Palm Sunday
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Good evening, good to see everyone tonight, Open your Bibles if you will to the eleventh chapter of the gospel of Mark.
In this scripture we come to the final week of our Lords life, and his ministry. This is the week of the end, the end of this week is the cross and the resurrection. So in a sense from this passage we only have a week to go before Jesus goes to the cross and dies in our place for our sins.
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:1-
The week begins with Jesus arriving in Jerusalem, its the passover week of that year. Friday will be the day when tens of thousands of passover lambs will be slaughtered, none of which can take away anyone’s sin.
Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.’ ” And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it. And some of those standing there said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go. And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!”
And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
Mark 11:1-
But on this particular passover there will be one sacrifice made for sin, that will take away every sin for anyone who will ever believe on Jesus. That’s because when Jesus came He was the true Lamb of God who came to atone for the sins of the world.
(Let’s Pray)
Well tonight we are looking again at a passage most of this group has heard before, but it is the day when the Lord road into the city and was greeted by the waving of palm branches and all of the fanfare that we have come to know.
The week begins with this weird event, it’s an odd scene to me. We call it the triumphal entry of Jesus but thats not really a full enough title for what is happening here.
I don’t want you to think this is an official crowning, it is not really triumphant to the Jews, it isn’t official to them, it isn’t official in a Heavenly sense. That’s why some pastors call it the false crowning of the True King.
However today we join together with millions all around the world who celebrate Palm Sunday. On this particular day this event where Jesus rides in is happening at the beginning of passion week. We need to understand that this happened during the time of passover, the people who would have been celebrating this Jewish festival would have been looking back to their deliverance from the bondage that their forefathers went through in Egypt.
I tend to agree with them, there isn’t any question about Jesus at all He is the promised King, He is the Son of God, He is the Son of David and has every right to the throne in Israel, He has every right to reign.
(passover)
He has demonstrated the fact that He is God throughout His ministry, He has shown and proclaimed that He is God in every way. He is the true king, but this is not a true crowning.
They were also looking forward to a future day when they believed the Messiah was going to come and they would be restored to prominence as a nation.
That’s why its so weird, the people weren’t expressing true faith, they weren’t truly praising Him it wasn’t God’s crowning either. What did happen was an odd event, not like any other royal crowning that ever happened.
When we celebrate these high holy days of Christianity its easy to see that this is something that should strengthen our faith, and we should approach this passage not as som
Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.’ ” And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it. And some of those standing there said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go. And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!”
And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
Mark 11:1-
That’s an odd ending for a crowning ceremony isn’t it?
It’s because it wasn’t really a royal precession, coronations aren’t humble, they aren’t unexpected, they aren’t unplanned, they aren’t unoffical, spontaneous, they aren’t temporary but this was all of those.
When a King is crowned that decision is not reversed in a few days so that the One who was elevated becomes rejected and executed. Like this One, JESUS IS THE REAL KING and He is worthy of all praise and all honor but this is the false crowning of the true King.
The true crowning of Jesus has 2 parts one has already happened and one has not. The first phase of the crowning of Jesus as King happened at His ascension, when He left this Earth like we read about in the first chapter of the book of Acts and ascended into Heaven.
Were told by Hebrews that at that time He took His seat at the right hand of the Father, this was His first crowning and His true crowning.
says that when He arrived He not only took His seat at the right hand of God but He was given a name He was given was the name Lord, which is the name above EVERY NAME and everyone in existence bows to that name.
He has already had His crowning in Heaven, He is reigning right now at the right hand of the throne of God, He is the Sovereign Lord of Heaven.
But He hasn’t been crowned yet on Earth, describes His Heavenly crowning while describe His Earthly crowning. In the future the Lord will return to the Earth not riding on the colt of a donkey but on a white Horse according to , coming out of Heaven.
Followed by the armies of Heaven following in white riding on white horses in a massive unleashing of power on the Earth lead by Christ and when He arrives He will destroy the ungodly in a massive judgment and He will establish His rightful seat in Jerusalem for a thousand years and beyond that forever and ever.
HIS KINGDOM HAS NO END!
That is when Jesus is crowned on Earth this is not the crowning of Jesus. There are no dignitaries here in this scene, there is no red carpet, no trumpets sounding, no fan fare, this is alot like when He was born.
When Jesus was born His mother is in humble obscurity, in the middle of nowhere riding on a donkey looking for somewhere to lay her head.
Here He arrives in Jerusalem riding on a donkey, yes he is the true King of Kings and Lord of Lords and no King compares to the Lord Jesus Christ.
All the king and presidents and emporers stacked on top of one another could not come close to even touching the hem of His garment.
Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples
Mark 11
This is where we have to start He was doing ministry in Galilee and now it is finished, His ministry in Judea is finished.
Now that He realizes His time has come to die for the sins of the world He comes to Jerusalem, and we need to understand that as you ride into Jerusalem, it is about 2,000 ft ascent to make it up the mountain and enter the city.
He has a massive crowd that has been growing because after all He is a miracle worker, He is surrounded by a large crowd they are all around Him.
The word has spread and will continue to spread that He raised a man named Lazarus from the dead. That is a true miracle because they had already had his funeral and he had been dead for days and there is plenty of evidence that he is ow alive because the Bible says that now he lives in Bethany.
So the news of Him raising Lazarus from the dead has spread and they are excited and they are following Him and they are pumped and they approach Jerusalem.
His plan He laid it out
And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. And they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him,
saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles.
And they will mock him and spit on him, and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.”
He was not planning to be crowned, He was not planning to take His kingdom, He wasn’t going to overthrow the Romans like the people were hoping He would do. He wasn’t going to set Israel free as a nation, those were all things they were hoping He would do, but He was coming to be killed by the leaders of Israel themselves, to die and rise again.
Why?
For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”
He came to die to pay the penalty for sin which is death and He came to do that for you and for me, to satisfy the righteous judge so that God could then offer forgiveness to everyone who would repent.
Before He will ever come to reign He had to come and die. Now up to this point Jesus had never allowed something like this to happen. He had never allowed an open public proclamation of Him being the Messiah.
He had never allowed it, there was one time when the people tried to push Him into sort of taking authority and taking the kingdom, He fled the scene, because He knew what would happen, and what would happen would not be positive because it wasn’t the way that He would want to establish His purpose.
Not by taking authority weilding power and creating His kingdom. that would come and it will come when He returns, but this time He came to die, he never allowed these things to happen and the reason is because it would cause the leaders who already wanted Him dead to act more quickly to take Him out.
Understand right from the start the Jewish leaders the Leaders of the church wanted to kill him, it all started that way, because the first thing He did was go into the Temple and attack the place. He tore it apart.
Then He spent 3 years discrediting what they thought they knew about God. He undermined them by helping the poor understand the heart of God. Any kind of massive event like this that made them think His popularity was growing would have been a threat to the leaders and they would have done everything in their power to kill him sooner.
He never let it happen, but here he lets it happen, here the real planner is God, because this is the week he must die, so He allows this to happen because their desire to kill Him had to be set off now.
They werent prepare to kill him on the passover even the gospel tells us they didn’t wanna arrest Him. Because they were afraid of the people, but they didn’t have a choice.
They were so afraid of His escalating power they had to speed up there plan to kill Him. that’s exactly how God wanted it so that on Friday on the passover He would be the passover lamb.
This was designed by God not to truthfully crown Him but to incite the leaders against at precisely the right timeto get things moving so there would be time for a trial and execution on exactly the right day.
He wanted this to happen while there was the biggest crowd, so that His enemies would be really threatened and execute Him on God’s divine timetable.
There was probably about 2 million people on passover. They estimate this because there is a record that over 10 years after this that over a quarter of a million lambs were slain. Usually there was one lamb for 10 people that would put the number at over 2 million people, it was a huge crowd.
The crowd around Jesus could have been in the hundred of thousands. This was the time to let this happen, to agrrivate his enemies so that Jesus would be being killed at the same time all of the passover lambs were being killed.
It’s Saturday Jesus goes into a little town called Bethany because H had some friends there, Mary Martha and Lazarus which he raised from the dead.
Heres something interesting I found, Bethany is not called BEthany anymore it’s called la Lazarea named after Lazarus.
He comes into their home and Mary anoints his feet remember that? She was anointing His feet and who had an issue with this? Judas because he had the money bag and he was wanting to gain as much money as he could.
That was on Saturday
The next day was Sunday according to John a large group came into bethany and it says they came to see Jesus and Lazarus whom He had raised from the dead.
The city is swelling with passover visitors the word is spreading about this guy who raised someone from the dead, they wanna see this man and Jesus.
John 12:
This is a problem for the leaders.
So it tells us that the chief preists took counsel to kill Lazarus. I mean how hard hearted are you, you dont deny the guy was raised from the dead and now your gonna try to kill him again?
That sounds crazy doesn’t it.
all these Jews come to see them, its now Monday the next day after the crowds arrived in Bethany that Jesus approached Jerusalem. That’s Monday, so really if you wanna get down to the brass tax here, it could really be called Palm Monday.
I think this is important because if you were a Jew and you wanted to select a lamb to slaughtered for the sins of your family, that lamb had to be set apart on the 10th of the Jewish month Nisan.
The 10th of nisan was Monday.
Thats when God’s sacrificial lamb arrived and also the sacrificial lamb had to be sacrficed on the 14th and thats Friday we call it good friday because thats when JEsus died on the cross.
He came on Monday and after the crowds shouted and waved the palm branches he left went back to Bethany on Tuesday came back to Jerusalem on Wednesday cursed the fig tree cleansed the Temple a second time went back to Bethany on Wednesday he got into it with the leaders gave his sermon on His second coming and Judas planned His betrayal.
On Thursday his disciples prepared for the passover and He spent time in the garden of Gethsemane He was arrested and tried. Friday He was crucified, and laid in a borrowed tomb. Saturday He was in the grave and Sunday He rose again.
Thats the week and thats what is depicted in our passion play.
Now we know the backround.
The Faithful Arrival
The Faithful Arrival
Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it.
Mark
He was in the town on Bethany in the house of MAry and Marth and Lazarus and He sent two of His disciples…
How does He know that?
He knows that because He is God He knows every donkey every horse every thing that can be known. He knows all the time.
This is evidence that He is all knowing.
GO FIND THAT ANIMAL
If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.’ ”
Well thats not a really good explanation I mean think of it if I walked up to a stanger and started trying to hotwire his truck and someone sees me and they know its not mine and they run out and say hey what are you doing do you think they will let me take it, because I look at them and say the Lord has need of it?
This assumes one thing that the person who owns this animal knows who the Lord is...
This must be a believer who has put His trust in the Lord He doesnt even give Him an explanation. Just say the Lord has need of it.
AND IMMEDIATELY HE WILL SEND IT BACK HERE
He knows He will respond correctly, He knows where the animal is, He knows who the man is and He knows how He will respond… that is only something God could have done.
That is a miracle
And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it.
And some of those standing there said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?”
And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go.
I mean did that register at all with them?
What had just happened?
They brought it back....
And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it.
That would used for padding to make it a little bit more comfortable for the Lord to ride on it.
Why is this here?
Didn’t David ride a mule?
Is this supposed to connect Jesus with Solomon and David?
Maybe but that is not really the reason. Mark doesnt tell us but Matthew does.
This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying,
Matthew
“Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold, your king is coming to you,
humble, and mounted on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’ ”
What prophet Zecheriah
This wasn’t even a full grown donkey, He comes faithful to the prophets.
Thousands of years before Christ was born the prophet says that Israel will hail their king riding on a donkeys colt.
This is that event that happened that day, He comes humbly on a donkeys colt, because He comes not to reign and rule as a conquering King He comes as a suffering servants and sacrificial lamb.
And His disciples didn’t get it. Did they get the omiscient I think they did, did they get the prophetic part no.
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.
The details all recorded in the OT they didn’t understand at the time, but later they understood.
This is a faithful arrival but it is more than just that.
He fufilled another prophecy
In
We are given a very important prophecy that it
483 from the decree of Artaxerxes lands you on the day when Jesus comes into the city. God’s hand is clear and His timing is perfect even down to the smallest detail.
Faithless Approval
Faithless Approval
And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields.
Why would they spread their coats in the road?
This was an old ancient expression, you can walk on me, you can step on me because you are above me.
Kings were always elevated and Kings were under thier feet and this was meant to symbolize that.
We place ourselves under your authority, this is them saying you are our king you are our king. But they had their own view attack the Romans throw them out of power make us powerful again as a nation, give us our place in the world.
They wanted help but they didn’t want the help Jesus came to give them. They were praising God with a loud voice.
They broke loose when they came over the crown of the mount of Olives and could see Jerusalem. Because of all the miracles they had seen. PLenty of evidence He was the Messiah, but they wanted Him to do what they wanted Him to do.
They spread branches under him, palm branches. They were joyful!
They were caught up in the drama of the moment.
HOSANNA HOSANNA!
This means SAVE NOW, SAVE NOW!
Deliver us now and they are talking about an Earthly deliverance, they want Him to set up the Kingdom of Israel right then!
They are shouting
The Lord is on my side; I will not fear.
What can man do to me?
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
This is faithless, the next day when He cleansed the Temple they began to turn on Him and by the end of the week, they are shouting crucify Him crucify Him give us Barrabas
Just a few days later they changed their minds how?
Because He didn’t do what they wanted Him to do...
And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!”
And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
Wow thats a really blah ending to a crowning, just go back where you came from?
This isn’t His time, and He is not really their king. What is He doing when He goes into the Temple?
He is casing the place He is making plans for the next day, and what happens the next day?
Mark 11:
And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.
And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.
Mark 11:17-
And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. And when evening came they went out of the city.
He has attacked them at the heart and He has the crowd all stirred up all this is done to make His death happen by Friday.