Have you ever wondered what kind of car Jesus would drive today?
Would it be a van with room for twelve?
Perhaps a Dodge Ram?
Or maybe Jesus and the disciples would go in one Accord?
(Sorry, I know that last joke hasn’t been fresh since the first Accords came out in 1976!)
But even though we don’t know exactly what car Jesus would drive today, we do know a lot about the steed he chose to ride into Jerusalem the week before he was crucified. And just as we can tell a lot about people by the cars they drive, Jesus’ choice reveals much about the way in which he chooses to be King.
Since January at Grace, we’ve been walking through some of the great prayers of the Old Testament together. But in the coming six weeks in preparation for Easter, we are excited to shift our focus more exclusively toward Jesus and his final week in Jerusalem before the crucifixion. As we look at The King in the City, our main text will be Mark 11-16.
This week, we invite you to worship together and learn from the Word what Jesus wanted us to see in his triumphal entry.
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Grace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: The King in the City
March 9, 2014
Triumphal? Entry
Mark 11:1-11
Daylight Saving morning, I tell you what. The few and faithful were with us at 9:00. It felt a little more like Daylight Losing. It’s okay. It’s kind of like we just put that hour in the bank last night and then we’ll get it back in September just like we put it in there, so just hold on for a few months. It’ll come back to us.
I was trying to think this morning as I was awake early, and it felt even earlier, of some sort of silver lining to this loss of an hour. I couldn’t find it until I got in my car and started driving over to the church. I looked at my car and noticed, of course, my little digital clock in the car was behind an hour of the real time, but underneath the clock were two buttons, one that was an H and the other one that was an M.
I realized that if all I did was push that H one time my clock would be set. And that was the best thing about Daylight Saving. When it’s “Fall Back” you have to tap that thing like 23 times. Then you miss it. You keep scrolling through and everything. So there you go, if you’re looking for something to celebrate about your lost hour of sleep.
When I was younger, I had some trouble waking up in the mornings. I don’t know if you have anyone in your household, teenage boys, who have that same challenge. But I was reading, and I came across Isaiah 50:4, and it talks about how God awakens me morning by morning. “He awakens my ear so I can hear his teaching.”
I started praying that verse in the night, and it was helpful in the mornings. For a little while, God actually would just wake me up. I still need an alarm clock now, but it really changed my life just praying that verse over and over again each night. It didn’t work this morning.
If you have your Bibles, open them up to Mark 11. If you don’t have a Bible, you can slip up your hand, and one of our talented Bible distributers would be glad to give you a Bible to read this morning. If you don’t have a Bible at home, you’re welcome to take that home. Read it cover to cover, we recommend. Also if you need a sheet for notes, slip up your hand. You can take some notes on that.
This week actually was Ash Wednesday. I’m not sure if any of you made it out to New Hope, but we had a wonderful gathering out there to remember Ash Wednesday. Here at Grace-Snellville on Wednesday night, we had LUG, where they did the Generation Change and kicked off this season of Lent. Traditionally, Ash Wednesday begins those 40 days leading up to the celebration of Easter known as Lent.
The history of Lent is interesting. It goes all the way back to the very early church where they would typically, with new believers, ask them to prepare for baptism on Easter Sunday by spending 40 days in very intentional focus on God, repentance, renewal, reflection on who Jesus is. So by AD 325, the Council of Nicaea, the church leaders got together and they said, “Let’s make this official for the whole church not just for the new believers. Let’s make this thing for everybody.” So Lent was instituted.
The word Lent itself comes from an old English word that means springtime, and that really helps connect it to the idea of the time leading up to Easter. Now traditionally, Protestant communities have not celebrated or observed Lent as strictly as some of the other more traditional or liturgical church bodies, but the focus of the Lent season is really on that word repentance or to repent, which is great; it rhymes. It’s like, “Lent. Repent. Lent. Repent.” So if you ever get, “What’s Lent about?” we’re repenting.
Repenting sometimes can be heard as a harsh word, but really the idea biblically of repenting is changing the way you think (that’s the Greek word) in such a way that it influences the way we act. That’s what repenting is. So we’re asking God during this season to transform us, to renew us, to change the way we think. “If we’re thinking wrongly and acting wrongly in some areas of our lives, then, Lord, correct that. Transform it.”
Some people like to fast or abstain from meat or other things during the season of Lent. It can be a really rich time. It’s not a time we are commanded anywhere in Scripture to observe. In fact, Paul, when he’s writing about observing holy days, he says in Romans 14, “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord.
The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.” (Romans 14:5-6) So the point is not necessarily that everyone has to keep Lent rigidly but rather that we each be convinced in our own minds and hearts, as Paul says, by what God is calling us to do in this season.
Then whether we’re fasting or observing Lent with intentionality or whether we see Ash Wednesday as a helpful reminder to bolster our pastel wardrobe in preparation for spring, either way, do it to the honor of God. That’s what Paul says. Either way, honor the Lord when you do it.
We couldn’t think of a better way to honor the Lord in these weeks leading up to Easter than by going back into the Gospels and looking at the life of Jesus. As Aaron mentioned, we’re going to spend these next six weeks focusing on Jesus in his final week in Jerusalem leading up to the cross and to the resurrection. It’s going to be a really rich time. I know the Lord worked a lot in our hearts since January as we looked at prayer. We’ll continue to touch on some of those themes of prayer we opened up these last months, but for now we’re going to zero in on Jesus.
So we’re going to read Mark 11:1-11, and then we’ll go back in and unpack it a little bit more. Of course, we’re picking up the gospel of Mark about two-thirds of the way in, so we’ll need to discover a bit of context so we can understand what’s going on. But don’t worry, we’ll get to that. But let’s read the Scripture first.
“Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them, ‘Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, “Why are you doing this?” say, “The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.”‘” (Mark 11:1-3)
Have you ever tried that in a Kroger parking lot? “I don’t really want to drive my car home; I want to drive somebody else’s home.”
“Hey, what are you doing? That’s not your car.”
“The Lord has need of it.”
“Oh, okay.” Verse 4:
“And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it. And some of those standing there said to them, ‘What are you doing, untying the colt?’ And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go. And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields.
And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!’ And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.” (Mark 11:1-11)
Interesting conclusion to the story. We often know this story as the triumphal entry, and the extent to which it is a triumph we shall look at in more detail in a moment, but in the gospel of Mark, this is a huge deal. This is, in fact, a turning point because Mark is very much concerned with showing us pictures of who Jesus is and challenging us to understand from those pictures his identity.
So Mark is very action oriented. It almost sometimes feel like when you’re reading the gospel of Mark that he’s just taking Polaroids from the life of Jesus and putting them before you and saying, “Hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about this? What do you think about this?”
In the beginning of the gospel, it says, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (Mark 1:1) We hear a little bit about John the Baptist. Then Jesus is baptized. Then he goes out in the wilderness and wins. Then in verse 14 of the first chapter it says, “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in [the good news] the gospel.'” (Mark 1:14-15)
There’s Jesus defining his whole ministry. He’s coming because the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, and it’s an invitation to repent, be transformed in the way we think and believe the good news, live our lives in such a way that we’re trusting Jesus in everything. Then it’s off to the races in Mark. It’s just one thing after another.
Jesus casts out a demon. He calls 12 disciples to himself. He settles down into Capernaum as his home base. He goes out and about. He heals a leper. He heals a paralytic. He calms the Sea of Galilee in storm with a word. He casts the demons out of the Gerasene demoniac. He feeds 5,000. He feeds 4,000.
He teaches in parables. He says, “Hey, I’m bringing something that’s like new wine, but is the old wineskin going to be able to contain it? The kingdom of God is like a sower sowing seed, but is the soil going to be rich enough to sustain it and produce fruit?” He’s challenging. He’s walking on water.
He even is transfigured. He goes up to the top of the Mount of Transfiguration, and there with Peter, James, and John, they see the glory and majesty of Jesus revealed, and it’s just emanating from him. It says his clothing was suddenly whiter than anybody could ever bleach it. There’s a voice from heaven, God the Father, saying, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.” It’s a great scene.
So all of this is going on, and Mark is challenging us to understand who Jesus is, but at the very same time, there’s a very interesting and sometimes perplexing aspect to the gospel of Mark. Because you would expect as Jesus is doing all of these wonderful things, he would always say, “Okay now that I’ve cleansed you of leprosy, go out and tell everybody how awesome I am,” or, “Now that you are cured of your blindness, go out and tell everybody how awesome I am.” But he doesn’t say that.
In fact, more than a dozen times Jesus says the exact opposite. He says, “Don’t tell anybody.” He commands them to be silent. What is that about? When he casts out demons, it says he forbade them to speak about who he was because they knew him. I can understand you want to silence a demon, but then there were times when he would heal people and he would say, “Hey, don’t tell anybody.” Like Jairus’ daughter, who was dead and Jesus raised her from the dead. He said to the girl and the whole family, “Don’t tell anybody about this.” What?
Several times to the disciples he’d be talking about what was going to happen to him in Jerusalem, that he was going to be killed and then on the third day raised, and then he’d say, “But don’t tell anybody.” What’s going on here? Why so much secrecy, Jesus? What are you getting at? It’s interesting and it challenges us.
There are several theories about why Jesus did this. Some people say, “Well, it’s just Jesus being very humble.” You know, “Hey, don’t tell anybody about what I did.” I don’t know. Maybe that’s true. Some theories say that if Jesus had been very public about his identity, the Romans would’ve come in and killed him before his time. They would’ve seen him as a revolutionary and just killed him.
But I think another aspect of Jesus’ secrecy in the gospel of Mark comes down to the fact that Jesus really wants us to know him on his terms. He wants to reveal his identity to us in the way he wants to reveal his identity. I’ll give you an example. How many times in your life have you had one encounter with a person or maybe you went to a restaurant and you had a bad experience and you came to a conclusion about that person or that restaurant based on just one little piece of information?
Then, unfortunately, that may not be accurate. You maybe caught that person on a bad day or caught that restaurant on a bad day or maybe the restaurant was about to fire the server who treated you poorly and spat on your burger, or whatever it was. Actually if someone spat on my burger I would definitely not go back to the restaurant, no matter what. Sometimes one experience is enough.
But the point is that often with Jesus we can catch a little bit here, hear a little snippet there, or latch onto one Jesus story and jump to the conclusion that we know everything about him. Or sometimes others who are just getting to know Jesus will maybe meet a believer and have an encounter with that person and just jump to a conclusion about what Jesus is really like based on that person.
Here Jesus, through the gospel of Mark, even though he is working amazing miracles that are communicating who he is, he’s telling people, “Hold on. Be silent. Whoa. Keep that secret. I don’t want you to speak,” because he wants us to see the full picture. As he’s wanting the people around him to see the full picture, this scene in Mark 11 is one of the primary places where he begins to unveil the secret, where he begins to pull back the clandestine nature of his movement so we can really see what he’s up to.
So what’s going on? What is he up to here in Mark 11? There are all sorts of symbols and things that for us in the modern day are a little bit hard to understand as clearly as they would’ve been understood by those who were living at the time of Jesus.
1. Why Jerusalem? What’s the significance of Jerusalem for this triumphal entry? Of course, we know from the Old Testament, there are prophecies concerning God returning to Jerusalem, the true King coming back to the city of David to restore the fortunes of Israel and the fortunes of the Jews. Jerusalem was a big deal.
Not only that, but the rabbis talked about Jerusalem like it was the center of the world. There are a couple of passages in Ezekiel actually that talk about this, that Jerusalem is the center of the world. They even talk about Jerusalem being the navel of the world, right at the core. There’s this idea throughout the Jewish tradition that Jerusalem is the place. This is why when Nehemiah is in exile and he hears about Jerusalem being in ruins, he weeps.
Or last week we were looking at Daniel 9, and he hears about the state of his people and the state of Jerusalem, and his heart is just broken, and he sits in sackcloth and ashes, and he’s fasting. Because Jerusalem is the place. That’s the center. That’s where God chose for his name to dwell. That’s where the temple is, the presence of God on earth in the Jewish mindset. So Jerusalem is the big stage.
Not only is it just the big stage, it’s also the big stage at the opportune time, because we know from the story that Jesus is coming to Jerusalem around the time of the Passover. The command in the Old Testament was that all the Jews who could should go to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover together. The scholars estimate that the population of Jerusalem would swell by like 300,000 with pilgrims coming from all around to remember and celebrate the Passover at the temple. It’s kind of like Augusta on Masters Week, just a lot bigger. A lot of people in town.
Then it’s not just the big stage, it’s not just the opportune time, but it’s also the climax of the showdown that has been building throughout the gospel of Mark. Because as Jesus is up in the northern part of the country working miracles and doing his ministry for three years, primarily in Galilee, we find these little references to scribes or Pharisees who have been sent up from Jerusalem to check on Jesus, and they don’t like what they find and say, “Oh, no, no, no. He’s not doing the right thing. Oh, no, no, no, that’s not right. That’s not really what God wants.”
There’s this building tension in the gospel of Mark. What’s going to happen when Jesus gets to Jerusalem? So here he is. He’s in Jerusalem, and what he’s about to do in Jerusalem is pretty unique. See, in verse 3 (we talked about this) Jesus is giving the disciples some instructions about how to get this colt.
2. Why does the Lord have need of this colt? What’s going on here? The first observation we could make is that Jesus is being very intentional about the way he wants to enter into Jerusalem. This is not the sort of situation where Jesus gets up to the top of the Mount of Olives and over on the other side of the valley is the city of Jerusalem, about a 10-minute walk, and he goes, “Oh man, I’m kind of tired. Does anybody have a colt or a donkey I could ride on? Oh great, let’s hop on that,” and then ride across just for convenience sake. It’s not like that at all.
What we see in Jesus here is a great amount of specificity and intentionality in what he’s doing. He says, “Go get this kind of colt, bring it back to me, I’m going to ride that into Jerusalem.” Why? What’s going on? Again, it’s Jesus wanting to control, wanting to be in charge, of the way we perceive him and understand who he is and what he’s doing.
Beyond that, there are some interesting things about this colt that is chosen. First, it’s a colt that has never been ridden. Typically, that is the sort of honor that would be reserved for kings, for royalty. You see, if you had something that was to be used with royalty, it would be something that had never been used before. It was the honor of giving this person the first use of the bowl or the dish or the pitcher, or the colt in this case.
Then furthermore, there’s a certain sense of royalty in the idea that Jesus could just send some disciples down and commandeer this colt for use. In the ancient world, if you were a serious leader, if you were a rabbi, a king, or even in the Roman Empire if you were simply a Roman soldier, you could come and exercise what was called impressment where you just pressed thing into service. “You have to carry this with me for some period of time,” or, “You have to let me use your horse for a bit.”
So when Jesus does this, there are all sorts of royal overtones coming down. Now, of course, he’s much more polite than the Roman soldiers would’ve been. He says, “Hey, I need this colt, but I’ll return it to you immediately.” But nonetheless, as Jesus is going about this, he’s very intentionally putting together a portrait of himself. In this portrait, one of the key things in the selection of the colt is royalty. Jesus is saying, “This is very much a royal moment.” So far so good. Jesus, headed toward the biggest stage in the world, at the opportune time, royal overtones.
3. Why is it a colt? In Matthew’s story, Matthew 21, his version of the triumphal entry, he specifies it a little bit more. He says it’s a colt of a donkey. So now we know this isn’t a small horse; it’s actually a young donkey Jesus is riding. What’s the significance of that?
You can tell a lot even today about a person by his or her ride. It’s amazing the assumptions or the conclusions we draw about people based on what they drive, and these assumptions or conclusions actually usually have very little to do with how much the car actually costs. You could drive a brand new Toyota Camry that costs four or five times as much as a used BMW. You drive up in a Camry, people say one thing. You drive up in a BMW, people say another thing. It’s just interesting.
I remember when I was a little bit younger, I was living in Buddy’s basement, and I was in between cars. It just so happened that there was a car that had been donated to the church for me to drive, and it was a Pontiac Trans Sport minivan. I’ll show you a picture of this car. I don’t know if you’ve ever ridden in style until you’ve ridden in a Trans Sport. Just look at the rake angle of that windshield! You could feel the air just being sliced in front of you. It felt so aerodynamic. Oh man!
Of course, we were living down in the basement (there were four or five of us living there at one time), and if you’ve ever been over to Buddy’s house, there’s a patio outside of the basement area, and then we would all park our cars on the gravel, face-in toward this patio. One night we were having a cookout, and we had made some meat and some corn on the cob or whatever. We were sitting around and one of the guys had finished his corn on the cob. He has this buttery cob, and he goes, “Stalls, I’m sorry about this. I just have to do it.”
I looked up. I was like, “What are you doing?” He stands up and he just throws the cob right at the windshield of the Trans Sport! That thing launched off of it like a ramp into the woods. We were all like, “That was amazing!” Then I’m wondering, “What does this ride say about me?” As I’m 22 or 23, looking for a nice godly woman to marry. Big streak of buttery corn right up the windshield on my Pontiac Trans Sport minivan.
I don’t think I had that anymore when I met Amy, which is fortunate. I was driving a 1988 Volvo sedan at that point. That was an exciting car. You never knew when it was going to work. The point is, our ride says a lot about us. We often look at people and come to some sort of conclusion about who they are, where they are in life, or something, based on their ride.
So what does Jesus’ choice of ride say here? Again, Matthew’s gospel is helpful. As he’s writing about the triumphal entry, he points us to the prophecy in Zechariah 9:9-10. It’s on your sheets there, on your notes, if you want to read along, but see if you can catch the significance of Jesus’ choice of a donkey and what that means, what he’s trying to communicate.
It says in verse 9 of Zechariah 9, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.” (Zechariah 9:9-10)
What does a donkey mean? Humble. Humble and mounted on a donkey. In fact, humility throughout the Old Testament was God’s commanded attribute for kings. The true kings of Israel were called to be humble men. In Deuteronomy 17, the instruction for the king is that he should write out his own handwritten copy of the entire Torah. Why? So that his heart, it says, should not be lifted above the hearts of any others.
David, of course, was a humble man. He had a mule, or a donkey, he would ride. When he came to the end of his life, King David wanted the kingdom to go to his son Solomon. Of course, there were debate and dispute about who was going to be the king, and so David, from his deathbed, said, “Solomon, get on my donkey and ride it through town with the mighty men.” That’s what he did. People looked at it and said, “Ah yes, humility. Humility.” This is the attribute. This is the characteristic.
Yes, Jesus wants to communicate that he is royal, that he is the true King coming back to Jerusalem, but he wants also to communicate that he is a humble King, that he’s riding a donkey. He’s not riding a war horse, as would’ve been common for the Roman leaders or the Roman centurions or the Roman magistrates, who would’ve gone around trying to exercise their power over everyone else on their horses. Jesus chose a donkey.
It makes me wonder if this story were adapted to the modern day and Jesus had to choose a car. What kind of car would he have taken across the valley over to Jerusalem? So far so good. Jesus is telling us very carefully, “This is who I am. This is the kind of King I am.” But the people around are sort of getting it, but also missing pieces of it. In verse 8, it says, “And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields.” (Mark 11:8)
4. Why branches? What’s the significance of these branches? This is where we get the phrase Palm Sunday from. John’s gospel, chapter 12, talks about how the branches they cut, most of them were palm branches. The palm branch, like that waving and laying out, was a sign of the nation of Israel. That was a sign of nationalism, a sign of great pride. In fact, if you look at some of the coins that were minted around this time, on those coins you will see the palm branch.
Let me show you a couple, just because I know you love ancient coins. You see there on the right there’s the palm tree. It’s the symbol of the nation of Israel. Let’s go to the next one. It’s a little bit harder to see, but there on the right again you see the palm like that. It’s sort of a national symbol.
When the Jews were being dominated by the Greek Seleucid Empire about 150 years before this, there were some great Jewish heroes, Mattathias and his sons, who revolted. One of the guys who helped lead the revolt was a guy named Judas Maccabeus, Judas the hammer. That’s what Maccabeus means.
So these generals, the priest and the leaders and all the rest of the Jewish heroes when they revolted, they overthrew the foreign government. It was actually quite violent as they went about it. But when they returned, the people were so excited they were just waving palm branches, the national symbol of the region. “Our country is ours again.”
This scene here, the triumphal entry with Jesus coming across with people waving the branches, reminds me of some of the pictures maybe you saw on the news from the Arab Spring a couple of years ago. They didn’t have palm branches in Lebanon or Egypt. They waved flags, but the idea is kind of the same. You see this one. This is Lebanon in 2011. You can see they’re all waving the Lebanese flag because they wanted to overthrow their current leadership. They want a regime change. They want a revolution. This is Egypt. The same thing, waving the flag.
As Jesus is coming into Jerusalem, the people don’t have flags, but they have palm branches, which was in a sense the flag of the people. They picked them up and they started waving them in the air. What they’re saying is, “We want a revolution. We want a regime change, and we think this guy (yeah, he’s on a donkey) is going to do it.”
What were they waiting for? They wanted the restoration of their people. They wanted the restoration of Jerusalem, for it to be the world’s greatest city again. They wanted the overthrow of all of the pagan powers. They wanted Rome to get out of there, because for so long the people of Israel, the Jews, had been reading these promises that they were the people of God, that God was faithful to them, and that he had made a covenant with them, and that he had a great future and a hope for them.
For too long it felt like they had all these promises, but at the same time they were just weighed down under the crushing weight of pagan rulers. Even though they were in their homeland, even though they were back in their own city, they had to pay taxes, they had to deal with all of the Roman overlordship.
People would come in and just say, “We need your donkey,” and they just take it away like that. The people were not happy with this situation. So when Jesus is riding in on a donkey, the people go, “Aha! We knew it. We knew he’s the King.” They pick up the palm branches and they start waving them like crazy.
5. Why, “Hosanna”? Then you see this even more reinforced in the words they sing about Jesus. They’re quoting from Psalm 118, which is a psalm that refers back to the exodus when God delivered the people from the Egyptian empire.
What they’re envisioning is now Jesus is going to do the same thing for them, that Jesus is going to come in and, like Moses, or like even the Maccabees, he was going to overthrow the foreign powers and set the people free. So they’re shouting out, “Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom.” You have a sense they have a very clear idea of what that coming kingdom is supposed to look like. “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David. Hosanna in the highest!”
We’ve talked about this before, but the word hosanna means, “Save us now.” Waving the palm branches, “We need a revolution. Save us now.” Almost certainly, what they’re envisioning is something violent, something involving warfare, something very similar to what they had seen happen about 150 years earlier with those Maccabees. I’ll read you a quick reference from 1 Maccabees 2, talking about how it went the last time there was a big overthrow.
It says in the Maccabees, “They organized an army, and struck down sinners in their anger and lawless men in their wrath; the survivors fled to the Gentiles for safety. And Mattathias and his friends went about and tore down the altars; they forcibly circumcised all the uncircumcised boys that they found within the borders of Israel. They hunted down the arrogant men, and the work prospered in their hands. They rescued the law out of the hands of the Gentiles and kings, and they never let the sinner gain the upper hand.”
So here the people are, shouting, “Hosanna!” to Jesus, and they’re saying, “Save us now!” Most likely the idea they have in mind is that Jesus is going to come in and drop the hammer on the Romans. He’s going to overthrow the Romans. Interesting story. Have you ever been in that place, where you’re looking at your situation in life or a relationship, something at your work, something you’re facing, and you’re going, “God, save me now! Lord, drop the hammer on this situation”? I’ve prayed that way.
6. Why did Jesus look around and leave? What does Jesus think about this? In verse 11, it’s a very curious end. This little detail is only here. It’s not mentioned in the other triumphal entry accounts. It says, “And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.” (Mark 11:11)
There are a lot of echoes in this story with other triumphal entries. In fact, in the ancient world, it was quite common when an important person, a king or a magistrate, would come to a city that there would be enormous fanfare. It was very important that the city would welcome the ruler or the important person or the king very well.
I think I have a slide with a couple of quotes on it. When Alexander the Great came to Jerusalem, this is what Josephus said about it. “The chief priest was to adorn the city with wreaths and open the gates and go out to meet them, and that the people should be in white garments, and he himself with the priests in the robes prescribed by law should go out to meet Alexander.”
Another guy, Diodorus, was traveling around with another of the kings. He said, “Wherever the king appeared, the cities poured forth bodily to meet him, their people clothed in festive garb and in rejoicing greatly.”
Then if the city didn’t do a good job of welcoming the king, it was bad. It was big shame. In fact, this guy, Lucius Verginius Rufus, besieged the city of Vesontio because it did not receive him properly. So he shows up with his whole retinue of people, and this city isn’t welcoming him with a big enough bang, and so he’s like, “All right, guys, I’ll show you. You’re under siege.”
This was a big deal in the ancient world. How does a city receive a king? Jesus is coming in riding on a donkey. There is some excitement. There is some fanfare. There are some crowds. But there are some people notably missing. If this were an official welcome, like probably had occurred for Pilate a little bit earlier…
We know that Pilate, the governor of the region at the time, spent his time in Caesarea, but around Passover he would’ve come to Jerusalem in order to keep the peace. He probably would’ve brought about a thousand Roman soldiers with him. So when he arrived a few days earlier, almost certainly the whole city would’ve come out and everybody would’ve been right there ready to welcome him.
Jesus shows up riding a donkey, and he has some people around him waving branches, but it’s not this massive overwhelming welcome by a city. The pattern of an ancient entry into a city was typically that the people of the city would come out to meet the person outside the city. Then they’d walk in all together shouting praises of the person and welcoming and acclaiming that person.
Then usually whoever the great leader would come into that city and whatever kind of temple or something they had there (remember it’s the ancient world, so you have all sorts of different pagan worship rites and things like that), whatever the temple was, typically that leader would come in to the temple there and make a sacrifice or do something that would affirm the city and then everybody would be excited and the welcome was complete.
What happens with Jesus? Not quite like that, is it? Some people come out to meet him, but rather than being escorted in by soldiers and everyone in the city, he’s just followed in by a small band of his disciples. He’s not riding a big war horse; rather he’s riding a donkey, humbly.
Then when he gets to the temple, he looks around (and he’s going to deal with the temple; we’ll see that next week), sees that it’s late, and walks away. He doesn’t give the temple that stamp of approval. He doesn’t give Jerusalem the stamp of approval. He’s again telling us what he’s up to in a very deep and very profound way.
In fact, what Jesus does in this final week here in Jerusalem is so shocking and off-putting to the crowds who did welcome him that by the end of the week when they were given a choice whether or not they wanted a murderer to be released free and Jesus to be crucified, they said, “I’d much rather have the murderer Barabbas among us and Jesus be crucified.” They went from saying, “Hosanna! Save us now!” to so disappointed that they said, “Crucify him! Give us the murderer.” It was that shocking to them.
Why? What happened? What was going on? They experienced a severe disappointment. They were waving palm branches and saying, “Save me now! Save us now! Overthrow the Romans now!” and Jesus provided a revelation of a humble revolution. Jesus, in all of his actions, coming down the Mount of Olives and going into Jerusalem was saying, “Yes, I am the King. I am royal. I’m the One with the right to have the unridden donkey, but it’s still a donkey; it’s not a war horse.”
We know from the Scripture that there will be a time when Jesus is connected with a war horse in Revelation, but now, the way he brings his kingdom is on a donkey. The question for us is…Are we willing to follow the kind of King who rides a donkey? Are we willing to follow the kind of King who rides a donkey and hangs on a cross shamefully?
I think we can say yes if we understand Jesus’ deep heart. The truth about Jesus is that he’s always going after the deeper victory. Jesus is always going after the deeper triumph. The crowds wanted Jesus to overthrow Rome. Jesus said, “Actually, it’s much deeper than that. I’m going to go in and overthrow what’s behind Rome, Satan himself, selfishness itself, sin itself. I’m going after the deeper victory.”
The crowds wanted Jesus to restore the temple to its glory. Jesus knew that tabernacle was going to be destroyed, but he was going after a deeper victory. He said, “I am going to establish the kind of temple that can’t be built with human hands, people filled with the Spirit of God.” They wanted him to go in and they wanted him to liberate Jerusalem. He knew the days of Jerusalem were limited. He said, “But I’m going to go in and win a victory that will establish a New Jerusalem and a new heaven and a new earth that will be open to all nations.”
The people wanted Jesus to come in and make the Jews the people of God, and Jesus said, “No, actually I’m going to come in and I’m going to open a way so the Jews and the Gentiles all together can become the people of God.” See, Jesus was going after the deeper victory. But sometimes in our haste or in our lack of understanding of Jesus or in our need to see him save now we miss that he rides a donkey. We’re not willing to stick with him riding a donkey and hanging on a cross before the resurrection comes.
But here is my advice. As you’re going through your life and you come across these situations where you just want the Lord to work, “Save now,” and you’re praying that way, but it feels like you have this hope, this promise from God, but it’s not coming to pass, it feels like you have these good expectations but Jesus isn’t meeting them, here’s what I would tell you. When it feels like Jesus is not meeting your God-given expectations, it’s usually because he’s in the process of exceeding them.
That’s what he’s doing here. He’s riding a donkey into Jerusalem. He’s going to hang on a cross, but he’s going to win the deepest victory. So our challenge this morning and this week and really this whole Lent season is to let Jesus be Jesus. Let him reveal to us who he is in his timing. Let his Spirit come and correct some of the things we may have in our minds that are not entirely true about Jesus, to come and renew that passion to know the true King and the true Lord a little bit more deeply.
Some of you guys might have just been walking with Jesus a short time or maybe you’re just considering it. The invitation is: Come get to know him a little bit more. Some of us have walked with Jesus longer. The invitation is the same. Come get to know him a little bit more. Then as we get to know him and the way he is the King, we face the other challenge, which is following him in his way.
Sometimes we need to ride the donkey too. Sometimes we’re in these seasons of life where it feels like you just want to show up on a war horse and set everything in order, but don’t forget that Jesus rides a donkey. He’s humble and he comes in humbly and he calls his people to be humble servants, laying down their lives in the same way. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for the Scripture. It is so good to reconnect with the true Lord Jesus. Lord, we invite you and your Spirit to work in our hearts and our minds to bring to the surface any areas where we may have mistakenly identified Jesus. Lord, I pray you would renew the passion in our hearts to know Jesus as he truly is.
Lord, I pray these next six weeks would be a profound revelation of your humble revolution. Lord, I pray our whole community would know the true Jesus and that we would look more and more like him, whether we’re just with our families, working our jobs, hanging out with refugees in Clarkston, in Calcutta, wherever we are, Lord. Let us be humble servants just as you are the humble servant King. We bless you in Jesus’ name, amen.