The Triumphal Entry of the King who Confronts Sin

Call to Worship

Psalm 118:26-29 “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of the Lord. The Lord is God, and he has made his light to shine upon us.... [Oh, Lord], You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God; I will extol you. Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!”

We serve a good God, He has indeed made the light from heaven shine upon us by sending us Jesus. Jesus is the light of the world that has come in the name of the Lord, and we worship him as king this morning as we celebrate Palm Sunday.

Triumphal Entry

Last week we took a look at Jesus’s road trip from Galilee to Jerusalem and saw that His disciples understood that Jesus was the Christ, the anointed one who the prophets had foretold, the king who would come from the line of David. Peter was the first one on the road to really get it, but then Peter and the other disicples showed that they really didn’t understand. They thought that Jesus was going to come and win a military victory for them, get rid of the Romans, and elevate the status of them and the other Jewish people. They were looking for a king of their own making, who could fight for their nation’s freedom. But Jesus explains over and over that that’s not why He came. He came to confront sin and death, and He will become King, but He’ll be a king that suffers for and serves his people. And so today, on Palm Sunday we see the crowds around Jesus finally starting to get who He is, but like the disciples they still only get a piece of it.

Matthew 21:1–11 ESV

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then 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 fulfill 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 crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.”

So these crowds have been travelling with Jesus from Galilee, not necessarily right with Him, but it was the custom of the Jewish people, and still is the custom for many Jews, to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year for their annual feasts. The one that these crowds are travelling in for is the Passover.

Which celebrates their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. If you remember the story of Moses, when he was born the Pharaoh gave a command that all Israelite baby boys were to be killed, but Moses’s mother saves him, and he is found by the Pharaoh’s daughter, and raised in the palace in Egypt, but then once he’s grown he realizes that he’s an Israelite and he kills an Egyptian man who’s mistreating an Israelite man. And so then he flees Egypt for many years, until God sends Him back to help deliver the people from slavery. And Moses and his brother Aaron go and confront Pharaoh, and God brings the 10 plagues, and the last plague was the death of the first born son of every Egyptian family, but the Israelite families sacrifice a lamb and put it’s blood on their door posts, and so God passes over them, and the next day they are delivered and leave Egypt, and God parts the red sea and leads them into the wilderness.

Anyways, the Jews celebrated this event where God passed over them allowing their first borns to live, and leading them out of Egypt, every year. And by the time of Jesus crowds from all over would go to Jerusalem about a week early to celebrate this event.

So while Jesus and his disciples are travelling with this crowd, Jesus sends two of his disciples ahead and gets them to do something kind of odd. He asks them to go into this small town, and he tells them that they’ll find a donkey, and a colt, a baby donkey, there and they are to untie this random person’s donkey and colt and just say the Lord needs them, and then bring them to Jesus.

Picture how awkward that must have been for them to have to go to this random person’s house and then just take their donkeys and the person is like what are you doing, and they’re like “the Lord needs them” and then the person’s just cool with it. It’s kind of strange. Which begs the question, why did Jesus need them? Why couldn’t he have just walked in like everyone else?

Because Jesus was showing that He was the king in a unique way, and for us in 21st century Canada, we miss it unless we do our homework. There’s a story in 1 Kings 1, where King David has gotten very old, and he chooses his son Solomon to be his heir, and he has Solomon ride in on a donkey to announce that he is the new king, and all of the celebrated their new King, who was in the line of David, as God had promised.

Fast forward several hundred years, and there’s a prophet named Zechariah, and Zechariah has a message for the people of Israel that same day in the future there will be another King, like David and Solomon who rides in on a donkey and the people worship them as their king.

Zechariah says this, Zechariah 9:9 “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.”

So when Jesus asks for the colt and donkey, and then rides into Jerusalem on them, the people who have been thinking for a while that Jesus might be the Christ, are now certain of it, and previously when Jesus had said to disciples don’t tell anyone yet, He is now allowing people to see who He really is. And so the people do something really cool, the crowds that had travelled with Him, now worship him because they see Him as the fulfillment of Davids line, and the Zechariah prophecy, and they understand that Jesus has come as a king to bring Salvation.

But the way that they worship Him is really interesting. In Jewish history there’s a family named the Maccabees who bring the Jewish people freedom and independence from the surrounding empires for a time. One of the famous stories about them is about the menorah and how God allowed it to keep burning for eight days. After the Maccabees had regained Israel’s independence by force, they marched into Israel and the Jews celebrated by waving and laying down palm branches for Judas Maccabee who they made their new leader.

And so as the crowds with Jesus are crying Hosanna (which basically means, praise to the one who saves) They are claiming Jesus is the coming king, and they are worshipping him the same way their ancestors praised their new kings or leaders when they had come essentially for their inauguration. The triumphal entry, essentially acts as Jesus’s inauguration to being their king. But the people still don’t understand what kind of king He is. They’re worshipping Him like a great military leader, but Jesus is a different kind of king altogether.

The story of the triumphal entry takes place in all 4 gospels, and in the gospel of Luke, Luke adds an extra little bit that helps to further the idea of Jesus being a different kind of King.

So the people are worshipping Jesus, laying down palm branches and saying Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. And Luke adds this, Luke 19:39-40 “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.””

So the Jewish leaders get angry that Jesus is not stopping the crowds or His disciples from declaring Him to be a King sent by God, they think what He is doing is blasphemy and should be stopped or punished. But Jesus responds by claiming that He is not just the king over the people of Israel who are declaring Him to be the king, He is in fact king over all of nature. And this is a massive claim, because it means that He is no longer keeping it a secret, that He is in fact God.

Now this all happens on the Sunday of the week before He was killed. We call this Holy Week. And this triumphal entry, is His inauguration of sorts, He has entered into Jerusalem as the king, and over the course of the following days we get a better sense of what He is doing as the king, and what His mission is as He prepares to go to the cross.

Temple

As we keep reading in Matthew, we see Jesus’s first act as king

Matthew 21:12–17 ESV

And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.” And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, “ ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?” And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.

We already saw it once in John a few weeks ago, but here Jesus is again clearing out the temple because of the money changers. The Jewish leaders are taking advantage of the poor for their own personal gain. This practice is likely making them welathy, and they’re ripping off the poor to do it.

And positioned right after the Triumphal Entry we see something else.

If Jesus is the Godly King that the crowds are claiming He is, then His throne room is the temple where He as God can dwell among the people. When the temple was first created, there was a room called the Holy of Holies where God’s presence dwelled, and the High Priest was able to, once a year, go in and offer a sacrifice to God. This place was sacred, because it was God’s dwelling place among the people. And so Jesus, being this Godly king is rightfully angry that they have turned this Holy temple where people should be worshipping God, into a place where they are just looking to increase their own wealth.

But Jesus’s anger is interesting, because it makes us think about anger differently. Anger is an instense response from a deeper emotion, just because you’re angry at someone doesn’t mean that you don’t love them, sometimes anger can come from love.

If you’ve ever had young kids, either your children, or maybe your younger siblings, or some other relationship like that. Think about this scenario, let’s say you have two boys, one who’s a little bit older and bigger than the other. And you love your two sons, but let’s say one day you walk into your living room and you see the older son bullying the younger son, he’s stolen all of the younger one’s toys, he’s making fun of him and calling him names, and he’s even hit the younger one. And so you as a parent are rightfully angry at your older son, you discipline him and scold him for hurting the younger one. You still love the older son, but your angry because you know that that’s not how he’s supposed to act, and you know that he knows that. You also know that you’ve taught him to take care of his younger siblings, and to be a good role model for them, and this is the opposite of that. And so you’re so angry with him, but you still love him, you don’t hate him , you don’t want to hurt him, you just want him to live differently, because you know as his loving parent that that’s better for him.

And so Jesus in the the temple is just like that parent. The Priests and money changers are not living like they’re supposed to, and not only are they taking advantage of the weak and poor, they’re also supposed to be an example to the people of Israel. They knew what they were supposed to do, and over and over again they kept getting it wrong and kept messing it up.

And Jesus as the king over all creation knows that they need to have their sin fixed, He doesn’t want anyone to perish which includes the Priests and temple leaders. And He needs them to follow Him not their own search for wealth, because their own way of doing things is just going to keep messing up the world for everyone, but Jesus’s way is much better. And He needs them to stop living in sin and to follow His way.

This is what He does the first day after being announced as King, He shows that as the King, He’s here to flip their way of thinking about things upside down. The important in His kingdom are the weak and poor, and Jesus shows that in the temple by healing the weak and sick that come to Him, and by elevating the faith of the children. But the temple leaders who thought they had it all together, but who were really just seeking their own greed and pride, Jesus needed to confront them about their sin. They were supposed to be the people who were leading the rest of Israel towards God, their lives were supposed to symbolically show good fruit, humility, patience, love, etc… but in reality they had no fruit, they only thought about their own gain, and the rest of Israel suffered for it.

Fig Tree

The next day, this is the Tuesday of Holy Week, Jesus comes across a fig tree, and there’s this really strange interaction.

Matthew 21:19–22 ESV

And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once. When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?” And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”

By itself this story seems really odd, but in context it’s a lived out parable. Jesus is drawing a parallel between the Jewish leaders and the fig tree.

They are supposed to be producing fruit: leading people to God. But they’re only trying to get their own wealth. They are not producing fruit and so, Jesus curses the fig tree as a symbol of what is happening to them because they don’t produce fruit. If they are not willing to follow Jesus as their leader, then the fruit that He provides in people’s lives will not be present in theirs.

Later on during Holy Week the religious leaders will claim they have no King but Caesar. In rejecting Jesus as king, they reject the fruit that he lets them bear. And so if He is not their king, they will not bear his fruit, that comes from having faith in Him.

And Jesus teaches His disciples that those with faith produce a lot of fruit. Metaphorically they will be able to even move mountains. But for those who do not follow Jesus as their king, they will wither away.

Conclusion

It all comes down to this, the people worship Jesus as their king, they want Him to come and win a military victory for them, and to save them. And Jesus is going to save them but not in the way they think. Jesus has come to save them from sin, from the sin in the world and from the sin in themselves. Jesus is the king that comes to confront sin, He will win a major victory, but His enemy won’t be Rome, it will be sin.

And each day of Holy Week shows Jesus as that King. On the Sunday, during the triumphal entry, Jesus shows that He is the promised King, who will save people, and that He is in fact king over all nature, He has come to restore things to the way that they were supposed to be back when God created the world. And that means peace among nations, not war.

On the Monday, Jesus shows that He has come to confront the sin of Israel and it’s leaders. If they are going to follow Him as king they need to stop their sin and choose to live His way instead. On the cross, He will pay the penalty for the sin of everyone, but we also need to decide to stop sinning for ourselves, and to follow His way instead of our own way.

On the Tuesday, Jesus shows that there are two types of people. Those who follow Him and who bear fruit, and those who have been given the chance but choose not to bear fruit. Those who follow Him will be able to do amazing things in His name, and will have their sins forgiven and will live with Him forever. But those who don’t will wither away, they will never bear fruit, and they will not be with Jesus in heaven because they have chosen to reject Him.

Each of these stories points to Friday, to the cross. Jesus is the king who has come to confront our sin, and when He confronts our sin we have two choices, we can either lay it all down before Him, recognize that He alone can save us from it, ask Him for forgiveness and turn from it and follow Him as our King. Or we can choose to continue doing things our own way, in which case we will not have fellowship with Him, and we will not bear the fruit that comes from abiding in Him.

As we look to te cross this week, our question must be what do we make of Jesus as King? Jesus is our saviour, in that He already payed the penalty for our sin if we repent and ask Him to forgive us. But for Jesus to be our King is a much bigger claim. It goes beyond us just asking Him to help us with things, it means that we must be prepared to lay down every thing for Him. Our hopes, desires, and dreams, all belong to Him, and we follow Him no matter where He leads. To make Jesus our King is a big deal, one that we should not take lightly, but it’s also the most rewarding thing we can do.

We can’t save ourselves from sin, but our King can. We can’t make it to Heaven on our own, but our King died to prepare a way for us. We can’t find purpose or meaning in this life on our own, but our King can. All He asks is that we surrender ourselves to Him, and choose to pledge allegiance to Him and to do what He asks, because He loves us, and He asks us to respond in love to Him.

Benediction

May the grace and peace of our king Jesus be with you in the week to come. As we focus this week on the road our Lord took to the cross may we prepare our hearts and minds to understand the gravity of His sacrifice and the depths of his overwhelming love. Go in peace.