Matthew 20.29-21.11

Introduction

I have really bad eyesight. I really need to wear my glasses all the time, but for ages I rejected that idea, and I’d walk around without my glasses on. I would especially do this in my university days. During that time, I was trying to help my friends who had a competitive dance team, but were short on people. In particular, my friend Kim was helping teach me how to waltz. And her advice to me was to waltz as I walked home, to get a sense of the timing and the steps. The next morning, after the lesson, I saw Kim coming towards me, and so I thought that I would show her I had been practising. So I started to waltz. It was only when I got to the end of a the waltz steps, that I was close enough to realise that this was not in fact Kim, and I had blindly waltzed my way towards a woman I had never met. This new knowledge presented me with a few choices of how to respond. I could play it off, I could talk to her and explain myself, or I could take courageous option number 3, which I actually did, and run away.

So often in our lives we are presented with information that demands a response from us. In my case, the woman I thought was Kim wasn’t, and so I had to do something about it. But this is also the case for our passage tonight. In this passage, Matthew constructs the story so that two truths about Jesus are revealed, and also that each revelation of Jesus creates two responses from the people around him. I believe that these revelations of Jesus are just as pertinent today, and the options for how to respond are just as real.

Jesus the King

The first thing that Jesus reveals about himself to us is that he is the true king, the true Messiah. Now, if we’ve been reading Matthew from the beginning, this wouldn’t really surprise us. After all, the first thing that Matthew writes about Jesus is that he is the Son of David, which is to say, the king. But now, in this story, we start to see Jesus lean into this identity a little bit more.

Look, for example, at Matthew 20.29-31. In this section, two blind men want Jesus’ help with healing. They want him to give them their vision back. And, when they’re calling to him, how do they address him? They call him the son of David. They do this twice. When they’re addressing Jesus, they’re addressing him with the royal Jewish title. What is particularly interesting, however, is that Jesus has actually done something like this before. He healed blind men in Matthew 9. But that time, after he had healed them, he made sure to tell them not to let anybody know what he had done. This time, however, not only does he accept the title they are giving to him as the Son of David, but he actually goes and heals them in the presence of the crowds. Jesus, in other words, claims his Messianic titles and shows his divine power in front of a large crowd of people. Jesus is now ready for people to know that he is the king.

This is all clearer in the second story we’re looking at tonight, that of the triumphal entry. This story describes Jesus journeying into Jerusalem with a large crowd of people from the surrounding regions, all of whom are going to celebrate the Passover. And did you notice how Jesus enters into Jerusalem? He does it on a donkey that he has his disciples fetch for him. Why might he do this? Well, part of the reason is that he wants to be noticed. Most of those travelling to Jerusalem from outside would have been poor, and so would have been walking. Jesus, on his donkey, would have stood out like somebody who is cycling in the midst of a park run.

But Jesus isn’t just wanting to stand out. He has a very deliberate purpose for standing out. Look at 21.4. Matthew tells us that Jesus was doing this in order to fulfil the prophecy. This prophecy comes from Zechariah 9.9, and looks forward to the day when God’s anointed king would come into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. And Jesus, by self-consciously imitating this prophecy, is showing the crowds who he is. He is telling them that he is the Messiah, the great king of Israel who has come to save God’s people.

And the crowds that are travelling with him aren’t slow to pick this up. They see him riding towards Jerusalem on a donkey and they start to praise him with their actions and their words. They celebrate him with their actions by throwing palm fronds on the ground, as well as their cloaks, so that he might not touch the ground. This is a typical act of devotion. They also declare great praise for him. They shout out the word Hosanna, which means God will save us, but which was also a general cry of praise to God, like Hallelujah to us. They call him the Son of David, echoing the Messianic claims we saw earlier. And then they go on to quote Psalm 118, which has the imagined setting of a celebratory festival being led into the temple by the king. Overall, their whole response is one that declares Jesus to be king. They have seen his allusion, and they pick up on it and accept it.

Inside Jerusalem, however, there is a very different response. V10 tells us that the whole city was in uproar. They saw this man coming in, deliberately invoking their royal Jewish prophecies, and they are outraged. For them, it is as if somebody else had arrived at a wedding wearing a white dress. In their eyes, he is behaving in a way he just simply shouldn’t. There are a few reasons why this might be the case. They might be worried about the political affects this would have for them with Rome. They might also have seen this as a challenge to their own status within the Jewish world. Here comes a Galilean interloper ready to challenge their temple and their position. Whatever the reason, their response to Jesus the king could not be more different than that of the crowds. They see him and ask “who is this?” trying to suggest that he is a nobody. He doesn’t deserve the titles he is claiming. They do not honour Jesus as king.

And the thing is, all of this is still true for us right now. The truest fact in the universe today is that Jesus is the king. Now, he’s not the king of South Africa, or America, or any earthly kingdom. No. He’s the king of God’s new kingdom, which is the church. And, in a real, but for the moment spiritual, sense, he is the king of the universe. Jesus rules all. Jesus is the king of everybody. Jesus is your king. And, just like the two crowds, we have two choices about how to respond. We can respond like the Galilean crowd outside the city. We can praise Jesus, recognise him as Lord, and follow him with Joy into his new kingdom. Or we can react like the Jerusalem crowd, and say “who even is this?” We can refuse to see Jesus’ authority and his power. We can refuse to bow to him.

And, truthfully, this happens even after we are saved. Even after you’ve bowed the knee, and recognised Jesus as the ruler of your life, it is still a major temptation to reject Jesus’ practical authority in our lives. How many times are we tempted to do something that shows disobedience to the authority of Christ? How often, in our suffering, are we tempted to curse him? How often do we refuse to submit to his authority and do the hard things that he calls us to? Do you know what we are saying in our hearts when we do that? We are looking at the authority of Jesus, we are looking at the king over our lives, and we are saying to him “who are you to exercise authority over me? Who are you to dictate my choices? Who are you to command me to do that which I do not want to do? Who are you?

And so we are confronted with this truth: Jesus is king of all; Jesus is king of me. And this truth gives us a simple choice: to love and praise, or to reject and scorn. I urge you tonight, Follow Jesus.

Jesus the Gentle King

This passage, however, doesn’t just show us that Jesus is the king. It also shows us that he is a gentle king. We see this in several places. We are prepared for it because of what Jesus has to say about ruling in the new kingdom in Matthew 20.25-28, where he reminds his disciples that greatness in God’s kingdom is accomplished not by outward acts of power, but by service. We also see it in his choice of transportation into Jerusalem. Jesus doesn’t choose to announce his authority from the back of a war horse, which was the accepted mark of worldly royal authority. Instead, Jesus does it from a donkey, a lowly pack animal. This is something that the prophecy that Jesus fulfils says explicitly about him – he comes riding on a donkey, why? Because he is a gentle king. Jesus, the ruler, is a gentle, humble ruler.

This isn’t just told to us by this passage, however. It is also acted out. In the story of the two blind men, we have Jesus, who is on his way to do something that is both crucially important, if you will, and also deeply upsetting for him personally. There is nothing more important or more upsetting for Jesus to be about to do than to go to Jerusalem and die for the sins of the world. And yet, in the midst of this journey, Jesus takes the time to heal two nobodies. Blind people were of a low rank. Just like with beggars in South Africa, people tended to ignore them if they could. The whole world, therefore, would have understood if, at this moment in time, Jesus ignored them. In fact, they probably expected him to. After all, he has more important things to do. But Jesus doesn’t. In his gentleness, he notices them and he treats their needs.

Jesus’ gentleness also draws two contradictory responses. Notice, the first one in v31, the crowds. Matthew tells us in 20.29 that this is a large crowd following Jesus, so they probably know who he is, and they are following him to Jerusalem because they expect him to do something significant, and they are excited to be a part of it. But when these two blind men come and ask Jesus for help, the crowd tries to shout them down. Why? The crowds are looking forward to what Jesus will do. They want to see him go to Jerusalem and establish his kingdom. But they forgot the nature of the kingdom they were anticipating. They forgot that, just like the blind men, they were once on the outside, and had been brought in either by being healed themselves or by encountering Jesus’ gentleness to somebody else. In the excitement of seeing Jesus do something great, they forgot the character of Jesus. And, indeed, I think we as the church do this all the time. We know that Jesus has a great mission, to build his kingdom. We know that there are great things to do for the kingdom, but we forget the ordinary, daily acts of faithfulness that mark kingdom life. We forget that Jesus wanted to include the downcast, and the unimpressive. As the church we often, to quote Russell Moore, cling to the mission of Jesus, but forget the way of Jesus. Let’s not do that. Let’s honour Jesus gentleness by living gently and humbly ourselves, and taking care of those who are, in the eyes of the world, small.

The other response to Jesus’ gentleness is actually that of the blind men. These people would probably have heard about Jesus from his ministry in Galilee, and so would be aware of what he could do. They also recognised their own state – these were people who would really need Christ to heal them. So they called out to him. They even had enough faith in Jesus’ power, and this willingness to help, to call out again despite the crowd seeking to silence them. And did you notice what they did after Jesus healed them? They followed him. These were people who heard that Jesus could help them, called out to him in faith, and received what they needed and followed him. What better example could we hope for?

Conclusion

This is one of the most significant stories in all of the gospels, but it is ultimately looking forward. A week after this, the man who proclaimed himself God’s anointed king would be hanging on a cross. The one who declared himself the gentle ruler would have nails driven through his hands and feet. And yet, far from invalidating the truths this passage has revealed to us, the cross would confirm it all in a greater way than anything else could. On the cross, the Gentle Lord would declare forgiveness to those who sinned against him. On the cross, the ruling king would declare the power of sin and darkness finished. On the third day, God’s new and gentle king would come out of the grave and declare his victory, and that of his new kingdom. Everything that was true that day outside Jerusalem is truer today. And your choices remain the same. Will you use your deeds and your words to declare that Jesus is the Lord? Or will you live in such a way as to ask “who is this?” Will you reject his way, and reject the people he wants to draw near? Or will you recognise your need, cry out to him in faith, and follow him. Friends, these are your choices.