The Stones Will Cry Out

The Stones Will Cry Out

Pastor Barry Kerner

Luke 19:28-44

Habakkuk 2

 

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We’re going to be reading out of the Gospel of Luke this morning, Chapter 19: verses 28-44. I’ll give you a few moments to find that in your Bible.

Today we celebrate Palm Sunday. The first day of Holy Week marking the beginning of Christ’s last seven days on His journey to the cross. To commemorate Holy week we’ll be posting a seven part devotional on our website. You can download this daily devotional and use it as we journey with Christ during the seven days of Holy Week.

Here’s a short story I heard last year.

It was Palm Sunday but because of a sore throat, 5-year-old Johnny stayed home from church with a sitter. When the family returned home, they were carrying several palm fronds. Johnny asked them what they were for.

“People held them over Jesus’ head as he walked by,” his father told him.

“Wouldn’t you know it,” Johnny fumed, “the one Sunday I don’t go to church and He shows up!”

Even though we’re social distancing I’m sure that Jesus is still here amongst us. Amen

If you’ve found Luke 19 in your Bibles, we’ll begin with verse 28.

Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King

28 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 30 “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’”

32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”

34 They replied, “The Lord needs it.”

35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. 36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.

37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:

38 “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”[a]

“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”

40 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42 and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”

As Jesus made His way to the Eastern gate that day a sort of carpet was being sewn together ahead of him. Fresh, green palm branches, presumably picked from nearby trees, and thick, worn clothing, likely from the backs of the crowd, formed a tapestry of endearment toward Israel’s long-awaited Messiah.

Many believe that it was the palm branches that made this day unique.

For centuries, the church has memorialized today, the first day of Holy Week, as Palm Sunday because of the palm branches and the cloaks that the people spread out before Jesus as he entered Jerusalem.

The Gospel writers tell us a crowd gathered, gushing with excitement, and lining the road in front of Jesus as He slowly rode into the city. As He made his way, one step at a time on a borrowed beast of burden, the crowd heralded His arrival.

Some 450 to 500 years prior to Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem, the prophet Zechariah had prophesied the event we now call Palm Sunday with these words,

“Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!

See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious,  lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9).

The prophecy was fulfilled in every particular, and it was indeed a time of rejoicing, as Jerusalem welcomed their King. Unfortunately, the celebration was not to last.

Luke tells us that as Jesus entered Jerusalem the people began rejoicing and praising God, shouting, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! (Luke 19:38)

Some of the Pharisees try to get Jesus to make the crowd stop. They ask him to rebuke the people for what they’re saying — the whole “Blessed is the King” bit. The Pharisees get it, you see. This isn’t just any phrase. This is the kind of welcome reserved for Israel’s Savior. It’s a phrase found in the Hebrew Scriptures, going back to Psalm 118, a psalm that rejoices in the Lord’s triumph. By verse 22 of this psalm, the rejected stone has become the “cornerstone” (Psalm 118:22). This is a marvelous work — by God’s doing — which then launches the day of salvation (Psalm 118:23–24).

This day of salvation is the long-anticipated deliverance that Israel thought might never come. But it will, it does, and Psalm 118:25 captures the hope saying: “Save us, we pray, O LORD! O LORD, we pray, give us success!” Now this salvation and success is nothing generic. It will come through a person — the Messiah of God — the one sent by God to rescue His people. So goes the shout, in the psalm,

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD! (Psalm 118:26)

Without doubt, this rambling crowd in Jerusalem, is taking its cues from Psalm 118. They are declaring Jesus to be their long awaited Messiah. That’s why the Pharisees tell Jesus to stop the madness. “Jesus, Do you hear what they are saying? They think you’re the Messiah come to save us. Tell them to shut up.”

Jesus doesn’t stop them, though. Of course, Jesus is the Messiah. And, He has come to Jerusalem to save his people. He says, instead, that if the people weren’t saying it then the stones themselves would cry out.

The people wanted salvation and success, remember. They wanted the Messiah to march into the city and do hard business with Rome. They wanted to be free from Gentile oppression, even if by force, even if by threats and plagues and a split sea, as they recounted so well in their history. They wanted another exodus, one that expelled the Romans.

Instead, what they got by Friday morning was a bloodied has-been, a man in Roman custody, rejected by their own leaders, standing next to an infamous criminal named Barabbas. They wanted an incomparable king, but they would see was a beaten blasphemer. Or so they thought.

The sounds of the crowd this Sunday — this Palm Sunday — would later be betrayed by the sounds of their own stony hearts. The cry, “Blessed is he!” would soon become a shout, “crucify him!” For this reason, there is something nauseating about today. We read of the response to Jesus, but because we know the story, we know it’s not real. It’s not right.

And as we feel the deep tragedy of their words, of their blindness, we shouldn’t expect that we’d have been any different. The Pharisees and the people had their problems, and so do we. If we know our hearts apart from grace, if we could listen in on this crowd, we’d hear our shouts along with theirs. We’d hear our praise, hollow as it were, and then, by Friday, “ashamed we’d hear our mocking voice call out among the scoffers.”

It is not the righteous, after all, who Jesus came to save, but sinners. Sinners like us.

It’s vitally important that we understand the banter that occurred between Jesus and the Pharisees that day. When the Pharisees hear the crowds praising God and acknowledging Jesus as their long awaited Messiah they command that Jesus silence his disciples.  His reply is, “I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” Song writers and preachers have had a field day with this statement. They make it out that if people today stop praising God the rocks around us will suddenly come out of retirement, shout praise to Him and burst into song.

Unfortunately this is not  so. Neither Jesus nor Luke means that this crying out of stones is a covering for silent worshipers. It does not mean that creation will praise God if we fail to do so. It is a specific reference to that occasion—and the crying out of the stones that Jesus prophesied would not be a cry of praise but a cry for judgment.

Those who believe that Jesus was saying that the pebbles and rocks, kicked up by His parade along the way, would sing His praises if His followers did not, miss the entire message of all of the prophets of the Old Testament, the prophet John the Baptist and even the greatest prophet of all, Jesus Himself.

The message of all of the prophets can be summarized in four points

One: God is holy and must judge every sin.

Two: All the children of Adam are born in sin and must face God’s judgment.

Three: God planned to send down a holy Redeemer who would bear the punishment of sin for the children of Adam.

Four: There are consequences for those who reject God

Those are the four truths which all the prophets of God preached. They are so important that I want to repeat them.

First: God is holy, and cannot overlook sin.

Second: Man is unholy, full of sin, and has no way of saving himself from the penalty of sin.

Third: God has a plan to cleanse sinners and save them from judgment.

Fourth: Those made righteous will be saved but the guilty will be punished

Of all the words of Jesus recorded in the Bible, about twenty-five percent of his teaching was devoted to prophecy concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, the scattering of the Jewish people worldwide, and the end of the age.  He spoke of these events in advance and discussed the rewards and punishments that nations and individuals would experience.

Jesus had a number of things in mind when he spoke on these matters, and He sought to accomplish several things:

Jesus’ teachings sought

• to forewarn his first-century followers when to flee the city of Jerusalem so that they would survive its destruction by the legions of the Roman Empire
• to bring others who heard his message to repentance—both those who heard him speak in person, and those who would read his words down through the centuries
• to motivate believers to keep on the watch for Christ’s return by paying attention to world events
• to let everyone know that God has already determined the outcome of human history, and that his victory over the nations is guaranteed
• to make it clear that those who obey God will be rewarded and those who ignore God will be punished when God intervenes to put an end to human rule and establish the rule of the Kingdom of God.

The call to repentance comes through loud and clear.  And the assurance of God’s ultimate victory over rebellious mankind is equally clear. 

The entire twenty-third chapter of Matthew’s gospel is devoted to Jesus’ denunciation of the Jewish religious leaders as “hypocrites” who would provoke God’s punishment upon the Jewish nation within that generation.  He told them,

“Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.” Matthew 23:36

While gazing upon the stones of the city of Jerusalem Jesus said, “I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” The Pharisees would have understood Jesus’ reference to Habakkuk chapter 2, where a warning is given regarding the Chaldeans known as Babylon. This warning is transferable to any city, nation, or church similarly built on greed, violence, and injustice, as Babylon was. The Pharisees would have understood exactly the warning Jesus was issuing to Jerusalem.

From Genesis 11 to Revelation 18, the Bible represents Babylon in these terms. In Revelation Babylon stands for Israel’s religious system. Habakkuk predicts Babylon’s fall because of such sinful human intent and action by its leaders and people. In fact, he presents the very stones and timbers of the city as crying out to God for intervention because of human sin and refusal to acknowledge God. In chapter 2 verse 11 Habakkuk prophesies, “The stones of the wall will cry out, and the beams of the woodwork will echo it.” It is clearly a cry for judgment, not a cry of Hosanna and the Pharisees would have gotten the message that day.

The prophet Habakkuk directed five woes towards the idolatrous Babylonian nation. Selfish ambition. Greed. Violence. Debauchery. Idolatry. These are pretty strong words, or “woes” as they are often referred to in Scripture. Jesus called out Jerusalem on these very same five sins and they could very easily describe much of modern-day culture. God described the ancient nation of Babylon in these very same terms to the prophet, Habakkuk and some things never change.

1. Selfish Ambition (Habakkuk 2: 4-5): A society so focused on wealth and status that corners are cut and relationships crumble. From social media influencers to C-suite executives, the pursuit of the “American dream” of wealth and success has driven many people to take shortcuts and even sacrifice others in their climb to the top.

 

2. Greed (Habakkuk 2: 9-11): The Bible uses the word covet to describe a level of envy and jealousy so great that it leads to resentment towards others. God took the sin of coveting so seriously that it made it into the ten commandments.

 

3. Violence (Habakkuk 2: 12-14): Babylon was one of the most violent and powerful nations at that time. America is certainly in no shortage of violence.

 

4. Debauchery (Habakkuk 2: 15-17): Debauchery isn’t a common word today. It refers to an excessive indulgence for pleasure. For Babylon it was drunkenness. Today, it could describe our culture of sexual freedom, drug addictions, or the opioid crisis that is crippling much of the nation.

 

5. Idolatry (Habakkuk 2: 18-20): Now, in Babylon’s day, this often translated into a physical idol made out of precious metal, jewelry, or wood that would be worshiped as a god. However, in today’s modern culture, idolatry refers to anything that we place before God. This can be a relationship, career, finances, a hobby – you fill in the blank.

 

God might have been speaking about the Babylonians in this conversation with Habakkuk, but it could so easily describe society today. Are you able to identify with any of these “modern-day woes?” Might they at all be evident in your life? If so,  ask for God’s help in setting you free.

 

As Jesus entered his beloved Jerusalem on that Palm Sunday, He recognized the marks of a violent city ruled by greedy leaders. The stones were calling for God’s judgment. He wept over the city (verses 41-44) because of the “woes” awaiting Jerusalem’s people under the judgment of a holy God. Only one thing could hold off that promised retribution: acknowledging God’s only begotten son, Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior..

The cries of the disciples, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” were cries of hope for Jerusalem. Like the sackcloth, ashes, and repentance in the Nineveh of Jonah’s day (Jonah 3:5-10), the cries of the disciples and pilgrims on this day might have averted the promised disaster, had they only been picked up by the city’s leaders and populace.

Sadly, the stones did “cry out” and God heard them. But their cry, like that in Habakkuk, was a cry to the God who not only saves but who also brings righteous judgment. In 70 ad God used the Romans to judge the nation of Israel. The nation was destroyed, its people scattered and as Jesus prophesied for the mighty city Jerusalem, not a stone was left standing upon another. The end of the age had come. The Old Covenant was done away with and God had ushered in the age of a New Covenant.

Let me close with these few thoughts. Could it be that today the stones are crying out to you? Could it be that you have realized that God has said, “woe” to you? Perhaps there are sinful activities in which you have engaged and in which you have continued to practice. Perhaps you have taken advantage of others, stolen from others, used violence, sought pleasure at the expense of others, or been involved in idolatrous practices (as these woes clearly explained). Perhaps you are prideful in your accomplishments and in your achievements. Perhaps you are seeking to build your own kingdom, rather than God’s kingdom. If this is you. Then, the answer is simple – repent of your sins and embrace Jesus Christ.

Perhaps you find it difficult to believe that we serve a God who judges the evildoer. Your ears have been “tickled” so many times that you’ve come to believe that God won’t punish sin.  Paul tells Timothy that itching ears want teachers who will tell them what they want to hear. Perhaps, when you think of God, you only see grace. Perhaps, when you think of God, you only see mercy. You think that God cannot be a harsh judge.

Please realize this, that God is a wrathful God. God will punish sin because men are entirely responsible for their sin. Apart from this understanding of God, the gospel simply doesn’t make sense. If your God isn’t an exacting, judging God, then there was no reason for Jesus to come and offer Himself up as a sacrifice for sin. If you believe that’s the case, then Easter with its cross and empty tomb was pointless.

God’s message of judgment upon the wicked ought to generate three responses in the soul of someone who is truly a child of God. The first response should be  thankfulness and praise to God, that through the grace of God, you will escape these terrors. You know that by faith, Jesus has been punished in your place. Your sins were born upon His body upon the cross almost 2000 years ago.

The second response should be a burning desire to share the Gospel with everyone you can. You understand that those who are not saved will suffer the penalty for sin. You have the responsibility as an instrument of God’s salvation to share the good news with your family, friends, co-workers and neighbors.

Third, the Bible tells us to rejoice in the anticipation of God’s return to judge the world. We should be awaiting with joyful expectation, that God will fully vindicate Himself.

Consider the following verses of Scripture…

Let the sea roar and all it contains, The world and those who dwell in it. Let the rivers clap their hands; Let the mountains sing together for joy. Before the LORD; for He is coming to judge the earth; He will judge the world with righteousness, And the peoples with equity (Psalm 98:7-9).

The execution of justice is joy for the righteous, But is terror to the workers of iniquity. (Prov. 21:15).

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; Let the sea roar, and all it contains; Let the field exult, and all that is in it. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy. Before the LORD, for He is coming; For He is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, And the peoples in His faithfulness (Psalm 96:11-13).

It is comforting (for us) to know that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” In other words, whether we sing our praise or not, the Lord’s glory will prevail (Habakkuk 2:14). But, our worship is not to silence the stones but to turn their testimony from judgment to jubilation.

As we draw closer to Resurrection Sunday and its celebration of God’s sacrifice for us our challenge this week is to turn from whatever wrongs we may have done, turn to our hearts to  God and recognize the rightful place that He should be given in our lives.

Let us pray…