When Jesus calls us to do something we just DO IT

The scripture we’ll cover today begins with what we call Holy week. These events will be the start of the last week of our savior’s life here on earth with us. Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem during the Passover on the first Sunday of Passion week is recorded in all four gospel accounts. The accounts are found in Matthew 21:1-11, Mark 11:1-10, Luke 19:28-40, and John 12:12-19.

Bible accounts differ in various circumstantial details but, they fully agree on the core of the story that is recorded here: that at the beginning of the final week of His life, Jesus of Nazareth rode into Jerusalem seated on a donkey and was hailed by the crowds who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the annual Passover feast with shouts of “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” as they anticipated the coming of the kingdom of God.

Jesus and His disciples are on their way up to Jerusalem for the Passover feast, like thousands of other pilgrims. They have just passed through the ancient town of Jericho, where, according to Mark 10, Jesus healed the blind man Bartimaeus on the way out of town. Jericho is located about 17 miles east of Jerusalem.

The Triumphal Entry

v.28-29 And when he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet,

Jesus is traveling ahead of His disciples. This happens all the time with Jesus, where we find Him in many instances alone either traveling or off in prayer to God. Then He sent two of the disciples to go into the village to find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat, and to untie it and bring it back to Jesus. In those days there was a right extended to dignitaries and people of note to use someone’s personal property for their own use. As a well-regarded Rabbi Jesus would fall under this custom and under Roman rule this was not an uncommon practice.

There are two things we should notice.

• The first is the command from the Lord Jesus. He says Go! Was there an argument about who should go? No! Absolutely not. He said GO and they WENT. There is a lesson there for the church today. The Lord expects us to submit and obey his commands when he commands them.
• The second thing that we should consider is the foreknowledge of Jesus. He instructs the disciples to go into town, tells them what to do, and even instructs them in what to say when someone inevitably discovers what they are doing and questions them. The events leading to Jesus’ coming suffering did not catch Him by surprise. On the journey from Galilee to Jerusalem He had taken the Twelve disciples aside and told them in Mark 10: 33-34

“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit on him and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.”

 The whole encounter happens exactly as Jesus describes it to them. This shows us that Jesus is completely aware of what is happening and what this leads to. He already knows exactly what He’s “riding into.”

v.35-38 And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

Here we see the purpose of the colt. Biblical tradition tells us that this was a donkey even though Luke doesn’t specifically call that out in this gospel. He isn’t seen riding in on some magnificent stallion arrayed as royalty. This gesture though regal, lacks the overt display of power and authority that the crowds were expecting from the messiah. Instead, we see a picture of pure humility. Notice also, that this is the only recorded instance in the Gospels where Jesus rides, rather than walks, and pilgrims coming to the Passover feast normally came by foot. Jesus, then, is doing something specific here, He is deliberately fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah chapter 9, as we began with our scripture reading.

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.

The point in all of this was not lost on the crowd. People began to spread their cloaks on the road for Jesus to ride over like a red carpet, they cut palm branches or other leafy plants as Jews did at other celebrations and festivals and strewed them in Jesus’ path. And then people, cried out as in Psalm 118.25-26 to Jesus as the “Son of David,” They began to chant the words of “Hosanna! – God saves! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” and others respond, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!”

The problem here is that while the crowd is praising Jesus’s arrival, it has nothing to do with true revival. They have an expectation of what is to come but it’s not based on their faith. They have a desire to treat the son of God, as the divine vending machine.

The Pharisees’ Reaction

v.39-40 And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

Amid the celebration of His coming, we find the Pharisees who are clearly unhappy with what’s going on. Perhaps they feel threatened by the devotion that the crowd is showing to this teacher that they have such disdain for. They make a request for Him to publicly rebuke His students. Jesus implies that this moment and the recognition of His arrival is so significant that even if He did rebuke them, Creation itself would cry out. He is making His Messianic claim directly to the Pharisees.

This invites us to ask a question of ourselves; Are we celebrating Jesus for who He truly is or are Christians fearful of the community around us and thus deny Him?

Jesus weeps for Jerusalem

 v.41-44 And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

We see Jesus’ compassion and His deep sorrow for the spiritual blindness and impending destruction of Jerusalem. This moment shows us the depth of love that the Lord has for us and His recognition of what is to come. His tears show us a range of emotion and where Jesus’s heart truly lies. A Shepherd who truly wants what is best for His people, but we see His heartbreak that at the stubbornness and hard-heartedness of the people. How many times do we as Christians go through something similar? We recognize that what God has for us is important but in our fleshly selves we cannot reconcile ourselves to it.

Also, we see the consequences of rejecting Jesus and the coming judgment. Jesus, in His foreknowledge, understands that the rejection that will befall Him as a rejection of God. This should also serve to remind us that as followers we are encouraged to faithfully conduct ourselves in a way that aligns with God’s vision for our lives.

Lessons from Jesus’ triumphal entry

• First, we see the Lordship of Jesus. The crucifixion of Jesus and the events that surround it were not an accident that befell Him while visiting Jerusalem. Jesus understood and embraced His calling to undergo so excruciating a death. In fact, He deliberately provoked events that would lead to His execution. He understood Himself to be the Shepherd-King prophesied by Zechariah and openly assumed this role in His provocative triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
  
  Throughout the process He displays his foreknowledge of these events: the finding of the donkey, the arrangements for the Last Passover Supper in the upper room, Judas’ betrayal, Peter’s three-fold denial, the disciples’ deserting Him, His deliverance to the Gentiles, His scourging, humiliation, and execution. He announced all these things in advance. He showed himself to be Lord over all history.

• The second lesson is that Jesus doesn’t always meet our expectations. The Jews were expecting a king who would be a great military leader like David, who would throw off the yoke of Rome, and establish God’s kingdom by force. When we read some of the Old Testament prophecies, we can understand why they had such expectations; they weren’t at all unreasonable. But Jesus was radically different than their expectations. When He rode into Jerusalem, He did not do so on a horse, the symbol of warfare and the choice of conquerors, or a mule, the steed of Jewish kings like David. Rather, He chose a donkey, a pack animal, a lowly beast of burden, as His royal mount. As Zechariah had prophesied, He came humbly and bringing peace.
  
  The Kingdom of God which He preached and inaugurated was not an earthly, political kingdom, but the rule of God in the hearts of people who know and serve Him. But this was not the kingdom which the people expected or wanted, and so they rejected Jesus as their Lord.

In our Christian Walk, as we grow older, we all encounter situations in which God does not fulfill our expectations. The temptation in all these situations is to bail out of what the Christian faith teaches and to do things our own way and in our own strength. We give up confidence in Gods’ love for us and no longer trust Him. When God doesn’t live up to our expectations, then we jettison God and do things the way we think they should be done or resent Him for not giving us what we want.

Jesus is Lord. He’s under no obligation to live up to your expectations. If He chooses to give you a life of suffering and hardship, of disappointment and failure, He is Lord. While that may be difficult to understand, we are not God. Many of us seem to think that if Christ doesn’t fit our expectations, then we’ll just reject Him, as the crowds in did. But Christ is our Lord, and He doesn’t have to fit our expectations of Him. He owes us nothing, but we owe him everything.

We must tailor our expectations to what God wants, not make God fit our expectations. Christ is Lord, and He knows what is best for us and those around us. If we try to make Him fit our expectations and what is acceptable to us, we will reject Him, and that is the path to self-destruction. We must not be like the people in Jerusalem, who hailed Christ as their king, just so long as He fit their image of what a king should be. Let us acknowledge Him truly as our King, our Lord, our Savior, and receive from His hand whatever He decrees. We must remain submitted to Him until His Return and what a Triumphal entry that will be!

“On Palm Sunday, Jesus began His journey towards the cross. This journey is a reminder of the incredible price paid for our redemption.” – Charles Stanley

Luke 19:38 ESV saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”