Palm Sunday Sermon Notes

HILLTOP CHAPEL

PALM SUNDAY SERMON

3/5/2020

     Good morning.  This is Pastor Rod from Hilltop Chapel here in Miramonte, CA.  We are here to praise the Lord this morning and wish you a Happy Palm Sunday.  I would like to share with you God’s Word this morning.  Please open your Bibles and read Luke 19:28-40, our sermon this morning will be taken from those passages.  Jesus is giving us a picture how the entry into Jerusalem came about that particular day.  Let’s have a word of prayer before we begin. “Father we just ask that you bless our time together.  Bless your Word to our hearts and our lives.  May we be used by you in a powerful way this day to present the gospel of Jesus Christ.  In His name we ask it.  Amen. 

     I would like to share a little something that I read about 3 years ago in the Daily Bread devotional, so a lot of my sermon will be on this topic.  The topic for this morning is “Finding the Way Home.”  The majority of you will not recognize the name Lou Wallace until I connect him with another name Ben Hur, a novel that he wrote.  These are other things he accomplished in his life.  Mr. Wallace was a Major General under Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War; he was an attorney; he was the first Governor of the New Mexico territory and U.S. Minister or Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.  He retired to his home in Indiana where he authored many books and articles until his death in 1905.  Ben Hur was written in 1880 and has been in continuous print since that date.  It is still considered the most influential Christian book of the nineteenth century.  Many of you have probably read the book or see the movie starring Charleston Heston many years ago.  It’s worth your time if your haven’t seen it to get the DVD or watch it any way you can.  But, what I would like you to see this morning is the amazing transformational power of the truth of God’s Word.  Lou Wallace was a nominal, that means in name only, Christian until meeting an agnostic on the train one day.  They discussed the merits and demerits of Christianity and Wallace left the train realizing how little he knew about his supposed religious beliefs.  As he researched the Bible for his novel, he was led to beyond unmistakable evidence, not only the existence of Jesus Christ, but also his deity, power and ability to save Lou Wallace from his sin.  Amy Lifson writing in Humanities magazine said that the writing of the book transformed the life of the author.  As Ben Hur guides readers through the scenes of the  Passion of the Christ, so did he lead the way for Lou Wallace to believe in Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord.  Wallace said, “I saw him perform works which no mere man can perform.”  And that’s the same story today, folks, it has not changed in 2000 years of history and it never will. Picture this, Jesus rode into Jerusalem being declared the King of the Jews, and four days later he was arrested and proclaimed a blasphemer.  By the following Sunday Jesus had been scourged twice, judged, paraded through the streets dragging the cross upon which he would die, had spikes driven through his hands and feet and finally died a horribly painful death.  And we were the reason for that.  Jesus did all those things I just described to you to give each one of us the opportunity, not only to escape eternal separation from God, but to make it possible for us to receive forgiveness of sin and spend eternity in His presence in a place too glorious to imagine.

     So, whatever your belief is today you will have to, one day soon, give an account to God, not only what you believe in but also your commitment to serve Him.  And I thought, as I was preparing the sermon this morning, and trying to realize what people feel like on Sunday, week after week, that there are so many things that we are confronted with this Palm Sunday that we never faced before, and so many restrictions of what we are doing as we are here this morning standing in front of 4 people that are helping to put this together for you , and the rest of the church is empty; and we are 6 ft apart by the way.  We have a lot of rules and regulations that we’re having to live with because of the Coronavirus, but God’s truth never changes, no matter what is going on in the world.  God knew we were going to be faced with this virus before the foundation of the world and all the things that have transpired since we started down this road, and have just convinced me more and more that we are living very much in what the Bible calls The Time of the End. And because of that we have to think of things a different way than we thought of them a week, a month, a year ago, and concentrate on what is actually happening.  There are things going on now that we don’t completely understand.  We as Americans have never been faced  with being shut in our homes and not being able to go out whenever we feel like it, or do what we want to do; go grocery shopping, go shopping for items we cannot even get into stores for now. So, a lot of things have changed.  But God never changes.  The Bible says God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and because of that we can put our faith in Him and know that He will get us through this difficult time.

    There might be a lot of you that are listening to this today, watching me do this, that have never really considered what the End of Time would be like.  The Bible says there will be plagues, pestilence, and there will be earthquakes in various different areas that we have never seen before.  All these things are happening today in our lifetime.  And Jesus said that when you see these things taking place, know that I am coming.  Are we ready for Jesus to come on this Palm Sunday, or this day of Hosanna, on this day of praising Him as He truly is, the King of King’s and Lord of Lord’s?  Do we take into consideration what it might be like if, all of a sudden, a billion people disappeared?  What it would be like if the End Times do appear before our very eyes?  You ought to be ready, to know beyond a shadow of a doubt where this life takes you next.  And the only way to be sure of that is have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  I thought about how worthy am I to be even considered by God. I’ve done a lot of things in my life that I’m not proud of.  They are in my distant past, as someone might say, in the rear-view mirror, but Satan doesn’t mind bringing those up every once in a while, running me through the ringer again.  But I am positive, absolutely positive that my life is in God’s hands today and I know that whatever tomorrow brings He’s going to take care of that too, and he’s going to take care of me throughout eternity.

     I’m so blessed to have so many wonderful people to work with.  I’m so blessed to have a wonderful church to be a part of.  But the most important lesson that I have is that, as unworthy as I have been in my life, that one single moment of accepting Jesus as my Savior and Lord has changed everything.  Those of you that know him as your Savior and Lord know exactly what I am talking about.  Those of you that might not know, be sure this morning.  I can tell you that there is no greater feeling in the world than the feeling that comes to you when you take Jesus into your life and have Him take charge.  My prayer for everybody here, whoever is watching this morning, on this website, listening on the phone, however you are hearing this today, that God will just touch your heart and show you the way home, the way to Him.  My prayer for all of us is that we will just bind ourselves together with Jesus and let Him take us through the difficult times.

     Thank you much.  We thank you for being here today.  Let’s close in prayer. “Our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day, we thank you for your blessings to us and we thank you for Jesus and for what he was willing to do so that we might have eternity guaranteed with you.  We praise you and thank you and ask that you bless this day and everybody that is with us this morning.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.