"Behold, Your King Is Coming to You"

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Who is this?” That is the question that lit up Jerusalem when our Lord entered there at the start of the Passover week. Who was this man who stirred up the crowds so, simply by riding a donkey into town? Who could cause an impromptu hero's parade and have the people shouting his accolades?

Indeed, who is this king who comes riding on a donkey? This is the question the world would love to have answered. And so many have offered their own answers to the question.

"You Shall Bless the Lord Your God"

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the LORD swore to give to your fathers.” This admonition Moses spoke to the people of Israel as they gathered on the edge of the Promised Land, anxiously waiting to enter the land which the Lord had sworn to give to their forefathers. And our text speaks just as powerfully to us.

The Lord has indeed promised a land to our forefathers. The land promised to us is a great and wonderful land. Its streets are paved with gold, and its gates are precious stones. Mighty trees line a beautiful river. Their fruit brings life everlasting, and the water satisfies the deepest thirst. There is no need for lamp or sun, and there is no sorrow or dying or sickness or darkness. The Lamb is in the midst of this land, and His people are gathered around Him in one great multitude from every nation and tribe and tongue.

Things Are Not Always As They Seem

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

If you have ever read or seen Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, you no doubt understand the saying, “things are not always as they seem”. Alice encounters one thing after another, in increasingly odd and peculiar situations. Cats come and go with a wink. Oysters and walruses are fond friends, for a time. Flamingoes are croquet mallets, and playing cards form a royal court. Flowers sing and caterpillars smoke hookahs. Nothing is as it ought to be.

How often do our lives feel like we have slipped down the rabbit hole! Those sworn to protect our Constitution are finding ways to end-run around it or nullify it. The rich are defrauding the poor by appearing as beggars. Marriage is divorced from God's plan, and so it seems to be whatever one wants it to be. Parents allow children to run their lives, and so ours has become a nation of overgrown children.

"By Your Endurance You Will Gain Your Lives"

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Then he said to them, 'Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences. And there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.'” Horrors and terrors abound all around us. It seems that every day you open the paper or turn on the TV and the news is filled with accounts of disasters natural and man-made. The smoldering volcano in Indonesia. The stranded cruiseliner off Mexico. The storms battering the Caribbean. Deaths of soldiers and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. The gulf oil spill. The earthquake in Haiti. AIDS and malaria in Africa. Cancer in our midst. And the list goes on and on.

As long as this globe continues turning, there will be disasters of every imaginable variety, severity, and source. Try as we might, the best engineering will never remove the effects of sin upon this world. We will be faced with loss and destruction every moment of our lives. If you are not convinced, check the dust on the doorframes of your house.

The Ones Coming out of the Great Tribulation

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Let us hear from the account of the martyrdom of St. Polycarp:

The church of God that sojourns at Smyrna to the church of God that sojourns at Philomelium, and to all those of the holy and catholic Church who sojourn in every place: may mercy, peace, and love be multiplied from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 We write you, brethren, the things concerning those who suffered martyrdom, especially the blessed Polycarp, who put an end to the persecution by sealing it, so to speak, through his own witness. For almost everything that led up to it happened in order that the Lord might show once again a martyrdom conformable to the gospel. The Passion of Christ is the pattern of that of his martyrs. ²For he waited to be betrayed, just as the Lord did, to the end that we also might be imitators of him, "not looking only to that which concerns ourselves, but also to that which concerns our neighbors.” For it is a mark of true and steadfast love for one not only to desire to be saved oneself, but all the brethren also.

"An Eternal Gospel to Proclaim"

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. And he said with a loud voice, 'Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.'”

St. John saw the angelic messenger of the Lord flying in the mid-heavens, proclaiming the eternal Gospel to all the people who dwell on earth. The angel's message is that of all Scriptures and every preacher of the Gospel: “Fear God and give Him glory.” That is, believe the Word of God, and honor Him in repentance and faith.

But that is not the message that so many preachers of this world proclaim. There are so many “gospels” out there, each claiming to save us from our enemy, each naming a different ill of our age as your obstacle to true happiness. If you look long enough and hard enough, you will find something that soothes your itching ears.