The King has Come | Luke 19:28–48

Good morning church! If you have your Bible’s & I hope you do would you grab them and flip on over to Luke 19. As I’m sure many of you are aware today is Palm Sunday which is a day when we remember is known as the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Each of the 4 gospels have this story—and it’s a fun little exercise to compare each one—and each one draws out different things. All four in some way point towards Jesus’ kingship, which is one of the things we’re going to look at, but Luke specifically points towards Jesus as the King who brings peace.

Peace is elusive, isn’t it? It feels like in some form or fashion we are in constant pursuit of it. That bill showed up this week that you weren’t planning on and now all of the sudden you lack financial peace. There’s strain in your relationships with your spouse or your kids or coworkers and all you want is some relational peace. There’s just so much going on that you are responsible for and your heart and your mind are overwhelmed and anxious so all you feel is a lack of internal peace. Moms or dads that have had your kids all week you’re really thankful for the nursery this morning because it gives you just a little peace and quiet from all the noise. The tone of my voice is sure to put you right into a peaceful little nap for the next 30-40 minutes.

We all want peace. If that’s true, then the question is where do we find it? Is it on a vacation? Is it through some sort of medication—whether that be prescribed or unprescribed? Or is there something more sustainable than that? But then there’s the next problem…what if you found it? What if you found lasting peace? What would you do with? What would be the right response? I think Luke 19:28-48 can actually answer all of these question. Remember that Luke wrote this book or letter to Theophilus who we don’t know much about, and I think he wrote this specific portion in this specific way to declare that the king has come to bring peace. That’s the main thing this text communicates.

Here’s what we’re going to do this morning. We’re going to read through this passage and then after that I want to try to answer 3 big questions to help us see that main point and why it changes every part of our life. Ok? So, hopefully you’ve made it to Luke 19:28-48 by now. Let’s read this, pray and then dive into it.

Luke 19:28–48 ESV

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, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ you shall say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.’ ” So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” And they said, “The Lord has need of it.” 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!” 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.” 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.” And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.” And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy him, but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on his words.

This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray.

So here’s how we’re going to tackle this this morning. We’re going to work through this passage 3 times. We need to understand the whole thing before we can really dive into the particulars of how it affects our own hearts and minds and then calls us out to live differently. So we’ll start heavy on the explanation of the text and then move on to the application. Alright? With that in mind here’s the first question I think we need to ask:

How does the way in which Jesus came declare peace & kingship?

We can read through this text and even have the background that we’re supposed to know that Palm Sunday is about Jesus is king and maybe even know that he brings peace, but how does this text actually declare that? I want to make just some quick observations of this text that not only show Jesus as king, but also what kind of king he is.

We start this story off and Jesus is leading his disciples to Jerusalem, which means, “City of Peace”. So here comes the king of peace to the city peace, and as they progress along the journey Jesus instructs a couple of his disciples to go on ahead into Bethany and when they do they’ll find a donkey. They’re supposed to untie it and bring it to him. They go on ahead, and sure enough, it’s exactly as Jesus told them. Luke is showing that this king knows exactly what’s ahead. He knows how things are going to work out, and it appears that he’s even in control of the situation in some way. This king comes knowing the future.

These verses also would’ve recalled to the early readers of it the prophecy in Zech. 9:9

Zechariah 9:9 ESV

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.

This prophecy is of the king coming to restore Jerusalem to it’s place as the city of God where the people and presence of God dwell. This proves that Jesus’ coming fulfills prophecy. He is a king who fulfills his promises.

Riding on a donkey doesn’t just declare he’s a king who keeps his promises and fulfills prophecy, but also that he’s a king who comes in peace. In 1 Kings there’s the story of King David’s succession to the throne. Remember that he had multiple sons with multiple wives and here we find him at the end of his life. One son, Adonijah, sees his opportunity to seize the throne so he rallies his supporters, prepared chariots and horsemen and soldiers to go before him. He goes through the ceremonial rituals to become the king, but Nathan the prophet hears of it. Nathan confronts David and asks if this is right or wrong because David had promised Solomon would become the king. So David in his wisdom instructs Solomon to enter in on a mule with Nathan and go through the ceremony to become king.

You see Adonijah had to come in showing strength and force to prove his kingship, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t king. Solomon could ride in on a lowly mule because the true King had made him king. Likewise, Jesus doesn’t have to ride in showing strength and force to prove his kingship. Because he is the king he can ride in on a donkey, fulfilling prophecy, but also in humility. Being one who can draw near to his people in peace instead of threatening them with rule.

Riding on a donkey doesn’t just show he comes in peace though, it also shows that he comes in partnership with his people. Jesus could’ve entered Jerusalem in a thousand ways. But he chose to send disciples to find donkey that belonged to some unknown people. This king doesn’t act alone or accomplish his mission alone, instead he uses his disciples & his creation to declare who he is.

When he mounts the donkey and comes riding toward Jerusalem what do his disciples do? They worship! They shout praise. They weren’t afraid; they were rejoicing because of what they had seen him do and were anticipating him to do. This wasn’t drums of war, but shouts of victory. In fact, V38 is a quote of Ps. 118:25 which in it’s original context depicted a king leading pilgrims to the temple to worship most likely on the occasion of some major victory. It’s a statement of worship and victory because of what God had accomplished. He is a king who comes to shouts of praise.

Yet, not everyone praises him, do they? The pharisees instruct Jesus to rebuke and stop the disciples. Now we don’t know if they were truly concerned that Jesus had amassed a large enough following at this point and the Roman guard was concerned about him. It doesn’t seem to be that way, but it could’ve. We do know the pharisees felt threatened by Jesus in their own positions and influence. Regardless, they demanded Jesus shut it down, but instead of rebuking the disciples Jesus rebukes the pharisees. He points out that rocks—inanimate objects—are more aware of who is walking by than the very religious leaders who were to be seeking him. This king comes rebuking those who reject him.

But he doesn’t stop at a rebuke. He gets near the edge of the city and for only the second time in Jesus’ ministry do we see him weeping. If only the people whom he had chosen long ago had recognized what makes for peace. But this brings about the question, what does make for peace? In verse 38 the disciples cry peace in heaven. But in v42 Jesus says if only you had known. The answer is it’s him. It’s the one who came from heaven. It’s the one whom at his birth the angels praised God saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom He is pleased.” He is the one who makes peace. It’s his presence. It’s his coming. And it’s his people who don’t see it or recognize it and it breaks his heart. The word used here means that he sobbed. He broke down because he desires to be known by his creation, yet his creation doesn’t worship him because they don’t recognize that peace only comes from this king. He is a king who comes weeping for those who don’t recognize him because he deeply loves them.

Their lack of recognition though is costly. Because they won’t recognize him as king the promises judgment to come and then enters the temple made to worship him and drives out those who even now would use what’s made for him for their own benefit. He is a king who comes judging justly.

Yet, we’re not done. One last thing, while they may reject him, he is still patient with them and comes teaching them. Proclaiming to them that peace has arrived. Working to help them see that he is the one who changes everything.

So just real quickly, let me put all of these things up on the screen so that we can see exactly what his coming looked like and entailed:

He comes knowing the future

He comes fulfilling His promises

He comes in partnership with His people

He comes in peace, riding on a donkey

He comes to shouts of praise

He comes rebuking those who reject him

He comes weeping for those who don’t recognize him

He comes judging justly

He comes teaching

Have you ever played that game where you use words to describe something so that someone else can guess what it is that you’re describing? If you forgot the rest of everything else that we just looked and only used those words to describe someone, who would be the someone? Someone who has that knowledge, that power, that humility, that praise…my answer would be God, but for the context of this passage, I’d say that’s a king worth following. That’s a king that is trustworthy and that you can know when he sits on the throne, things will be ok. Peace will reign, even when things seem really terrible.

Well that’s great news, right? The way Jesus came and the fact that Jesus came is a good thing and maybe I can kinda see now how it declares his kingship and his bringing forth of peace to them, but what about us? Is there a way in which the way Jesus came and the fact that he came as a king to bring peace brings us peace now? Well, that’s our second question, or second point that I think we need to ask of this text:

How does this bring peace to our hearts and minds?

We’ve got a basement at our house and yesterday morning my kids were downstairs playing. There arose a small disagreement over some rules and I sat at the top of the stairwell listening to them work it out. I’m proud to say they did. They were gracious and worked together to come to a solution, but, it was interesting to listen to them work it out. They knew that if they didn’t work it out then dad was going to come downstairs and when dad had to come downstairs to solve their problem things aren’t good and don’t end good. Things are so broken that they can’t find a solution to their problems and only someone else can solve their problems. Only someone else can bring peace to the situation.

The fact that Jesus came says that things were so broken that we couldn’t solve it ourselves. How Jesus came declares that he came to bring peace. He didn’t just come to find resolution, but restitution. You see, our first issue is between us and God. The fracture of that relationship, the lack of peace between our first relationship has led to a lack of peace in every relationship, and the problem with having a broken relationship with God is that there is no way a man can fix it. Only God can. So God did. He loved us enough to come to us and live for us, but he had to as a man. It was man who caused the problem and for God to continue to be just it would be man who had to pay the price. So Jesus, the God-man came and lived perfectly and at the end of his ministry began the journey that led us to where we are today.

By his coming, living, dying and rising again he paid the debt of our sin, the thing that broke our relationship with God. God looked on his sacrifice and said that’ll work. That’ll pay the price for all sin of all time because it was paid by the one who was both God & man. And that’s why we can have peace with God…now instead of constantly trying to work it out ourselves and prove to him our worthiness, we can say, “I can’t work it out, but I can instead trust in what Jesus did to work it out for me.” I’ll rest on him instead of trying for me. That is the only form of atonement God will accept…His own. So if we put our faith in Jesus we can have peace with God, what about the rest of life? How does Jesus’ coming bring peace to our hearts and minds there?

The journey of the triumphal entry, however, doesn’t end in the temple with Jesus teaching. In fact, it doesn’t end at the cross with Jesus dying or even end in the resurrection with Jesus rising again. This journey is paused at the ascension of Jesus back into heaven, but all of that—the triumphal entry, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and his ascension—proves that there is nothing left for him to conquer. He’s already won and now he sits at the right of his father ruling over his kingdom. Yet, while all this is true, peace still seems elusive. Why is that?

It’s the same reason that caused Jesus to weep—the world doesn’t know what makes for peace. We have continued to reject his kingship over every area of our life and instead tried to place ourselves on the throne. But like we saw in Daniel, we make for bad kings. We get anxious because we don’t what is coming, yet what does Jesus show us here at the beginning—not only does he know what’s coming, but he is control of the situation. If I can trust him to be king and know what’s coming, even if it’s really bad from our level, I know he loves me, he came for me on a donkey and not on a war horse, then I can trust him to handle the situation.

But here’s the next step of this, if Jesus knows what’s to come and is in control of it, and if he knows everything about the situation then do you know what else he knows everything about? You. He knows your very thoughts. He knows your very motives. He knows what makes you tick, and yet he isn’t repulsed by you. He loves you and desires to draw near to you. It breaks his heart when you’re far from him. So now instead of seeking to find approval or intimacy from people on a horizontal level, I can rest in the approval and intimacy that’s available to me with the one who came to me riding on a donkey. If my heart is satisfied with the approval of the one who knows everything about me then the pressure is removed from these horizontal relationships. I’m not counting on them to fill me up which totally transforms the way I relate to you, or my wife, or my kids, or my parents. I’m not looking for you to bring me peace because I’ve found peace with him.

Do you see how the gospel transforms every aspect of our life, not just our relationship with God? I think we can take this and work it out in every situation of life where we lack peace. As Julian of Norwich said, “Peace reigns where our Lord reigns.” We can continue to look at how each of those 9 ways in which Jesus’ coming brings us peace, but for the sake of time I just want to look at one more way in which this shows us his coming brings peace.

What does Jesus do to the Pharisees who tell him to rebuke his disciples? He rebukes them. What does Jesus promise is coming for those who don’t recognize his kingship? In v43-44 he prophesies of their destruction. What does Jesus do to those who rob from him? He drives them out. Rebuke. Destruction. Driving away. He is a King who has come to bring peace, but if you reject his kingship he will be just. If he is just to respond to these people in this circumstance then he’s just to make all things right. So wherever it is that you have been actually wronged and injustice has occured, you can trust that he’ll make things right. That’s why he came. He came to make it right. So does peace reign in your heart and mind? If not, then the question for you is who is king? Who or what are you looking to for peace? The things of this earth fail. They die. They may bring peace for a minute, but in the end they never fully satisfy. Look to the King who came for you and find the peace your heart longs for.

If you have done that, if you have found peace, then the last question is what do we do with?

What do we do with peace?

What do we do with Jesus? I think there are 6 practical steps that this passage gives us to live out of the peace that comes to us in Jesus. Here’s the first one:

Obey His instructions

At the beginning of this passage what does Jesus do? He provides very clear instructions for what his two disciples are supposed to do. Go to town, find a donkey, bring me the donkey, if anyone asks questions say this. No big deal. The disciples obey and find things to be just as Jesus had said.

God has given his word that doesn’t just tell us where to find peace, but how to live out that peace. This book contains everything that we need for life and godliness. If you want to live a life full of peace, then get to know the person who brings peace through His word and do what he calls you to do. This isn’t some sort of legalism that says, I’ve got to do this so that I can have peace, no it’s I have peace so I want to do what He asks me to do.

What’s another name for a police officer? It’s a peace officer. What do peace officers do? They keep the peace. How do they do it? They watch out for those who have broken the instructions given to them by the government for the purpose of maintaining peace. If you know the law and obey the law, then you’ll have peace. Our community will have peace, but when we break the law, we break peace. Likewise, if you want to maintain peace in your life live according to God’s Word. When you step away from it and decide to do things your way, peace might seem to be there, but it won’t last. Now, for you to obey His instructions do you know what this means? You’ve got to relinquish your rights.

Relinquish your rights

The disciples had to say, we trust you and think you know better, so we won’t argue with you. We’ll do what you ask. But it wasn’t just the disciples who had to relinquish their rights to thinking they know best, do you know who else had to? The owners of the colt! They had to relinquish their rights to their property

We had a really robust discussion over this in my DGroup this week, which men, if you aren’t in one then catch me after the service. I’ve only heard really encouraging things about them. I’m telling you, get plugged in.

Imagine for a second that you walk out of your house in the morning and you see someone backing out of your driveway in your vehicle. You’re like, wait, wait, wait! What are you doing? And the person rolls down the window and goes, “Don’t worry, the Lord has need of it.” What’s your response? I think mine might be, well let me introduce you to him!

But here’s the thing, either Jesus is King over all of your life or none of it at all. One of my favorite quotes is by Abraham Kuyper,

In the total expanse of human life there is not a single square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, “That is mine!”

Abraham Kuyper (Theologian and Politician)

Everything belongs to him! If Christ is truly king then you relinquish your rights to everything. Your time, your talent, your treasure is his. Now here’s the thing, if I have the view that everything I has belongs to him and based off this story I’ve seen his character and how he uses those things then I can know that when he takes that thing away or calls me to give it up not only is it for my good, but it’s for the good of others and magnification of Him! When I rest in the peace that is found in Jesus I can and do relinquish my rights.

When the disciples obeyed and the owners of the colts gave up their donkey then what happened? V37 The “multitude of disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen”

Worship Him

What’s the third thing? Worship Him. And I love this, with a loud voice. Sing loudly. Sing believing and shout from the rooftops who he is. When you see him do what only he can do the only right response is worship. But do you know what our problem often is? We walk throughout our days not recognizing the mighty works that he’s done and is doing all around us.

One question I ask in my DGroup each week, and I stole this from someone else, is where or how or what is something that you’ve seen God do or a way in which you’ve seen God move? Sometimes we immediately know the answer and other times we have to pause and think about it. The point is it’s a great question to reorient our hearts to a position of worship of the King. It’s why we start every service with a reading of Scripture—we want to reorient our hearts to reasons for why we sing. We want it to motivate our worship. So take that question, maybe here’s a simplified version of it—what can we celebrate about God today—and ask it to your spouse every night. Ask it to your kids every night. That way when you lay your head down to sleep your mind is on what God is done and who God is and not over the worries about tomorrow. Worship Him.

Weep over those separated

But the next thing this text shows us is that not everyone worships him and what is Jesus’ response to that? It’s to weep. If Jesus weeps for those who don’t recognize, then what should our response be? Should it be in judgment towards them? Should it be in pity? Or in self-righteousness? No, our hearts should break for the lack of peace that exists in our families, our communities, and our world—and not just strife, but a lack of knowing Jesus. Let me ask you this, when was the last time you wept over the lostness of someone’s soul?

Devote ourselves to prayer

Teach others about what he’s done

The King has come to bring peace.