1 The Roaring Crowd: Palm Sunday
Meaning
Place yourself in the triumphal entry (Matthew 21). Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey. The crowds spread garments and palm branches on the road, shouting, "Praise God for the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" The entire city erupts. You are right there in the middle of it.
But your excitement is different from those around you. You have heard his teaching, witnessed his miracles — including Lazarus raised from the dead just weeks earlier. What has gripped you most is not his power, but his heart.
Key Points
- The crowd shouts for a king to overthrow Rome and restore Israel. You wave your palm branch for a different reason — for you, he is already king of your heart.
- Jesus enters Jerusalem knowing he has come to die — as the suffering and sacrificial king who gives his life for sins.
- The crowd celebrates in the moment but has not yet grasped the full picture of who Jesus is and what he is doing.
2 The Mocking Crowd: Good Friday
Meaning
Five days pass. You wake Friday morning to news that Jesus was arrested overnight. You find yourself in a very different kind of crowd — made up of many of the same people from Sunday.
Pontius Pilate steps forward with two prisoners: Barabbas and Jesus. He offers to release one. The crowd shouts, "Barabbas!" Pilate asks, "Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?" And the crowd shouts — all the more loudly — "Crucify him!"
Key Points
- Hours later you stand near three crosses. Jesus hangs in the middle as the crowd hurls insults: "Save yourself! Come down if you are the Son of God!"
- Jesus cries out, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit," and takes his last breath. The earth shakes. The crowd fades.
- You walk home utterly devastated — grief, confusion, and bewilderment so deep you can barely move. Friday and all of Saturday: you can only weep and sit in the sorrow.
3 The Witnessing Crowd: Resurrection Sunday
Meaning
Sunday begins just like Saturday — heaviness, mourning, grief. But later in the day, news starts to spread: Jesus is alive. Dare you believe it? Your mind races. But then you remember — you watched him call Lazarus out of the grave. Your heart bursts wide open with hope.
And then a few weeks later, that hope becomes an absolute reality. You are standing in another crowd with the resurrected Jesus — alive, right in front of you.
Key References
- Acts 1:3 — After his suffering, Jesus presented himself alive, giving many convincing proofs. He appeared to them over a period of 40 days.
- 1 Corinthians 15 — He appeared to more than 500 brothers and sisters at the same time. You were in that crowd of witnesses. Hope is a reality.
4 From Crowd to Community: Pentecost & Acts 2
Meaning
Just a short time later you are in yet another crowd — Pentecost, the Jewish Feast of Weeks, exactly 50 days from the resurrection. People from many countries and languages have gathered in Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit comes upon you and the other followers of Jesus. You begin to speak in other languages as the Spirit enables you. A large crowd gathers, amazed.
Peter stands and preaches the most powerful sermon ever given. About 3,000 people believe and are baptized that day. Your little band of 120 Christ-followers grows to over 3,000 in one sermon.
The Acts 2 Pattern
- They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship.
- They continued to meet together in the temple courts — big crowd, big worship, big celebration.
- But they also broke bread in their homes, eating together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God.
- And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
This new crowd of Christ-followers becomes a community and moves into homes. You find yourself around a table — sharing life, growing in faith, knowing and being known like a family. It is so different from the energy of the crowd, but just as exciting. And you begin to realize: this is what your soul has always longed for.
5 The Crowd vs. The Table — What Each Provides
Meaning
We need the crowd experience (Sunday morning worship and celebration) and we need the table experience (regular, intentional times of gathering with a close-knit group of followers). Neither replaces the other — both are essential for a healthy, growing faith.
| In the Crowd | At the Table |
|---|---|
| I learn about Jesus through teaching. | I encounter Jesus up close as his love is lived out through his people. |
| I am inspired and motivated by God's word. | I am inspired by people I see actually living out God's word. |
| I belong to something big — the church, the movement of God on this planet. | I belong to family — people who know me, care about me, love me personally. |
| I am moved when I hear my story in the message. | Others are moved when I open up and share my story with them. |
| I discover purpose in serving as a member of the body of Christ. | I discover what it means to serve one another in love — up close and personal. |
| Trust flows as we sing together — oxytocin (the bonding hormone) is released as our breathing syncs and hearts align around the same truth. | Trust deepens as we do life together. |
The Oxytocin Effect
When people sing together in worship, bodies release oxytocin — the bonding and trust hormone. As breathing synchronizes, voices blend, and hearts align around the same truth, the brain receives a signal: "You're safe. You're connected. You belong." This is how God designed our brains and bodies. The crowd triggers trust. The table deepens it.
6 The Dangers of Choosing Only One
Crowd-Only Dangers
- You can hide. You keep parts of your life on the down low. You blend in — and in the blending, loneliness settles deeper and deeper in your soul.
- You observe without participating. You consume without contributing. It becomes about what you get, not how you grow through giving yourself away.
- You mistake inspiration for transformation. You may feel moved on Sunday but never experience authentic change because no one is walking it out with you.
- You are left vulnerable when life gets hard. When crisis hits, the crowd doesn't know your name. You have no one to help support you through life's difficult seasons.
Table-Only Dangers
- Your world gets too small. Your perspective shrinks to the size of your circle instead of expanding to the size of God's church and movement on this planet.
- You drift out of alignment. Sundays anchor us and bring us back to truth that keeps us centered. Without that regular anchoring, it is easy to slowly drift until what feels right is no longer rooted in truth.
- You miss the power of corporate worship — the deep God-designed bonding of collective faith and a unified voice worshiping together.
- You turn inward and grow prideful. Everything revolves around what you need, what you feel, what works for you. When your world gets small, it is easy to think your perspective is the whole picture.
7 Roots Deep and Wide
Meaning
When you step from the crowd into community, something begins to happen beneath the surface without you even realizing it: roots start to grow in your spiritual life.
In order to be built up and strengthened, we have to be rooted. Our faith needs roots. Without them, we can so easily be dragged away or blown away. But roots grow from relationships. There is no other way.
Deep Roots — Me & Jesus
Deep roots grow from our personal relationship with Jesus: spending time with him, reading God's word daily, engaging with him in prayer. This is the foundational, unchanging core of the Christian faith.
Wide Roots — We & Jesus
But we need more than deep roots. We also need roots that spread wide — the "one-another" root system. Consider the redwood trees of the Pacific Northwest:
- Redwoods tower hundreds of feet into the air — yet their root system is only 6 to 12 feet deep.
- Instead of growing deep, their roots grow wide and intertwine with the roots of every other redwood around them.
- They literally hold each other up. Their strength is not in how they grow individually — it is in how they grow together.
The One-Another Root System
Our roots grow wide when we are connected with others and living out the one-another commands of Scripture: devoted to one another, honoring one another, encouraging one another, building each other up, motivating one another toward love and good deeds, bearing with and forgiving one another, carrying each other's burdens, teaching and admonishing one another, loving one another deeply from the heart. The only way to grow a root system like that is around the table.
The Christian life is not just "me and Jesus." It is just as much "we and Jesus." Jesus himself taught us to pray "our Father" — not "my Father." It is a tiny word with huge implications. God's big plan on this earth: the development of an eternal family made up of Christlike people, united in loving devotion to Christ and to one another.
Application
- Me and Jesus grows my roots deep. We and Jesus grows my roots wide.
- Connected and intertwined, growing together and getting stronger — around the table.
- At some point, following Jesus means stepping out of the crowd and into community.