Scripture: Matthew 21:1-11

Matthew 21:1–11 NIV

1 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.” 4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet: 5 “Say to Daughter Zion, ‘See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’ ” 6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Hosanna in the highest heaven!” 10 When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?” 11 The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

3/29/2026

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Standard

Palm Sunday - Children’s Procession during first song

Opening Prayer:

Prayer of Confession

Lord of all, we confess that we are quick to praise and slow to follow and even slower to forgive. We cry “Hosanna” on Sunday but deny You by our actions and words. Forgive us and teach us to live as faithful disciples of Christ. We pray this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Call to Worship

Leader: Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His steadfast love endures forever.

People: Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!

Leader: Hosanna to the Son of David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!

People: We come to worship the King who brings salvation.

Leader: Come, let us lift our voices in praise to the Lord of lords.

All: Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

Everyone

Movement 1: Series Recap — From Individuals to the Crowd

For the past several weeks, we've watched Jesus confront sin one person at a time. The devil. A scholar. A survivor. A blind man. The sick and the dead. Today, Jesus faces everyone. And by the end of this week, everyone will have to answer one question: Who is this?

We started this year in the Gospel of Matthew, and most of those encounters we just walked through came from the Gospel of John. Today we're back in Matthew, and I want to remind you of two things I've asked you to watch for whenever we're in Matthew's gospel. The first is geography, because knowing where these things take place makes a difference. The second is to pay attention when Matthew tells us that scripture is being fulfilled. Both of those are important in today's passage.

In each of those encounters, we saw Jesus approach people fearlessly despite physical, social, and spiritual barriers. We saw how he knew these people better than they knew themselves. And most importantly, we saw how he engaged sin and the effects of sin in their lives and left them transformed. But Jesus knew his days of interacting with people one-on-one were coming to an end.

As I read through the Gospels, the large groups of people Jesus was around seem to run either very hot or very cold. They get really excited when he's healing, or when he multiplied the fish and the loaves of bread and fed everyone. But that kind of excitement fades quickly.

Jesus spent most of his time on the road with those disciples closest to him, or in their small homes sharing meals with them, getting to know them personally as they grew to know and love him for who he was. So even as the excitement built toward this grand entry into Jerusalem, his official introduction as God's chosen Messiah, I wonder if Jesus was already missing some of those quieter times on the road with his closest friends.

Movement 2: The Political Landscape and the Plan

There was a plan in place for this day. Jerusalem was a city of division politically and religiously, the capital of a nation at its breaking point. You had to be big and bold enough to get the attention of the crowds. You had to be respectful of the many religious traditions, some from scripture and many handed down through the centuries, or you'd offend the religious leaders who held the hearts of the people. You had to be careful about how much change you were pushing, because the political leaders held power by position and wealth and had the ear of the Roman military. Whatever you were doing had to be big enough to matter but small enough not to make the Romans shut it down before it even got started.

Jesus really needed a public relations person with political expertise to navigate all of that and bring him to the heart of the city. Instead of that expertise, he had God and that Holy Spirit that had been guiding him every step of the way, from his baptism into the temptation in the wilderness and then throughout his ministry.

I think the disciples at this point, three years in with him, had begun to learn to follow him even if they had questions and didn't understand. It had not been that long since they'd been chased out of Jerusalem, were informed about Lazarus being sick, and watched Jesus wait around an extra two days and then tell them that Lazarus was not just sick, that he was dead. They followed him back into dangerous territory, thinking they were attending Lazarus' funeral, only to watch Jesus call him out of the tomb. That news spread quickly from Bethany, that suburb of Jerusalem, all throughout the city, and people were talking about him all over town before the parade even started.

Movement 3: The Humble Entry

The plan here was not just to build as big a crowd as possible. Jesus didn't always seem to have a lot of success with crowds. Matthew tells us that Jesus instead chose to make his entrance in a way that fulfilled or brought to life what the prophet Zechariah spoke centuries earlier.

"Say to Daughter Zion," a reference to Jerusalem, "See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey." So Jesus sent his disciples ahead of him to find that donkey with its colt waiting for him. They went obediently, found it, and brought it to him, no questions asked.

But there were other scripture passages that Jesus could have chosen to be his theme verse for the day, riding into Jerusalem. He could have come on a war horse trampling through the vineyards to the chorus of Glory, Glory, Hallelujah instead of on the donkey with palm branches to the tune of Hosanna. That might have even pleased the crowds more that day.

But just as we've seen in all of Jesus' encounters, Jesus is not about making a spectacle or making a point. He is who he is. He doesn't have to show off. He just shows up [★], and what we experience is the Son of God entering our lives.

Here's someone who needs no war horse to walk in and capture the hearts of the people. He needs no crown to have their unquestioning obedience. He doesn't need a team of scouts to prepare his messages because they're his people. He knows us better than we know ourselves. It's not just his words, but his every action speaks more clearly and more directly to our minds and hearts and souls than we are comfortable receiving.

Nothing about him is extravagant. Nothing about him is especially unique. He was likely not the first or the last person to ride in through a gate on a donkey that day. He doesn't have to be any of those things because he's Jesus. We, just like the city of Jerusalem that day, cannot help but be in awe and welcome him into our lives when he shows up.

Movement 4: "Who Is This?" — The Central Question

The Spirit of God that sailed him from the Jordan River through the wilderness for forty days, across the country of Israel and Samaria for three years, brought him at last to this final trip to Jerusalem, and that Spirit on him was impossible to ignore. That shouldn't surprise us, because that's the same kind of response he got from Nicodemus, the woman at the well, the blind man, and the people gathered around Lazarus' tomb.

But welcoming him in is not the same as understanding him, and it's really not the same as having a real relationship with him. That day, Jerusalem was full of people from all across the country and even from beyond its borders. Many of them had been talking about Jesus since they heard about Lazarus coming back from the dead.

Matthew tells us that those who hadn't heard the news were asking about who this Jesus was, because back then Jesus was probably as common a name as Joshua is today. The crowds answered back, "This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee." To many people, that probably sounded like the prophet from Two Sticks in Flat Rock County. Where is that? So this is nobody of any importance coming from nowhere, riding in on a donkey. Tell me again, why is the city all stirred up about this?

Their question is the root of the gospel message. Who is this? It's the question the devil asked Jesus in the wilderness: "If you are the Son of God." It's the question Jesus answered for Nicodemus and for the woman at the well. It's the question the blind man faced, because everybody asked him, "Who was it that healed you?" I think it's the question everybody, even his closest friends, were asking when they watched him call Lazarus out of the tomb.

Who is this? Here is somebody who should not be able to command my attention, yet I cannot turn my eyes away. Who is this that I shouldn't even notice, and yet there's something in my heart that wants to surrender, that wants to leave everything and follow him wherever he goes? Who is this that comes with no strength or might or powerful words of wisdom, and yet I would surrender my life to him?

They all called him a prophet because they didn't have a word for what they were experiencing when they were with him. In their minds, the Messiah would be too great and glorious to notice them. But this Jesus was so small and so humble. He noticed everything. They didn't have a word for that.

Movement 5: The Spirit of the World Pushes Back

But they didn't have a word for the discomfort that was growing either. Even as the crowd welcomed Jesus, even as the questions arose, something else was stirring. Yes, the Spirit of God was in him, but that city and those people had a spirit of their own, and it was not the Spirit of God. It was the spirit that had ruled their lives and had ruled the lives of all humanity since Adam and Eve fell in the Garden of Eden.

We're going to hear the rest of the story later this week. But we know that one question, "Who is this?" is going to come back, and it's going to grow sharper and sharper until it becomes a weapon meant to wound Jesus. The foreign rulers will put a sign over him that says "King of the Jews" and call him the Son of God at his death. But his own people? The ones who recognized him? Who welcomed him in for a day, for a week? Even some who left everything and followed him for three years? They couldn't take it. That spirit that lives in their hearts and in their communities and in their families and in the world had too much hold on them.

Movement 6: Freedom in Jesus — He Came to Save, Not Condemn

That same spirit is at work in our lives too. It is anchored into our lives by sin. It comes in and tries to run our lives like those credit companies trying to convince us to refinance our mortgages and loans. When Jesus comes into our lives, forgives us, and sets us free from those sins, we begin to find ourselves strangely free. Those creditors have no authority. In fact, they have nothing to offer us when our debts have been paid.

Yet that spirit of the world tells us that we were born sinners, that we will sin every day of our lives, and that we will die sinners. It will give us one, two, or ten rules to follow to try to manage that sin and keep it as small and unnoticeable as possible.

Think back to those people that Jesus encountered. Think back to the disciples who followed him through most of those encounters. People like Peter, James, and John were always in the presence of Jesus. They should have felt guilty for the sins that they committed every day with him standing right there watching, but none of that was ever written down, because when they were with him, they were no longer worried about sin. Did they do everything perfectly? Absolutely not. Did they make mistakes? Every day. Jesus talked to them about some of those mistakes.

Did that keep them from growing closer to him every day? From learning more about God? From following him wherever he led them? From preaching, teaching, healing, and performing miracles right with him? When they were with Jesus, sin had no hold on their lives. Where they once lived a life in a losing struggle with sin, Jesus gave them the power to confront it and claim victory over it each day. [★]That may be the reason that Jesus is the biggest threat this world has ever faced.

There were people who avoided Jesus because his presence exposed the sin around him. There are people still today who avoid anything that looks like, sounds like, or feels like Jesus, because they know he exposes the sin in everybody. They don't want to feel that shame. Maybe you've felt like that. Maybe you feel like that today.

But exposing sin is not all Jesus does. He can charge into our lives with a whip on a war horse, but he doesn't come to punish us. He came to save us, not to condemn us. So he makes himself small, humble, gentle, riding in on a donkey to the chorus of Hosanna. Save us, Lord. And he will. With his last breath, his last drop of blood, whatever it takes, whatever the cost, he will save us. Will we let him?

Movement 7: The Invitation — Who Is He to You?

Jesus could have crushed us under the weight of his glory, and we would have deserved it, but he chose to come in humbly and gently. Paul wrote to the Romans that it was not power or wrath that brought people back to God. It is His kindness that leads us to repentance. Will we do more than just welcome him in for a moment? Will we welcome him into our lives, our minds and hearts and souls, so he can do what only he can do and unhook those twisted barbs of sin that are anchored deep within us and set us free?

In the days and weeks ahead, we're going to ask ourselves:

What would we do with our money if we were free from debt?

What would we do with our time and our strength and our energy if we were free from our addictions and our vices and the things that steal those away from us?

What would we do with our hearts if we were free from guilt and shame?

Some of us can't even imagine what that would look like or feel like or be like. But all of that possibility, all of that potential, all of that hope is going to hinge on the one question that everyone asked the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on that donkey. Who is he, and more specifically, who is he to you? [★]

Closing Prayer

Lord, we pray for your love and your mercy and your forgiveness and your grace, because we know we are sinners, and we know we live in a broken world, and we know we will die without you. Every time you come into our lives, it surprises us how powerful and plain and true and gentle and loving you are. That spirit of the world and our sinful nature cry out that you are too much for us, and we find ourselves having an allergic reaction to your presence. All too often, there's something deep inside of us that watches and wants to push you away.

Lord, help us to see that the person deep inside of us who watches this all go down, who cried out to you for help in the first place, and who weeps at what our sinful hands and sinful mouths and sinful feet do to you... that person is who we truly are. That is who you came to save. Help us to let go of what we want you to do and to trust you with our lives. You know us better. You have the power to set us free. Your kindness, your gentleness, and your commitment to give us everything you have and all that you are prove that you love us even more than we love ourselves.

Lord, as we watch you this week, do the work of saving our souls and bringing us new life. Set us free to follow you faithfully. In Jesus' name, amen.