The Triumphant Procession
Notes
Transcript
The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, “Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!” His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.
Welcome - happy Palm Sunday
This is the day YHWH has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.
We are going to do something a little bit different this morning.
First, we are going to begin with a responsive reading:
Leader - Blessed is He Who comes in the name of the Lord
All - Hosanna in the Highest
Leader: Today we enter Holy Week, with its cycle of life, death and new life
All: Jesus the Holy One enters Jerusalem riding a donkey9 colt. Crowds wave branches and cry out for God's salvation.
Leader: Jesus the Holy One, enters the gates of our hearts today.
All: We join together with them, and cry out “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
And now the blessing of the palms, let us pray:
We pray you, O Lord, bless these branches. May we also, carrying them forth from this place and crying out "Hosanna in the Highest" and "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord", proclaim Jesus as our Messiah and King and follow Him in the way that leads to eternal life. Amen.
And now the distribution of the Palms - please come forward by row and take your Palms.
Go grab a palm
That was all very similar to the traditional start to a Palm Sunday service for about 800 years, the only exception being we are not going to go outside and parade our palms through the town right now.
Palm Sunday - or as it was known in some traditions from early on, “Passion Sunday” - is the day we remember Christ’s entry into Jerusalem the Sunday of the week of His crucifixion, or what is known as Holy Week.
And this entry into Jerusalem is what we call the Triumphal Entry.
The earliest evidence that this day was commemorated as a holiday - or holy day - is from the late 4th century - at least in churches of the east. The holiday does not appear in the western church until the 8th century.
In the Protestant tradition, Palm Sunday was largely ignored early on, but later more Protestant traditions began to recognize the day, even if it lacked the pomp and pageantry of how the Roman Catholic church celebrated it.
Because the celebration in the Roman Catholic church traditionally consisted of the blessing of palm branches, which would then be distributed, and then paraded in procession to celebrate the victory of Christ and to honor Him as King.
Later, the pageantry grew even greater, and priests would ride on a donkey for the parade as a representation of Christ.
Then, the palms that were blessed would be collected by the church, burned to ashes, and those ashes would be preserved for the following year’s Ash Wednesday that began the season of lent.
Now a days, many churches just give out palm branches in commemoration, preach a palm Sunday sermon, and leave it at that.
And then people get to go home with their palms and, in some cases, the palm is used as decoration - some people weaving it into a cross to hang on their wall - but in most cases, those palms wind up getting thrown out at some point.
That’s all part of the modern tradition.
Now, while I don’t intend to disparage any tradition - older or newer - I can’t help but wonder if what actually happened at the Triumphal Entry gets a little lost in all our traditions.
Do we know what Jesus was saying with His actions that day? Do we know what He was doing coming into Jerusalem the way that He did?
Because that celebration for Jesus as He rode into Jerusalem - the joy and gladness at His presence - it didn’t last. Because the One hailed as King that day wound up betrayed by one of His closest friends and abandoned by the rest.
The King was arrested like a common criminal, and actually forced out of Jerusalem when He was made to carry His cross to the place of His death outside the city.
He entered in “Triumph” according to the headings in our Bibles, but by all worldly standards, He left in defeat and shame.
And He wound up at Calvary, where the God-Man let mere men nail Him to a cross.
And we will pick the events up from there at our Good Friday Service this Friday night.
But, knowing what happens at the end of that week, why has His entry into all of this at the start of the week become known as the “Triumphal” entry?
Well, let’s explore that this morning. Because Jesus was, in fact, signalling a great triumph by doing what He did that day. And the people - at least for a time, and most likely even unknowingly - celebrated that triumph exactly the way we should.
To see this, let’s go back in time about 2,000 years to the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem like a King:
The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.
“The next day” - this is picking up the narrative from the prior verses. The last thing we read there is that there was excitement building to see Jesus - and Lazarus whom He had recently raised - so many Jews came to Jerusalem during Passover just to see them.
And we read that the religious leaders planned to put both Jesus and Lazarus to death, because many were believing in Jesus because He raised Lazarus from the dead. And they couldn’t have that.
This is the large crowd that is referenced here. By most estimates, about 150,000 people would come to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover.
And while most of them would not have been part of this large crowd, we are still likely talking about thousands of people who were anticipating Jesus’ arrival.
How did things get to this point?
As Jesus’ reputation grew in the early years of His ministry, and as more and more people began to know of Him, He often tried to keep them from spreading the news of His ministry.
We see often in the Gospel accounts how Jesus would heal people or cast out a demon, and then tell them not to tell anyone. When He healed a deaf man, He charged him and all who saw not to say anything.
But they did.
When He healed a leper after calling His first disciples, He told the man to tell no one but the High Priest so that he could be declared clean. And yet we read that right after that, the news of what He did was spread abroad to the point that crowds would come to Him for healing and that He would withdraw to desolate places to pray.
Why would Jesus want to keep His ministry under wraps?
Because there was still so much work to do - He had to bring the Gospel to those, to Whom He was sent. And He knew what would happen if He carried His ministry out too openly.
Exactly what happened on Good Friday.
So Jesus, for a long time, tried to keep His ministry out of the spotlight as much as possible, and yet His reputation grew.
And with the raising of Lazarus, that proverbial ship had sailed. He was outed, as it were, for Who He was.
So we read that Jesus then went and hid Himself from the Jews, because they were seeking to arrest Him. And yet, word still got out that He was coming to Jerusalem for the feast.
So here, on Palm Sunday, people knew He was coming. And thousands of them, with bated breath, awaited His arrival.
They were like children on the wee hours of Christmas morning. Waiting with excitement for the best day of the year to the point that they wake their parents up at like 5:00 AM to get the day started.
They just can’t wait any longer! They’re too excited! The anticipation is too great!
That’s what it was like for those waiting for Jesus. Their anticipation grew and grew.
So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!”
Picture this parade leaving the city. People marching out waving palm branches and crying out about the King. Oh, how that must have enraged the religious leaders.
Because this is much more than just recognizing Jesus as a great Healer. It is more than recognizing an itinerant preacher as a true man of God.
It’s even more than recognizing Him as a prophet.
No. There is so much going on here.
First, the palm branches make this far worse for Jesus - but also much more right.
Because palm branches meant something. They were used in worship, specifically during the Feast of Tabernacles. This was actually prescribed by God in the book of Leviticus when He commands the feast:
And you shall take on the first day the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palm trees and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.
Note Who the people are to rejoice before with the palms. And here come these people, rejoicing over Jesus.
And what’s more, when the palms would be used in the celebration of the feast, they would be carried in a procession and waved around, and the movement of the air they created as basically giant fans, was meant to represent the Spirit of God moving on behalf of His people.
And, of course, the Feast of Tabernacles was meant to commemorate Israel’s time as wanderers in the desert. That’s why they were to live in temporary dwellings. But the end of the feast commemorated when they didn’t have to do do that anymore.
That was when God fulfilled His promise and gave His people rest.
So a parade of palms was used in Jewish celebrations, to celebrate YHWH and the fulfillment of His promises.
Here, they celebrate Jesus.
Now, granted, the day Jesus entered Jerusalem, it wasn’t the Feast of Tabernacles, it was the Sunday before Passover.
But this goes beyond the symbolic use of palms.
Because second, the people come out of Jerusalem quoting Psalm 118:
Save us, we pray, O Lord! O Lord, we pray, give us success! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of the Lord.
They say: “Save us, we pray.”
In Hebrew:
hosh-yi-ah na
Or, as we transliterate it into English through the Greek: “Hosanna!”
But to get the full impact of what they were claiming, we need to read a little further into that Psalm:
Save us, we pray, O Lord! O Lord, we pray, give us success! 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. Bind the festal sacrifice with cords, up to the horns of the altar!
The people coming out to Jesus said: “save us we pray, YHWH.”
I don’t know that you can say more with so few words.
When the people ran out to meet Jesus, shouting “Hosanna, blessed is he Who comes in the name of YHWH,” they were proclaiming that Jesus is the salvation of God. That He is the light of God that has shined upon them.
This is the light we read about in the opening chapter of this Gospel. It is the light Jesus claimed to be during the Feast of Tabernacles back in chapter 8 of this Gospel.
But there’s more. Because traditionally, in the Ancient Near East, when a king was coming home to his city, the people of the city didn’t wait for him - they went out to meet him and come into the city with him.
This is what the crowd was doing here:
The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!”
These people were claiming with their words and their actions that Jesus was their King!
In all that they said and all that they did here, these people were claiming that they believed Jesus is the promised Messiah - the King of Israel. They claimed to believe what He said about Himself.
They claimed that God’s rest was about to be given to His people.
And they were right!
Though they were wrong about how they were right. Because it wasn’t going to go down the way they thought.
And yet, unknowingly, they were proclaiming exactly what was about to happen. Because once the prayer for salvation is made in the Psalm. And after the blessing of the One Who comes in YHWH’s name is made, we read:
Bind the festal sacrifice with cords, up to the horns of the altar!
After rejoicing in God’s salvation, there is supposed to be a festal sacrifice. An offering made on the occasion of the Passover festival. An offering, of a lamb, to the God Who has provided that salvation.
And that sacrifice is Christ Himself. The Lamb of God. Our Passover Lamb.
Christ came into Jerusalem to go from the celebration of salvation, to the altar of sacrifice on the cross to achieve that salvation.
And given that all of this was going on - Jesus already knowing coming to Jerusalem would mean trouble before all of this happened - here comes this crowd claiming Him as their King, calling Him God’s light and salvation, and even proclaiming what Jesus knew was about to happen, though nobody else did.
This would certainly mean death if Jesus continued on and came into Jerusalem.
Everyone knows He’s coming. And now they are proclaiming that He is bringing the salvation of YHWH to them.
And the religious leaders already want Him gone.
And Jesus knew that. He knew that coming to Jerusalem was a death sentence already.
But Jesus didn’t do things small, that day. He didn’t come into Jerusalem secretly for Passover like He had in years past.
Now, not only did He not stop the crowds from declaring Who He is, but He openly agreed with them.
So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it
In times of war, kings rode horses to lead their people into battle. Once the war was won, however, kings rode on donkeys. It showed that the war was over and the battle was won. It meant there was peace.
Jesus came into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. He came as a King bringing peace to His people. He came as a King Who had won the battle for His people who now had no more to fear from the enemy.
He came in triumph as the One bringing salvation to His people.
Because Jesus came as the One fulfilling a long-awaited prophesy of the restoration of the Davidic Kingdom:
And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, “Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!”
This comes from the prophesy of Zechariah.
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.
And the people were rejoicing greatly. They were shouting aloud as they came from Jerusalem.
And they beheld their King. He was coming to them, righteous. He was coming with salvation.
He was coming as King riding on a donkey.
He was coming - unbeknownst to them - humbly. He was about to humble Himself to the point of death, even death on a cross.
He came into Jerusalem triumphantly, to die. He knew victory meant death on the cross.
Yet He came. And He accepted these people who called Him King, Who came out shouting about YHWH’s salvation.
And in the other Gospel accounts, we read what happened next:
And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields.
As I said, it was traditional in the ancient world for people receiving their king to go out to meet him. It was also common for them to lay their cloaks or whatever they had on his path as a sign of reverence to him.
And that is what these people did for Jesus.
And as I said, they didn’t truly understand what they were doing. Because they didn’t know what was going to happen on Friday of that week, or on the following Sunday.
They didn’t understand how God’s salvation would be given. They didn’t understand how God’s rest would be achieved. They didn’t understand how Christ would reign for the next 2,000 years and only God knows how many more until we reign with Him in the New Heavens and the New Earth.
They didn’t understand.
And amazingly, neither did Christ’s disciples:
His disciples did not understand these things at first
They saw what the crowds were doing. And they understood what the people were saying by following the tradition of receiving a victorious king. They knew the Psalm the people were reciting and what it meant.
And they knew Jesus’ teaching better than anyone. And they saw the healings, and the exorcisms, and they heard all the Words of life straight from their Rabbi’s mouth.
And they even heard Him say multiple times what was going to happen when they got to Jerusalem this time.
And they didn’t understand these things…
…at first.
So when did they understand?
His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.
It wasn’t until after the resurrection that the disciples of Jesus understood what happened the week prior. It wasn’t until that prophesy of Zechariah was further fulfilled that they made the connection to the previous Sunday’s events.
Let’s go that prophecy again and look at it more fully:
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. [That’s the part we read already - but it continues]
I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, [there is the King putting an end to the war for His people. But His people aren’t just those who came out to greet Him that day. They aren’t even just those of Israel. Because:]
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. [He will become King over all through His victory!]
As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, [Christ’s disciples would hear these words about the blood of the covenant four days after Palm Sunday. They would hear first of the coming of the Spirit and then they would hear the Savior Himself say that He was making a covenant with them - the covenant was His - but the blood that established the covenant would also be His] [Repeat: “as for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you”:] I will set your prisoners free
[this is what Jesus preached that He came to do at the start of His ministry - after His temptation in the wilderness, He goes in the power of the Spirit into Nazareth and preaches from Isaiah that the Spirit is upon Him, and that He has come to proclaim liberty to the captives] [Repeat: “as for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free”:] from the waterless pit. [The “waterless pit” is hell. He will set His people free from hell!] [And then He exhorts His people]
Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double. For I have bent Judah as my bow; I have made Ephraim its arrow. I will stir up your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece, and wield you like a warrior’s sword. [The stronghold of these prisoners of hope is Christ. And now that we have been set free and made prisoners of hope, it is us - God’s people - against the world. Death has been overcome. Sin has been overcome. Hell has been overcome. But the war is still on, brothers and sisters. And we are the army of Christ the King. And what is the hope we look to as we fight the war in the name of our King? His final victory.]
[When we will be caught up in the air to meet our King at His return, and He comes to bring us peace finally and forever]
Then the Lord will appear over them, and his arrow will go forth like lightning; the Lord God will sound the trumpet and will march forth in the whirlwinds of the south. The Lord of hosts will protect them, and they shall devour, and tread down the sling stones, and they shall drink and roar as if drunk with wine, and be full like a bowl, drenched like the corners of the altar.
On that day the Lord their God will save them, as the flock of his people; for like the jewels of a crown they shall shine on his land. For how great is his goodness, and how great his beauty! [Our King will return. He WILL win the war. He will save us finally and forever, and we will be glorified]
I can’t wait. Can you feel the anticipation?
Oh YHWH hosh-yi-ah na
Hosanna to Him Who comes in the name of the Lord!
And here is the thing - here is what we need to grasp - here is what Christ was saying by riding in on that donkey and accepting the praise of the people.
Here is what He was saying and this is why it was truly a Triumphal Entry:
This had begun.
This prophecy of salvation began to be fulfilled on Palm Sunday - it was fulfilled further at the cross - and it’s final fulfillment was guaranteed by the resurrection.
And one day, when we see Him as He is - and we will be like Him in that we will be glorified - we will truly know His goodness and His beauty. We will see in full what we now only know by faith.
And that’s exactly why we need to have faith now.
Like the disciples on Palm Sunday - there is more for Christ to do before we can understand what He is doing right now.
And it isn’t because we will know everything when He returns. There is no promise that God will fill us in on all the whys and hows of what He allows to happen in this world. No!
It is because we will see and know the ultimate Why when we are with our Lord forever. Because He is our why. He is King. He is the light of the world. He is God’s salvation.
He is the One Who died to make us His.
That is why we seek Him now. Why we must fight the war. Why we live to please Him now. Why we suffer with gladness and thanksgiving now. It’s why we give up all we have for Him now.
And we need to have faith now, because we will see and know the ultimate How when Christ reveals Himself to us. When that trumpet sounds, and He comes like lightning, and we are raised into glory and shine like the jewels of a crown in eternity - we will meet, face to face, God’s ultimate and only “How.”
And that is Christ.
For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.
It is all through Christ.
Our salvation. Our guaranteed inheritance. Our faith. Our ability to will and to do for His pleasure.
Our way to holiness. Our means of perseverance.
The how of all of this is our King, Who rode in victorious that day as He headed towards the cross, where He humbled Himself, and gave it all for us.
Where He won victory through death.
That was how God made us His.
And that is how He added us to the Triumphant Procession that hails Him as King and as the salvation of God.
It is how He saved us from hell. Because that is what we deserve. So that is where we were headed. We were not in a triumphant procession on our own. We were headed to death - eternal death.
And to make us part of the Triumphant Procession, Christ came into Jerusalem not just knowing it meant death for Him, but He came because it meant death for Him.
Because the wages of sin is death, and Someone had to pay for that sin with death.
So He did.
And to do that, He was betrayed, and denied, and abandoned, and mocked, and spit on, and beaten, and traded by the people He came to save for a murderer, and He was given His cross to bear, and His Triumphant Procession stopped at Calvary where He was nailed to a cross with our sins upon Him.
And He died the death of a sinner, though He was not a sinner. Because if you believe - if you are a prisoner of hope - realize: He died your death!
You’ve died with Christ. So you are set free from death. You are set free from the power of hell.
And you have been added to the Triumphant Procession of Christ!
Are we proudly walking in that procession? Are we following Him in His triumph?
Are we living our lives rejoicing in His salvation until He comes as King over all the earth? Are we proudly proclaiming Who He is?
Are we blessing the name of our King through how we live?
Are we laying down before Him everything we have and everything we are in reverence to the King Who saved us?
That’s where I think we go wrong on Palm Sunday. We come to church ready to receive our palms so we can take them home with us. We are given something to commemorate His Triumphal Entry and our being added into that procession.
But that isn’t what happened that day. The people who proclaimed who Jesus was, they didn’t get, they gave. They laid down before Jesus what they had.
And they did it without knowing what they were truly receiving.
Yes, they thought they were getting victory from God.
Yes, they thought Jesus was bringing salvation.
Yes, they thought He would be their King.
But they didn’t want it the way He came to do it.
Yet they laid down their palms, and their garments - whatever they had - at His feet.
And us - we know what we have been given.
We have been given victory from God through Jesus Christ.
Have you taken part in that victory? Have you surrendered yourself to the King and joined His Triumphant Procession? Have you laid down what you have and what you are to the One Who laid it all down to win the victory?
If not, you are not part of the procession. But Christ is calling you right now to join the procession. My friends, now - this very day - this is the time to repent and believe the Gospel. Be part of Christ’s victory!
My friends, we know what we have been given.
We have been given salvation through Christ.
Do we know His salvation? Or are we still trying to save ourselves? Are we relying on anyone or anything other than Jesus to save us from death and from hell? If so, we still stand condemned. We are watching the procession go by, instead of being a part of it.
If you have not placed your faith in Christ as the only One Who gives salvation and life, now - this morning - is the time to believe. He who does not believe will not see life, but whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.
Today is the day of salvation.
Pray “Hosanna!” Pray “Save me, I pray, O Lord!”
My friends, we know what we have been given: a kingdom. And we know that Christ is King.
If you have not bowed to Christ as King, now is the time. He is the King that humbled Himself and died for you. What other king would you serve?
He is here. And He is calling. He is ready, willing, and able to show you that He is Savior and victorious King.
Turn from your sin, and turn to the King!
And lay before Him what you have, and rejoice in the salvation of God!
And for everyone here Who knows the salvation of the King, I call on all of us to bow before Him. I want us to remember that we are part of that Triumphant Procession, and I want us to live like it.
God’s light has come to us.
God’s salvation has come to us.
So, instead of receiving palms today, let’s lay what we have down before our King. All of us.
Whether for the first time, or as a sign of renewed commitment to Him - lay down what you have.
Come lay down what you have at the foot of the cross. And let’s show that using the palms God said to use to rejoice in Him.
I invite you to come lay down your palm down at the front of the sanctuary as a symbol of your surrender to Him. But only if you are ready to lay everything you have and everything you are at His feet.
Only if you are ready to present your self as a living sacrifice to the One Who died as your sacrifice.
Up to the horns of the altar.
Let’s say this morning:
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!
Join me in laying down what we have before Christ - emptying our hands that He may fill them with more of what He died to bring us: salvation and victory.
Invitation again
May we, carrying salvation forth from this place, cry out "Hosanna in the Highest" and "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord."
Let us proclaim that in word and deed - proclaim it through our lives. May we proclaim Jesus as our Messiah and King and follow Him in the way that leads to eternal life.
Let’s leave here rejoicing, and proud, to be part of the Triumphant Procession. And let’s live in victory!
Let’s pray.
