Blessed is the King!

[AI translation] In the whole magnificent scene of Palm Sunday, I would like to draw your attention to just one small point. A single moment that shows how truly Christ is Jesus more than the crowd cheering, protesting, praising the King. The crowds of people on Palm Sunday did not themselves know how truly the King was the one before whom palm branches were cut and robes were spread. Of the whole crowd, there was perhaps only one person who understood something of Christ's royal claim: the anonymous one who had the honour of giving Jesus his donkey for this royal procession! This is the one moment of the whole great celebration that I would like to highlight. What is happening here? Without all the pomp and circumstance, without all the pomp and circumstance and without all the drumbeat, a simple proclamation of recourse is made, a soul obediently acknowledges it and acts accordingly. Jesus sends two of his disciples to a neighbouring village with instructions to find a donkey tied to the door, tied to a colt, outside in the street, and simply untie it and bring it to him, because he needs it. And if the owner of the animal asks by what right they dare to touch another's property, they are to say only this: 'the Lord has need of him'. The owner of the animal immediately understood what was at stake and provided Jesus with what he asked for! Behold, this is what the kingdom of Christ practically looks like in the life of one man! This is the practical recognition of the otherwise theoretical proposition that Jesus Christ is Lord!The reason why I want to emphasize this very strongly now is because many believers have come to the recognition of Christ as Saviour in their relationship with Christ, but have not come to the recognition of Christ as absolute Lord. There are many who have Christ as their Saviour, but not yet as their absolute Lord and King. They have already a happy faith in Christ the Saviour, but still lack full obedience to Christ the Lord. In other words, as we talked about last Sunday, many believers have not yet been transformed by Christ into a usable person, an instrument that Jesus can now use to increase His glory. Well, then, today Christ is saying to you who believe in Him that not only do you need Him sometimes, His comfort, His forgiving grace, His help and service renewed every day, but He also needs you, your work, your service, done specifically for Him, for His cause, for the further extension of His kingship. And do not now regard this as another burdensome obligation, which is an extra on top of your many occupations - but as a holy privilege, an honour, which gives to all your other occupations and your thousand tasks their supreme meaning, purpose and direction. For it is a terrible thing when one feels superfluous in a society, when one lives in the knowledge that no one needs one's work; when one is told to put down one's tools because one is no longer needed by the community in which one has worked. I've ministered in communities where someone committed suicide because they offered their hands, their physical and mental strength to serve, and nowhere did they need it. How many people today still long to have their work accepted, demanded, their service appreciated. Not to feel superfluous in society! It is our human sense of self to feel that someone needs us. Well, can there be a happier sense of self than the great honour of knowing that the Lord needs me?
Just as on that first Palm Sunday Jesus sent two simple disciples to someone with this message, so on this Palm Sunday he is sending a grey disciple to you with the same message, so hear me and let me give it to you: the Lord needs you! In your earthly life, in your worldly occupation, in society, you will truly fulfil your vocation, you will find your life's purpose, if you are inspired, guided, inspired and influenced in all your actions by the knowledge that the Lord needs you! Many believers are at a crossroads, wondering which way to go, what to do, whether to go this way or that way: even in such a pondering, the uplifting knowledge that the Lord needs you can guide you. Perhaps you have to go this way or that way precisely because the Lord needs you there. He wants to use you for something in a place you never thought or wanted. A believer can see a commission from above even in the forced shape of his destiny. A believer can take part in political life, or in a political party, or in any kind of physical or spiritual work, or even in warfare, with the self-confident sense of vocation that the Lord needs him there. I have heard of someone who had to go to prison because the Lord needed him there. Yes, I have heard of someone having to lose a good job because the Lord needed him elsewhere! How much bitterness, disappointment, brooding, uncertainty, helplessness, is saved from a man by the happy knowledge that the Lord needs him! How much grace there is in this Word, how much love, care and strength in the fact that the Lord needs me!
But the believer not only takes comfort in this knowledge, but also puts this majestic need of Christ into practice. How does this happen? As the apostle Paul says in his letter to the Romans: 'Dedicate yourselves to God as those who have been raised from the dead to life, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace" (Rom 6:13-14) I read a self-confession of an English missionary in which he describes how he became a blessed instrument in the hands of God, a man whom the Lord could use mightily to increase his glory. On his thirty-eighth birthday, as he was doing his morning devotions, he wondered why he could not become as fully consecrated to God as the Apostle Paul, King David, or Jeremiah? If a man who had lived through great sins like David had succeeded in becoming fully an instrument of the Lord, why should he not do the same? And he felt a great desire to become a man after God's own heart. And all at once the Holy Spirit prompted him to pray. Let these hands never touch anything that You do not want them to touch! Let them never do anything that would diminish Your glory! Here are my two feet, I give them to Thee. Let them never take me where Thou wilt not see me. To Thee will I consecrate my eyes. Never let them look upon anything that would grieve Thy Holy Spirit. Let not mine ears be attentive to anything that profanes Thy Holy Name! Let never my mouth open to utter a word that I would not have Thee hear. Let no thought or imagination enter my mind that would obscure the reality of Thy presence! Let my heart never be attracted to what Thou dost despise, nor let it warm any emotion or feeling that is not of Thee!
Is not this lacking in Thee? Is this complete devotion? This giving of yourself, of your members, of your faculties, of all that you have, to Christ? Christ has given Himself completely for us, the merits of His pure and holy life, the forgiveness of sins in His death and resurrection, the full glory of His heavenly world - and we who have accepted by faith what He has done for us, we dare not give ourselves to Him, for fear that we ourselves will fall short if we surrender everything to Christ! That stranger on Palm Sunday, when he heard that the Lord needed the donkey, did not say, "Oh, don't take it away just now, because I need it too, I'm on my way, I'm just resting a little, but I have to continue my journey. The situation must have been like this, because the disciples did not find the donkey resting in the stable, but tied to the door outside in the street. So the message of Jesus came at a rather inopportune time. But if the Lord needs it: he has the right of way, here, take it!
Yes, we dare not do that, that Christ comes first and everything else comes after. We are such believers that when Jesus whispers to us, "I need your money now," we explain to Him with beautiful logical arguments that it is impossible now, because it is not even enough for our own needs. When Jesus says in a company: 'I need your money now', we are frightened and excuse ourselves by saying: 'Anything else, Lord, but don't ask me to start talking about you in front of unbelievers, because they will laugh at me! When late at night, Jesus rings me up in the form of a ragged stranger, a newcomer, asking for a night's lodging, and says: 'I need your bed for one night,' I am astonished at this intrusion, and I flatly refuse, 'How can he think of such a thing, so where am I to spend the night? When you come home tired from work and hear him say, "I need you to visit some of your brothers and ask them if they go to church, if they like our church," you make this absurd demand unheard, because you are tired of it!
Well, that's why Jesus can't use us, because we don't obey Him! We love Him, we serve Him, we follow Him - just not the way He says, but the way we like! How many lies are there when we say to Jesus, "My Lord and King! How much Christ is not really Lord and King to you? Then we can sing: 'The great King is coming, he would come, he would come'! Well, whose King? Hardly for us! How painful it must be to hear Jesus sing this Song of the Flowers on Palm Sunday, as if it were a downright mockery on our lips, whose idolatrous self is our true King! And yet, in spite of it all, the great King is coming! He offers His unfaithful, disobedient, even unconsciously mocking subjects mercy, for what greater mercy can there be than that still, even after all this, He should maintain His royal claim upon us, and say, 'The Lord still needs you, it is not yet too late to acknowledge His sovereign power and obey Him.
I am His messenger, I bring His message, behold, hear, the Lord needs you! You can still bow down before Him, you can still bow down to Him, you can still greet Him in this way: "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!"
Amen.
Date: 21 March 1948 (Palm Sunday).