Luke #44: The King Arrives (19:28-48)
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Luke 19:28-48
N:
Welcome
Welcome
Bye, kids!
Good morning! I’m Bill Connors, senior pastor here with Eastern Hills, and I’m blessed to be here this morning as the church gathers together to worship the Lord and to reflect on His Word. I pray that this time is a blessing to you as well, but more than anything, I pray that our joining together today brings honor and glory to God, and points us to Him. I wanted to take a moment this morning and say thanks to our praise band Worship 4:24. They work really hard to be prepared to lead us in musical worship and praise each Sunday morning, and I appreciate their hearts, talents, and faithfulness.
If you’re visiting with us for the first time today, I hope that you’ve already discovered that Eastern Hills is loving, friendly, supportive, and encouraging church body. We invite you, if you are a guest with us today, to fill out a communication card, which you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you. Then you can drop that in the offering boxes by the doors on your way out after service, or you can bring them down to me at the front following our benediction at the end, as I would love to meet you and give you a small gift to thank you for your visit with us today. If you’re online, and visiting with us today, feel free to head over to our website ehbc.org, and fill out the communication card on the “I’m New” page. Whether you’re here in the room or online, we just want to be able to send you a note thanking you for your visit today, and to see if we can pray for you or minister to you in some way.
Announcements
Announcements
Don’t forget that we have our bi-monthly business meeting tonight at 5:30 here in the sanctuary. We’ll be voting on the budget that we discussed a couple of weeks ago, among other things. Please plan to be here to participate in that vote if you are a church member.
Opening
Opening
Welcome to Palm Sunday. Not really, but it’s the passage that we’ll be looking at this morning in our study of Luke. Most of the last five-and-a-half chapters of Luke’s story of the King cover a mere eight days of time: from the Sunday before Passover through resurrection morning. Today’s passage on the Triumphal Entry begins what is commonly referred to as Passion week.
As we saw through the parable of the minas last Sunday, as Jesus approached Jerusalem in anticipation of Passover, the people expected that the Kingdom of God was going to be fully consummated upon His arrival. They expected one kind of King. But instead, we will see this morning that the Triumphal Entry and the verses that follow it describe the arrival of this King as something very different from their expectation.
So please stand as you are able to do so, in honor of the reading of the Word of God this morning, and turn in your Bibles or Bible apps to Luke 19, where I will begin reading in verse 28.
28 When he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples 30 and said, “Go into the village ahead of you. As you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say this: ‘The Lord needs it.’ ” 32 So those who were sent left and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34 “The Lord needs it,” they said. 35 Then they brought it to Jesus, and after throwing their clothes on the colt, they helped Jesus get on it. 36 As he was going along, they were spreading their clothes on the road. 37 Now he came near the path down the Mount of Olives, and the whole crowd of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the miracles they had seen: 38 Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven! 39 Some of the Pharisees from the crowd told him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” 40 He answered, “I tell you, if they were to keep silent, the stones would cry out.” 41 As he approached and saw the city, he wept for it, 42 saying, “If you knew this day what would bring peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 For the days will come on you when your enemies will build a barricade around you, surround you, and hem you in on every side. 44 They will crush you and your children among you to the ground, and they will not leave one stone on another in your midst, because you did not recognize the time when God visited you.” 45 He went into the temple and began to throw out those who were selling, 46 and he said, “It is written, my house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves!” 47 Every day he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people were looking for a way to kill him, 48 but they could not find a way to do it, because all the people were captivated by what they heard.
PRAYER (Thank God for the end to the government shutdown, and pray that we learned something as a nation from it.. pray for Zach)
I have said many times over the last few years since my trip to Israel that going there is like reading the Bible in color. It’s really incredible to be in the Holy Land, walking in these same places, seeing these same things (albeit 2000 years later). And as a side note: we’re going to Israel as a church in February of 2027. Check the website (ehbc.org/trip) for more information about that trip.
So when I read something like this morning’s passage, I can in some ways “see” it. I’ve been on the Mount of Olives. I’ve seen the Kidron Valley that Jesus would have crossed to enter the Temple complex through the eastern Golden Gate. In fact, here’s a picture that I took while standing near the bottom of the Mount of Olives...leave this picture up until the first point. Since laser pointers just don’t work well on LED screens, all I can do is explain and shoot the wall near the screen. The green valley filled with olive trees that you see in the bottom of the photo is the Kidron Valley. The structure at the top of the photo is the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The double gate that you see up here is the eastern gate to the Temple complex. This gate was called the Golden Gate, likely for the very reason that it faces east, so would catch the rising of the sun as it came up over the Mount of Olives in the morning. It was finally walled off in 1541 by Ottoman Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent, and cannot be accessed.
It is entirely possible that Jesus walked right across that valley and through that gate when He entered Jerusalem for His (though He could have gone through any other gate into the Temple as well, as most people generally entered the temple through the Southern Gate).
The picture that Jesus was painting in His Triumphal Entry was completely intentional. He was making a statement with how He came into Jerusalem that day. He was declaring, without any doubt, that He is the coming Messiah, and the people (while they may not have known the full meaning behind His arrival) agreed. But again, Jesus didn’t come as they expected Him to. He came as the King, yes. But not as a military leader. He came as a conqueror, but not of a human enemy. He came as Messiah, yes. But not to offer salvation only to Israel, but to the whole world.
So how did King Jesus come and declare His royalty? He came in peace. He came in victory. He came in compassion, and He came in righteousness.
1: The King comes in peace.
1: The King comes in peace.
Jesus didn’t come with an army and a sword, even though that’s what most of the people expected of Him. He didn’t come on a mighty charger, rearing up at the head of His forces arrayed behind Him. Instead, He came in almost the lowliest of ways, because He was sending a message: He came in peace.
28 When he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples 30 and said, “Go into the village ahead of you. As you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say this: ‘The Lord needs it.’ ” 32 So those who were sent left and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34 “The Lord needs it,” they said. 35 Then they brought it to Jesus, and after throwing their clothes on the colt, they helped Jesus get on it.
Jesus had traveled from Jericho after staying with Zacchaeus, and then traveled the approximately 14 miles from Jericho to Jersualem, climbing from a lowly elevation of about 800 feet below sea level to about 2600 feet above sea level over that distance. As He approached Jerusalem, He sent two of His disciples ahead (not sure which two) and had them basically “requisition” a donkey foal who had never been ridden for Jesus to ride into the city. To requisition an animal from the populace was the prerogative of the King, and He told the disciples to declare that the Lord needed the animal if they were asked. It was that simple.
I believe that in His Divine knowledge He knew about the colt and how the interaction with the disciples would go, not that He had somehow planned this ahead of time with the owners of the donkey (when would He have done so?).
As I said earlier, this whole scene is absolutely, completely intentional. Jesus didn’t accidentally choose to do this. He was fulfilling a prophecy about Himself from hundreds of years before, found in the book of Zechariah:
9 Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout in triumph, Daughter Jerusalem! Look, your King is coming to you; he is righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
No one would have missed this connection, especially given what they were anticipating (the arrival of the kingdom of God), and soon would be declaring in the excitement of His arrival.
But again, this wasn’t the arrival of a warlord or general. This was the arrival of the Son of God, the Prince of Peace, God in the flesh and in all His fullness, the ambassador of reconciliation between God and mankind, who would bring that peace through His death. Paul wrote in Colossians 1:
19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
I don’t know about you, but I think this world could use more peace. I think this country could use more peace. I think our lives could use more peace. But the problem is that we are simply terrible at peace. In so many ways, we are focused on building our own kingdoms, and as a result, we are in conflict with both God and one another. But our King Jesus came in peace, with peace, as peace, and for peace.
We’ve already seen how He came in peace. But He came with peace as well, and after His death, He promised that He would leave His peace with His disciples:
27 “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Don’t let your heart be troubled or fearful.
Jesus’s peace isn’t like the world’s idea of peace. As we trust in Christ, following Him, focusing on Him, we experience this peace that only He can give, as the prophet Isaiah said:
3 You will keep the mind that is dependent on you in perfect peace, for it is trusting in you.
But Jesus also came as peace. What does this mean? It means that He is the source and center of true peace with both God and others. Without Jesus, peace with God is impossible, because we stand condemned apart from faith in Christ. We need justification, and His sacrifice is our justification:
1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
And He also is the source of true and lasting peace between people: even between vastly different people, such as the Jews and the Gentiles.
14a For he is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility.
And Jesus also came for peace: that as we follow Him, we ourselves become agents of His peace in the world. We are to be peacemakers.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
We just talked about this a couple of weeks ago in Pastor’s Bible Study: How are we peacemakers? When we share the Gospel of Jesus Christ, telling others that peace is available through Him, being at peace with one another in the church so that those who look upon us will see a people of peace, seeking to be agents of His peace in our neighborhoods, workplaces, and anywhere else we might find ourselves, even (as far as it is possible from our end) with our enemies. Our King comes in peace, and we get to declare that message to the world.
To be fair: Could Jesus have come in awesome power? Yep. But His purpose wasn’t the overthrow of Rome. It was victory over sin, death, and the enmity between us and God. He brings peace through His victory.
2: The King comes in victory.
2: The King comes in victory.
Jesus’s mission of bringing peace between God and mankind was necessary because we had gone astray. We rebelled against our good, loving Father, and went our own direction, thinking that we know better than He does. And as a result, all of humanity became enslaved to this cruel master called sin. But sin leads to death, and not just physical death, but spiritual death. Jesus came in victory over sin, and would bring victory over death as well.
36 As he was going along, they were spreading their clothes on the road. 37 Now he came near the path down the Mount of Olives, and the whole crowd of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the miracles they had seen: 38 Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven! 39 Some of the Pharisees from the crowd told him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” 40 He answered, “I tell you, if they were to keep silent, the stones would cry out.”
Mark records an additional word that Luke didn’t include in His account: the word, “Hosanna!”
9 Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted: Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! 10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!
There is no contradiction here between the two statements. For one, Luke like left off “hosanna” because his initial audience would not have understood it. Secondly, if there is a crowd of people all yelling in praise, they aren’t all going to say precisely the same words in the same order.
But the word “hosanna” is itself a prayer for victory: it means “please save us!”
Picture the scene if you will. Put the picture back up (can you get the text of verse 38 over it?). Crowds of people who have seen and experienced Jesus’s teaching and His miraculous ministry have gathered basically on the top of the Mount of Olives, cheering and shouting and praising the Lord. What would that sound like? Would you like to know? We can do that! Could we take just 10 seconds to cheer and shout and praise God because of Jesus? Feel free to shout the very words Luke wrote in verse 38.
TURN YOUR MIC OFF. GO! Ten seconds...
How did it go?
Can you feel the excitement of the people as the Messiah came over the top of the Mount of Olives? What a moment that must have been!
Luke records that the people were throwing their clothes on the ground before Jesus, a display of humility and honor for the King, and John recorded that they took palm branches and waved them and threw them down as well as an act of worship and praise.
But just like Jesus’s actions in coming in on a donkey’s colt was intentional to display His identity as the Messiah, the King of Israel, so the things that the people say and do are intentional. They’re responses show that they think that Jesus is exactly who He is saying that He is.
They quote a declaration of blessing from Psalm 118:25-26, a psalm about thanksgiving for victory, which Michael read earlier in the service.
25 Lord, save us! Lord, please grant us success! 26 He who comes in the name of the Lord is blessed. From the house of the Lord we bless you.
The palm branches were a symbol of victory for the Jews, and waving them signaled the Jewish hope of liberation and freedom. And this would not be the first time that Hebrew people threw their clothes on the ground for their king to travel across:
13 Each man quickly took his garment and put it under Jehu on the bare steps. They blew the trumpet and proclaimed, “Jehu is king!”
Still, even with all the excitement and anticipation, the victory imagery and declarations, this wasn’t the victory they expected. They thought the Christ was about to come into Jerusalem as a conquering king to throw off the shackles of Roman oppression and set Israel above the other nations, but they were mistaken.
In his commentary on this passage, Grant R. Osborne writes:
Jesus’ purpose here is to show that he will not be the conquering messiah they are expecting who will bring the armies of heaven to destroy Israel’s enemies. Rather, he is the Suffering Servant, who is coming to defeat a different enemy, the sinfulness of humankind, and bring messianic peace, as symbolized by the donkey.
— Grant R. Osborne, Luke: Verse by Verse
Jesus came to conquer, but not the foe the Jews thought He would conquer. He came to defeat sin and death, to fulfill the cry of “Hosanna!” by setting us free from that which had enslaved us. And He did so by dying on the cross and rising from the grave. His victory is our victory if we belong to Him through faith.
3 For this is what love for God is: to keep his commands. And his commands are not a burden, 4 because everyone who has been born of God conquers the world. This is the victory that has conquered the world: our faith.
It is through faith in Jesus that we become conquerors—more than conquerors, as Paul wrote in Romans 8:
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We always have hope, because the victory is assured. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ. Nothing. And on that day that He came into Jerusalem, nothing was going to stop the praise.
The Pharisees (in the last time they are mentioned in Luke) object to the praise because they know what it means. They know that the people are declaring Jesus to be the Messiah, which they felt was blasphemous. So they tell Him to stop them from saying so, since He was the object of their praise and worship. It’s sad that even surrounded by the praise and rejoicing, the Pharisees—the ones who claimed to be so faithful, so pious, so worthy of respect and imitation—were the ones trying to pour water on the flames of worship.
But Jesus told them that it didn’t matter: that even if the people were to stop declaring His praise, that the praise would not cease, because the rocks would take up the cry themselves. Even if it would take a miracle, praise was going to happen…as we praise the Lord for His incredible grace, the creation joins in the refrain, as Isaiah wrote:
12 You will indeed go out with joy and be peacefully guided; the mountains and the hills will break into singing before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
The King comes in peace. The King comes in victory, and as we see His response to seeing the city before Him, He comes in compassion.
3: The King comes in compassion.
3: The King comes in compassion.
Even in the midst of the tumult around Him from the celebration of His arrival, and the declaration of His identity as Messiah, Jesus looks out across the city of Jerusalem as He begins His descent down the Mount of Olives, and in His compassion because of what He knows will take place, He is moved to tears:
41 As he approached and saw the city, he wept for it, 42 saying, “If you knew this day what would bring peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 For the days will come on you when your enemies will build a barricade around you, surround you, and hem you in on every side. 44 They will crush you and your children among you to the ground, and they will not leave one stone on another in your midst, because you did not recognize the time when God visited you.”
Even on the day that Jesus refers to as “this day”—the day of His arrival, our Savior wept over the lostness of His people. He wept because of what He knew was coming in their future. And it’s actually kind of ironic: the Prince of Peace came, offering peace to Jerusalem—which literally means “Foundation of Peace”—and they would reject His offer, and within a week, He would be arrested, tried, condemned, and crucified. To be fair, it’s highly doubtful that any of the people who were praising Him at this moment took place in the cries to crucify Him on the following Friday. It was their leaders who would condemn the city, something that Jesus had predicted would happen back in Luke 13:
34 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! 35 See, your house is abandoned to you. I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’!”
His prediction for Jerusalem would be fulfilled in the year 70 AD, when General Titus besieged Jerusalem for months following a Jewish uprising, and then in a massacre that ended on September 8 of that year, Jerusalem was razed, the temple was burned and demolished, and likely around a million Jews had been killed.
The imagery that Jesus uses of the coming difficulty for Jerusalem was not new to the Jews. They had heard and even experienced these things before, but had refused to learn. Passages like Isaiah 29:3 and 37:33, as well as Jeremiah 6:6 and Ezekiel 4:1-3 all reflect times in Israel’s past where God brought this kind of judgment on them because of their rebellion against Him.
But still: Jesus’s compassion for the wayward Jews is beautiful. And His compassion should be our compassion. Have you ever had your heart broken for the lost? When was the last time you wept over your own sin? How often do you weep over a brother or sister’s sin, or the consequences that that brother or sister was experiencing because of their sin, instead of simply condemning them for it? How likely are we to show compassion and care for one another, to seek to be like-minded and sympathetic to one another, as Peter wrote in his first epistle?
8 Finally, all of you be like-minded and sympathetic, love one another, and be compassionate and humble, 9 not paying back evil for evil or insult for insult but, on the contrary, giving a blessing, since you were called for this, so that you may inherit a blessing.
The King came in compassion, and so should we—we should choose to respond with gentle curiosity and compassion to one another, even if we disagree. But that doesn’t mean that we simply accept sin, which Jesus also did not do. Instead, He came in righteousness, which is our last point.
4: The King comes in righteousness.
4: The King comes in righteousness.
When I say that the King comes in righteousness, I mean this in two aspects, both of which we see in our focal passage this morning: First, He came in righteousness by confronting sin, and secondly, through His teaching of righteousness in the last week of His earthly ministry before His crucifixion.
45 He went into the temple and began to throw out those who were selling, 46 and he said, “It is written, my house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves!” 47 Every day he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people were looking for a way to kill him, 48 but they could not find a way to do it, because all the people were captivated by what they heard.
The confronting of the sellers was probably the next day, Monday of Passion week, because Luke compresses the time of the week a bit in these verses. But Jesus went into the temple courts and drove out those who were “selling,” which would have included those making money by selling sacrificial animals and other offering supplies for the people to use for their sacrifices, as well as those who were turning a profit by acting as money-changers, since there was just one type of coin (the Tyrian silver half-shekel) that was acceptable for paying the temple tax. People could come with any other kind of currency and exchange it for the correct one, for a fee of course.
Jesus was incensed about this because the temple court was not the place for commerce. It was a place to commune with God, to confess sin, to bring your legitimate offerings and sacrifices, and to pray.
In His condemnation, Jesus quotes from two Old Testament passages: Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11:
7 I will bring them to my holy mountain and let them rejoice in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”
11 Has this house, which bears my name, become a den of robbers in your view? Yes, I too have seen it. This is the Lord’s declaration.
This confronting of sin did not ingratiate Him to those who were in charge of the temple—the chief priests (who possibly were receiving kickbacks from the sellers), as well as the scribes and other religious leaders. The people, however, were enthralled by Jesus’s leadership and teaching. It was His last week before His death, and He spent every day in the temple teaching the people. It reminds us of when He was a boy and came to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage with his parents, and the focus He had on the things of God:
49 “Why were you searching for me?” he asked them. “Didn’t you know that it was necessary for me to be in my Father’s house?”
We will have the privilege of reading some of Jesus’s teachings from this final week in the next couple of chapters of Luke.
But it didn’t matter to the religious leaders. The King had come, and they wanted nothing to do with Him. In fact, they wanted Him dead if they could just figure out how to make it happen without causing a riot of all the people who believed in Him. This was not new, either. We’ve seen several occurrences of their animosity toward Jesus throughout our study of Luke: 6:11 and 11:53-54, for example.
Jesus came in righteousness. He would not stand for sin, and He spoke the truth about God to people. And just as the other traits that we’ve seen this morning of Jesus’s arrival should be ours as well, His righteousness is already ours if we have surrendered our lives to Him in faith. We are declared to be righteous because He is righteous, as Paul wrote in Romans:
22 The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, since there is no distinction. 23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24 they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
18 So then, as through one trespass there is condemnation for everyone, so also through one righteous act there is justification leading to life for everyone. 19 For just as through one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so also through the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
And as such, we should make no room for sin in our lives. We should stand against it within our hearts as Jesus stood against it within the temple. We should speak the truth to one another so that we all might mature in the faith, and pray for one another so that we might be healed. We should shine like stars in the world, so that people will glorify God because of the evidence of His grace in our lives. We should long for Jesus’s righteousness to be evident in our present, even as it is guaranteed in our future, and submit to the work of God in that sanctification.
Closing
Closing
The King has arrived at His destination—Where He will die for the sins of humanity, so that we might surrender to Him in faith and be saved.
Is Jesus your King? Have you surrendered to Him, believing that He died for your forgiveness, and rose for your victory? Is He your Savior and Lord?
Baptism
Church membership
Prayer
Giving
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Bible reading (Heb 9:1-10:18, Ps 127)
No Pastor’s Study because of business meeting. Wendy’s afterwards
Prayer Meeting
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
Hymn 570: “The Trees of the Field” (from Isa 55:12)
You shall go out with joy and be led forth with peace;
The mountains and the hills will break forth before you.
There’ll be shouts of joy and all the trees of the field
Will clap, will clap their hands.
And all the trees of the field will clap their hands;
The trees of the field will clap their hands;
The trees of the field will clap their hands
While you go out with joy.
