFvpq3MqC4

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Today is the 6th Sunday of Lent, and it is also Palm Sunday – which is the beginning of what many Christians call Holy Week, culminating on Resurrection Sunday.

 We’ve looked these past several weeks at individual elements of the supernatural armor, and although we’ve looked at them in isolation, each piece of the armor is crucial to the entire unit of the armor. And so, prayer must be viewed as being equally important to the Christian armor as the belt, the breastplate, the shield, the sword, and so forth.

I’ve titled today’s message, Prayers, Palms, and Pummeled. Let’s look first at Prayer. Here are St. Paul’s remarks about prayer in this spiritual battle:

“With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, 19 and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak." (Ephesians 6:18-20)

I want to pause here a moment and focus our attention on what the great apostle Paul is requesting. Many Christians think of Paul as a giant of faith and evangelistic fervor. And rightly so. If we look only at the book of Acts, it seems Paul single-handedly won Europe and Asia Minor to the Lord. He seemed unstoppable. Shipwreck, flogging, stoning, imprisonment, hunger, cold, nakedness – nothing stopped the man from proclaiming Jesus the Christ as humanities ONLY door to eternal life.

But the apostle clearly recognized the battle he faced daily. That is the entire point of this section we’ve been looking at the last several weeks. It is a deadly battle, and this battle has claimed more than its share of spiritual victims. How many high-profile Christians and pastors do you know who have fallen, and fallen hard? As I prepared this message, I did a quick internet search using the key words, ‘famous Christians who left Christianity’ and found many, many others. I was quite surprised – though I should not have been – just how many Christians there are who have lost their faith.

They ALL became casualties in this deadly spiritual battle. And some of you know the stories of people close to you – perhaps even those among your own family – those who once walked with Christ and have since turned away from Him.

Listen! In this spiritual battle, Satan is out to destroy your soul! That is why we must put on our battle armor every day, with the belt of God’s inerrant and infallible and eternal truth, and wearing the breastplate of righteousness, our feet sandaled up with the preparation and the proclamation of the gospel of peace, holding fast the shield of faith, wearing the helmet of salvation, and holding high the sword of the Spirit.

And never neglect prayer.

Paul asked his readers for prayer because he knew something many of us often overlook. The weapons of this warfare are NOT of the flesh. They are powerful ONLY through God’s supernatural intervention. That is why we pray constantly for own perseverance in this battle – and that is why we ask OTHERS to pray for us to stay faithful and steadfast in this journey toward the Celestial City.

You will remember what happened with the Lord’s closest disciples after they celebrated the last Passover meal, or what is commonly called the last supper.  

After the meal, Jesus and His disciples went to the Garden of Gethsemane. Matthew tells us Jesus took three of them, “Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed.  Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.” (Matthew 26:37-38)

But you know the story. They let their best Friend down. Not once. Not twice. Three times they fell back asleep.

And so – and listen carefully to this – in this battle Jesus also says to us: “Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41)

I found this quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Whatever your denominational label, these words will ring true for anyone who has ever tried to pray fervently, consistently, and effectively:

"Prayer is both a gift of grace and a determined response on our part. It always presupposes effort. The great figures of prayer . . . all teach us this: prayer is a battle. Against whom? Against ourselves and against the wiles of the tempter who does all he can to turn man away from prayer, away from union with God. . . . . The "spiritual battle" of the Christian's new life is inseparable from the battle of prayer." (paragraph 2725)

It is no surprise to anyone who prays that prayer requires effort. Sometimes a lot of effort. That’s why, by the way, several years ago I wrote a book of twelve prayer strategies.

So, I titled my message today, Prayer, Palms, and Pummeled. We’ve spent time looking at prayer. Let’s now look to the Palms – since today is Palm Sunday. What do Palms have to do with the spiritual battle and with prayer?

As the Lord Jesus rode into Jerusalem on that donkey’s colt, John tells us: “A great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him, and cried out: “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ The King of Israel!” (John 12:12-13)

Place yourself in that scene. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of pilgrims had swarmed into the city. They traveled to Jerusalem from all over the Roman Empire to be there for the obligatory feast day prescribed in the Law of Moses. Suddenly you hear cries off to your right. You can’t quite make out what they are saying, but the cries get louder as more pilgrims take up the proclamation. Then you hear it clearly – “Hosanna, Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel.”

You catch a glimpse of the One on the donkey’s colt. He looks plain enough. There is nothing about Him that would warrant even a second look. But He must be someone special, or the multitudes would not be shouting after Him and laying their coats and palm branches in His path.

You don’t know what it all means, but you get caught up in the excitement and cry out yourself – “Hosanna. Hosanna to the king of Israel.”

But the problem with people, all people, is we so easily get caught up in what the crowds are doing and saying. Psychologists have a name for it. It’s called mob-mentality, or herd-mentality.

Some of you might remember the scene in Acts 19 when Demetrius the silversmith brought charges against St Paul who was going around telling people gods made with silver are no gods at all.  Luke tells us that when Demetrius had sufficiently stirred up the crowd, “they were filled with rage, they began crying out, saying, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” [And] the city was filled with the confusion . . .” And a few verses later, Luke adds, “Some were shouting one thing and some another, for the assembly was in confusion and the majority did not know for what reason they had come together.”

And for two full hours, Luke again tells us, they continued this circus, throwing dust in the air and shouting “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”

Two hours.

There is an important lesson here for all of us, a lesson directly related to our spiritual armor and to honest, humble, and reverential prayer.

It is too easy to get caught up in crowd mentality. Everyone’s going down to the altar. I should go, too. Everyone is singing. I should sing, too. Everyone is getting baptized. I should, too. Everyone is praying. I should pray, too.

Those are all the wrong reasons to do anything – even and including religious stuff.

We follow Jesus because He is worthy to be followed. We speak of Jesus because He is worthy of our words. And we pray to Him because He alone is worthy of our prayers. He alone is worthy of our focused attention.

The gospel texts don’t tell us how many of those who shouted on Palm Sunday, “Hosanna to the Son of David” were also in the crowd at the end of the week, on Good Friday, shouting, “Crucify Him. Crucify Him.”

But knowing human nature as we do, I think it fair to assume some were part of both groups. Prayers one day. Delivered up to pummeling the next.

It is a wonderful thing to lay our palm branches before the Lord. But if our laying is not bathed in reverential prayer – beware!  As the crowd on Palm Sunday did not know how events would unfold on the next page of the gospels, neither do we know how events will unfold on the next page of our life.

Could that be what happened to the well-known Christians I referenced at the beginning of my message? Did they in the beginning get caught up in group mentality? Did some stay caught up for years in the Christian herd?

And then life-events turned the page of their lives, and Hebrews 6:6 proved tragically true for them as they crucified to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.

If we let our spiritual armor gather dust in the closet, if we neglect an intimate prayer life marked by the humility, then we remain in danger of crowd-mentality, shouting for two hours, and even for years, “Hosana, Hosana’ – but in the end, not knowing why it is we cry out, or to Whom we cry out.

We can end up like Demas, in 2 Timothy 4, who fell out of love with Christ, fell back in love with his old life, and deserted His Lord. We can become like Judas, turning Jesus over for a pummeling in exchange for a few dollars. We can become like the Christians at Ephesus, to whom the Lord said: “I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.” (Revelation 2:4-5)

Do you see how dangerous and how deadly is the battle we are fighting? If we do not recognize the battle, our prayers will be anemic, and we will too readily follow the crowd one day to lay palm branches across the Lord’s path, and the next day deliver Him up to be pummeled by those who hate Truth.

That is why once again I say it to all of us – including myself – put on that spiritual armor every day. Gird our loins with God’s truth. Wear the breastplate of His righteousness granted us through our faithful obedience to Christ. Sandal up our feet with the preparation and proclamation of the good news of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice which alone saves us. Put on that helmet of the assurance of our salvation, the helmet that guards our mind from the demonic deceptions and false teachings that have swept across the nation AND which ravages many churches.

Take firm hold of the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s inerrant, infallible, and eternal word. And if you have not yet done so – develop a prayer life that draws on the supernatural power of God to keep you walking faithfully, humbly, and obediently toward that celestial city, so that none of us end up like the sad examples I mentioned earlier.

Surely, our spirit is willing to follow Jesus to the very gates of hell. But remember Peter and his three-fold denial. Yes, our spirit is willing. But we must never forget what Jesus said next: “The flesh is weak.”

Today is Palm Sunday and the last Sunday of Lent. Calvary’s cross is only a few days away for Jesus – and perhaps also for us. We do not know what will happen when the next page of our life is turned.

The battle rages. Remember the supernatural armor. Remember the supernatural power of prayer -- for ourselves and prayer for each other in this battle.

I will close this message with a slight modification of today’s text: With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray that utterance may be given to us all in the opening of our mouths, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel; that in proclaiming it we may speak boldly, as we ought to speak.