The Entrance of a King

You have probably noticed all the palm leaves everywhere, and you felt probably very special walking down the, you know, the path of palms as you entered this morning. That is because today is Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter. And so because it's Palm Sunday, we're going to turn to Matthew 21 to read of the event which is now called Palm Sunday, the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. So let's turn to Matthew 21, and we're going to read from verse one through to 11. Matthew 21, verse one.

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethpage to the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples saying to them, go into the village in front of you and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say the Lord needs them and he will send them at once. This took place to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet saying, say to the daughter of Zion, behold your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden. The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them.

They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks and he sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up saying, who is this? And the crowd said, this is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee. So far, our reading. Now there's lots happening in these 11 verses. We dig and we will be digging a little bit deeper this morning, and we'll see, in fact, that this whole passage is absolutely laden with symbolism.

It is absolutely full of metaphor. There are overtones and there are undertones. There are insinuations that are being made left, right and centre, all pointing to this one theme, and that is that Jesus is king. The thing we need to know this morning, therefore, more than anything from this passage is that Jesus is king. He is king over our lives.

He is king over this world. He is king over everything that exists in this universe. All of mankind and all of its trajectory is based around Him. And we see this in this multilayered passage and event of Palm Sunday. Three points this morning that we see and want to reflect on this morning.

Three points that we notice in Matthew 21. Firstly, the confrontational king. Jesus is a confrontational king. One of the more obvious parts of symbolism that takes place at this event, which is called the triumphal entry where Jesus walks into, or rather rides into Jerusalem, is this sort of entrance that the palm fronds being waved, the people standing by the sides of the road shouting and celebrating, Hosanna in the highest, they yell and sing. The people that humble themselves before this man by taking off their cloaks and throwing it on the ground before him.

Like some dignitary entering into the arena. All of these things, all of these acts are indications of royalty. They point to royalty. This is what you would do for a king. But this is something very surprising that happens here that Jesus does.

Do you remember how Jesus was for the first three years of ministry? Do you remember what he would do when he healed a sick person or when he drove out evil spirits from people? Do you remember what his suggestion or his recommendation was to the people? Don't go and tell anyone about this. Hush.

Don't don't let anyone know that this has happened to you. Yet on Palm Sunday, this is reversed. He accepts very publicly all the adulation and all the praise. Why? I think to a large extent, it is to force the hand of the religious leaders.

It is to force the hand of the spectators around him. It is to force the hand of the civic leaders like the Romans, Pontius Pilate, to try and stop him or to at least make a decision about him. Just before we get to chapter 21, we read in chapter 20 a story of two blind men in verses 29 through to 34. The story of two blind men who, as Jesus walks up from Jericho, they shout out, have mercy upon us, son of David. Have mercy on us, son of David.

And what happens? Jesus heals them. And Jesus doesn't correct them and say, no, no, that's not me.

Jesus receives that title. What does that title point to? It points to royal lineage. It points to the crown prince. On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus accepts this title.

Now he enters Jerusalem riding like a king in victory into the city that he is conquering. That's significant. The people in the streets are also actors in this scene. They cry out, Hosanna. Hosanna in the highest, which means God save us.

God save us. And again, Jesus accepts the public declaration that he is God's answer to salvation. Do you see that? Jesus accepts that he is God's answer. Now whether the crowd really understand what they're saying here, that they really understand they are saying this is God in the flesh coming to save us, probably they don't.

But the significance, in fact, the irony of this event is tangible. The Holy Spirit made sure that they shouted that. He made sure that Matthew recorded it to the point that we knew exactly what God was doing in that event. God save us as Jesus enters Jerusalem. Then after the triumphal entrance in verses 12 to 17, we didn't read that, but it's straight after, another little paragraph, Jesus cleanses the temple in Jerusalem.

Remember that story? Jesus drives out the money exchangers, the money lenders. But this is what he says. He drives them out and calls the temple my house. He quotes the Old Testament.

He says, my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers. Jesus calls the temple His house. What was a temple in the Old Testament? It was the dwelling place of God. It was the house of God for the whole world, and Jesus is claiming something huge here.

Jesus is building the tension so quickly here. Do you see it? It's just catapulting. It's not a gradual thing. It is just he's gone from first year into fifth.

Jesus declares himself the messianic king. And in essence, gives this ultimatum, crown me or kill me. Crown me or kill me. Tim Keller writes, Jesus is the only person I've ever known who is unbelievably humble, but not modest. He's tender, Keller writes.

He's sweet. He's gentle with the marginalised, the women and the children of his time, with the poor, the prostitute, the people of other races and nations, but at the same time, absolutely not modest at all. Look at these outrageous claims he's making about himself here. Crown prince in the line of David, God's answer to people's salvation, royalty that demands public declaration. He even hints at being God.

This is not modest. This is confrontational. In an essay on that triumphal entrance at the gospel of John and John's perspective, author Ryan, sorry, Reynolds Price writes this about the record of this scene. He says, it is either what John writes is either a work of madness or a blinding revelation.

The acts it portrays, the claim it advances from the very first paragraph demands that we make a hard choice. If we take the gospel writers seriously, he says, we must finally ask the question that he thrusts so forcefully towards us. Does the gospel writer bring us a life transforming truth about Jesus, or is this one gifted lunatic's tale of another lunatic even wilder than he? What a great line. Is this a life transforming truth about Jesus, or is this just a crazy story about a crazier guy?

Jesus confronts Jerusalem on that day. But friend, he confronts us and our world today with the same truth. Crown me or kill me. Accept me or reject me, but you cannot simply like me. And how many friends do we have that say Jesus was alright, Christianity thing I don't like.

Jesus is okay. He doesn't give us, he doesn't give humanity that option. Now friends, you may call Christ your saviour. You may even call Jesus our dear Lord or the Afrikaners will say, which I don't like.

But He is more than a saviour. He is more than a saviour. In order for Him to be saviour, He must be Lord. He must be king. He must be.

And He can't be your saviour without being your Lord. You can't say to Him, come into my life, Christ, my saviour, but stay out Lord and don't have any sway or say over my life. Forgive me so that I may have eternal life, but don't tell me how to live. Don't don't interfere with my decision making. Come in saviour.

Stay out, Lord. You can't say that just like you can't say to me if I was to visit you, come in KJ, stay out, Trump. The two are inseparable.

Inseparable. So is Christ our king this morning? Is Christ our king or are you playing a game? Is He Lord or do you just want a personal saviour in your pocket? Jesus confronts the world, not just Jerusalem with His entry, crown me or kill me.

One way or the other, I cannot simply be liked. So He is a confrontational king. Then we come to the counterintuitive king, and it's another fascinating view of this scene, which is almost laughable, in fact, you can have a smile on your face imagining it. There is so much satire in this scene.

Stanley Hauerwas in his commentary on Matthew writes that Jesus is actually throwing a satirical spotlight on the whole royal entrance of a king into the mix. He writes, on the one hand, this looks like all other triumphal entries. Two hundred years earlier, Simon Maccabees, our couple that have just been to Israel may have seen some of the remnants of that. Simon Maccabees is a great Jewish leader. Even today, the Jews revere him as having defeated a very hostile enemy in those days and liberated Jerusalem.

Simon Maccabees, when he entered Jerusalem, came in this way. He rode in and people celebrated and cheered him for his victory only two hundred years before Jesus. And now Jesus comes and in fact, they were waving palm branches as well at that time because he had delivered them. Hauerwas writes this, this triumphal entry parodies, it parodies the entries of other kings and armies. Victors in battle, he says, do not ride into their capital cities riding on asses, but on fearless horses, fearsome horses.

But this king does not because He will not triumph through force of arms. A donkey is not a fearsome horse. But not only that, Jesus chooses a baby donkey, a colt. It's almost comical. You can imagine a Monty Python skit like that, a tiny little thing under a fully grown man.

What is Jesus doing here? Well, firstly, Matthew points it out for us as well, but this is a fulfilment of prophecy. Zechariah 9:9 talks about the king entering on a colt into Jerusalem. The whole thing is one giant lesson, how he is going to show this crowd when they yelled God save us, that he is coming to save, that he is king, but not in the way they expect him to. It is counterintuitive, but he triumphs through defeat.

He wins power by giving up power. This has all sorts of implications, all sorts of implications rather, for our salvation and our faith. Because the followers of Jesus, and hear this well, us, we, the followers of Jesus, will not gain salvation by force. Christians will not save the world through politics. We cannot be saved by showing them we're better than them.

If our Lord triumphed through weakness, what does that mean for His followers? This is why salvation by faith is the only option in God's redemptive plan. Because we, as followers of Jesus, we, as citizens under the king, are only saved and can only enter the kingdom by repenting and realising our weakness and realising our sin, and admitting our need. That is why we're not saved by good works. That is why Jesus doesn't come in on a fearsome white stallion and say, be like me.

Aspire to be like your saviour. Because we aren't saved by a strong saviour, at least not in the world's eyes. We aren't saved by a fearsome hero on a war horse that says to his onlookers, do and be like me. Jesus' entry is a foreshadowing of his death on the cross. It's a salvation through weakness so that we may have salvation in spite of our sin.

And therefore, it means that anyone can get in. And yet we still forget this. We forget this. We feel guilty. We feel too shameful to walk through those doors for ourselves.

Or we might feel that others shouldn't be walking through those doors when we're in here. We still grab for that power. We still grab for the moral high ground. Palm Sunday is an incredible parable of the lifelong mismatch of what we think we need and what God knows we need. What we think we need is almost always too shallow. It is almost always flawed.

For us, what God does in the short run is almost always too confusing. But this passage teaches us to wait, to rethink, to be patient. We go to God and say, you need to give me and do exactly what I tell you to, God. I'm telling you and I'm petitioning you for this. What we see this morning, what did these people think they need?

They needed a saviour from the Romans. They needed a king who was going to sit physically on that throne in Jerusalem to bring not just judgement, but punishment on the Romans who they thought were ruining everything. But what they really needed, these people, was someone to come down and bear God's judgement on Himself on their behalf because they were ruining everything. Humanity, not one single race, not one single people group is what our greatest threat is. And these people we see in the story wanted a warrior, but what they really needed was pardon and reconciliation so that God may come back and destroy evil without destroying us.

To destroy evil without destroying us. A Christian God always gives you what you would have asked for if you knew everything. God always gives you what you would have asked for if you knew everything. Now if you learn this, if you understand what that means, that God does exactly what is needed all the time, if you really trusted that, you would have a content life.

You would have no anxiety. But if you won't learn this, then you won't find peace. And so when we pray, remember we pray to the God who knows more than we do. A God who is able to do more than we could hope for. And so what do we do?

We be patient. We remain watchful and we wait. So we see a counterintuitive, surprising king. And then finally, we see the coming king. Now traditionally, in churches like ours, but probably even more liturgical churches like the Anglican church or the Catholic church, they have lectionaries that they operate according to.

And they they have sermons and they have services built around these lectionaries. Now on Palm Sunday, the readings, the Scripture readings, the hymns, the prayers, everything point to or have readings of a future return. They have apocalyptic writings in them. They reference Revelation on Palm Sunday of Jesus' return. They point to things like Revelation 1:7 which reads, behold, He is coming with the clouds, Jesus, and every eye will see Him.

Even those who pierced Him and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him. And even so, we say amen. So why on Palm Sunday do we look towards Christ's return? Because this is also prophetic. This also points forward to the future.

It has symbolism for that event whenever it may be, but it also has this throwback to the Old Testament. We see with this story an explicit mention of palm leaves, not in the Matthew account, but we hear about it. Now why is it important for us to know what types of leaves were used? Why not just say branches? People chucked, you know, some leaves on the ground.

The palms signify victory. Palms were used on the Roman coins for the places that were dominated by the Romans. This is to show that the Romans have authority here. Roman civic buildings, their courtrooms, courthouses, and all that sort of stuff had palm engravings. Now it was a signature of royalty, of authority.

And here is Jesus being given that authority. He is king, not Caesar. But then we also have to think back on Psalm 96:12 that says, then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord. The trees will sing because He has come. He has come to judge the earth.

Isaiah 55:12 and 13 says that the word of God will go out and not return to Him empty. And while it does its job, this is what it says, that the mountains and the hills will break into singing, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. There is something altogether redemptive. There's something altogether apocalyptic that's happening there. There's something final about these words.

At the judging of the earth, the trees, these inanimate objects well, they're not inanimate. I guess they are living, these voiceless creations that can't speak. But at His return, they will shout and burst into joy. Now whether that happens literally or not, we get the picture. At the judging of the earth, the forests sing and clap their hands.

Creation having waited so long have their king back finally and fully. The second bit of symbolism is found in what Jesus is riding. D. A. Carson, in his commentary on Matthew, notices that Jesus is riding on an unbroken animal. If he's coming on a colt, it's not big enough to be used normally as a beast of burden. Now if you've ever worked with horses, and I definitely haven't, but let me inform you, you can't ride an unbroken horse.

A horse having something on his or her back just throws it off. Yet Jesus is riding a baby donkey through a yelling crowd. Humanly speaking, no writer could do this. Carson writes, in the midst of all this, an unbroken young animal remains totally calm under the hands of the Messiah who controls nature through a word. This even points to the peace of the consummated kingdom, this kingdom that will be established finally when Jesus returns.

Jesus, He says, is the Lord of all, and under His hand, nothing but harmony and peace comes about. The animal knows and loves His true master for who He is. And so what we see is a foreshadowing of the healing and the completion of nature found in Isaiah 11. That passage that says, in this kingdom, the wolf will lie with the lamb. The leopard will sleep next to the young goat.

And so from this scene, we can't help but have our eyes thrown forward, cast forward in hope to the day when Jesus comes again. This time, He won't be riding on a donkey, He'll be riding on the clouds. Truly divine. And for many on that day, truly fearsome. Now in closing, Psalm 24 gives us a final prophetic insight of the emotion of that time, of that day, and the emotions specifically of the citizens, of the viewers that are expecting and longing for this sight of Christ's kingdom, the humble recipients of His great salvation.

Psalm 24 speaks about the great gates of Jerusalem and they are also alive just like the trees. Metaphorically, these great gates of Jerusalem are spoken to. And this is what it says in Psalm 24, Lift up your heads, O you gates. Be lifted up, you ancient doors.

Let the king of glory enter. Who is this king of glory? It's the Lord. Strong and mighty. The Lord, mighty in battle.

And so on the one end, Jesus entered these gates weak and humble to triumph through defeat. But our great hope is another time is coming when He comes as king of glory. King of glory. And He will be the Lord, and He will be mighty in battle. And so as we close, we have to ask, I have to ask, friend, are we ready for that?

Are you ready for that day? Are you looking forward to that moment or will you fear and tremble? If it was to happen as we walk out, would you be sure that He is your king? Let me pray. Father, we thank you for this time together.

We thank you for your word that is so wonderful. That is so beautiful, so rich. We thank you, Lord, that we may study it, we may reflect on it, we may be moved in our minds and in our hearts. Lord, I pray that we may truly take you as the Lord of our lives. God, so easily we can take what we think is needed for us from you and leave out the rest.

But you are Lord and you are saviour. We need to either crown you as our king or we need to reject you as a lunatic. There is no middle ground.

And so God, we humble ourselves before you and we accept you as our king. We throw our cloaks before you and we also cry with that crowd, Hosanna. Hosanna in the highest. God save us. Father, accept our repentance.

Give us the strength to fight against temptation to throw off your authority. And Father help us to walk a life that is worthy of our king. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.