The Heart of Jesus

Triumphal Entry

All this for you

Title: The Heart of Jesus

Theme: Who is this Jesus the Christ or not?

Mark 11:1-11; Luke 19:41-44

ME: ORIENTATION: FIND COMMON GROUND WITH THE

WE: IDENTIFICATION (MAKE IT CLEAR THAT YOU STRUGGLE)

GOD: ILLUMINATION (THE GOAL IS TO RESOLVE THE TENSION

I. The Course was set

Jesus knew what he was doing

Mark 10:32-34 (NLT)

32 They were now on the way up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. The disciples were filled with awe, and the people following behind were overwhelmed with fear. Taking the twelve disciples aside, Jesus once more began to describe everything that was about to happen to him.

Awe: Wonder and Surprise astonishment

1. The basic meaning of the group is “to be astonished,” then “to be affrighted.” Thus divine manifestations or miracles can cause astonishment or fear and trembling. Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (p. 312). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.

Mark 10: 33-34 (NLT)

33 “Listen,” he said, “we’re going up to Jerusalem, where the Son of Man will be betrayed to the leading priests and the teachers of religious law. They will sentence him to die and hand him over to the Romans.

34 They will mock him, spit on him, flog him with a whip, and kill him, but after three days he will rise again.”

Bethphage was a little hamlet or district between Jerusalem and Bethany. A traveler approaching Jerusalem from the east, coming from Jericho, would come to Bethany about two miles from Jerusalem on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. As he rounded the south side of the Mount of Olives, he would pass by Bethphage before entering Jerusalem.

On that blessed day, the first Palm Sunday, Jesus was walking in front of his disciples (10:32) when they came to Bethphage.

II. The road was sure

A. Jesus’ Triumphant Entry

Mark 11:1-3 (NLT)

As Jesus and his disciples approached Jerusalem, they came to the towns of Bethphage and Bethany on the Mount of Olives. Jesus sent two of them on ahead.

2 “Go into that village over there,” he told them. “As soon as you enter it, you will see a young donkey tied there that no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here.

3 If anyone asks, ‘What are you doing?’ just say, ‘The Lord needs it and will return it soon.’ ”

Tyndale House Publishers. (2015). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (Mk 11:1–3). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.

B. Jesus has laid out his path

Mark 11:5-7 (NLT)

5 As they were untying it, some bystanders demanded, “What are you doing, untying that colt?”

6 They said what Jesus had told them to say, and they were permitted to take it.

7 Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their garments over it, and he sat on it.

C. Why the choice of a young donkey?

Because over 500 years before, Zechariah had prophesied that the Messiah would come riding on the foal of a donkey:

“Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9)

Jesus consciously fulfilled this prophecy to the letter, and in fact exceeded it, for he chose a colt upon which no one had ever ridden.

This was because in Biblical culture (and ancient culture in general) an animal devoted to a sacred task must be one that had not been put to ordinary use (Numbers 19:2; Deuteronomy 21:3; 1 Samuel 6:7).

In addition to this, Jesus’ told his disciples they would find the colt “tied” (tethered) in Bethphage. This points to the Messianic oracle pronounced by Jacob upon Judah in

Genesis 49:10, 11:

“The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his. He will tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch; he will wash his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes.”

Christ, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, wants us to see the connections here. By riding a donkey, he fulfilled not only Zechariah 9:9, but (in Genesis) Jacob’s prophecy to Judah. What is more, riding a donkey (contrary to what we think today) was a kingly act which identified him with the royal line of David. (The donkey was a royal animal during King David’s reign. After him, the Hebrew kings switched to horses, and the donkey was considered unsuited to the dignity of kings.)

King Jesus knew exactly what he was doing when he rode a donkey into Jerusalem to fulfill the great Old Testament Messianic prophecies and identify himself with the royal line of Judah!

Mark 11:8-11 (NLT)

8 Many in the crowd spread their garments on the road ahead of him, and others spread leafy branches they had cut in the fields.

9 Jesus was in the center of the procession, and the people all around him were shouting,

“Praise God!

Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord!

10 Blessings on the coming Kingdom of our ancestor David!

Praise God in highest heaven!”

“Hosanna!” was a customary religious greeting at Passover, but on the lips of the fervent crowd it was an anticipatory cry which literally meant, “Save!” or “Save us!” The people were prophetically repeating over and over and over that Jesus was their deliverer: “Save us! … Save us! … Save us!” Not even the disciples themselves understood the full import of what they were saying. It was only after Jesus was glorified that his followers pieced it all together (John 12:16).

11 So Jesus came to Jerusalem and went into the Temple. After looking around carefully at everything, he left because it was late in the afternoon. Then he returned to Bethany with the twelve disciples.

III. Jesus weeps for Jerusalem.

Luke 19:41-44 (NLT)

41 But as he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, he began to weep.

And with the whole city before his eyes (Luke 19:41), the Savior began to weep.

We must never forget this. It was not with quiet tears that he wept, as he had done at the grave of Lazarus, whom he was going to resurrect, but with loud and deep sorrow.

There in the middle of the road, with the great city in dramatic panorama, the stunned multitude ceased their hosannas and heard the Lord of the Universe wail over Jerusalem! This was a new kind of king!

42 “How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace. But now it is too late, and peace is hidden from your eyes.

43 Before long your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side.

44 They will crush you into the ground, and your children with you. Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place, because you did not recognize it when God visited you.”

Of the final destruction, Josephus says:

Caesar ordered the whole city and the temple to be razed to the ground, leaving only the loftiest of the towers, Phase 1, Hippicus, and Mariamme, (Towers built by Herod the great) and the portion of the wall enclosing the city on the west; the latter as an encampment for the garrison that was to remain, and the towers to indicate to posterity the nature of the city and of the strong defenses which had not yet yielded to Roman prowess. All the rest of the wall encompassing the city was so completely leveled to the ground as to leave future visitors to the spot no ground for believing that it had ever been inhabited. Such was the end to which the frenzy of revolutionaries brought Jerusalem, that splendid city of world-wide renown.

YOU: APPLICATION (TELL PEOPLE WHAT TO DO AND WHAT THEY HAVE HEARD)

Conclusion:

The Son of God in tears,

The wondering angels see.

Be thou astonished, O my soul,

He shed those tears for thee. G. Campbell Morgan

The tears of Christ measure the infinite value of your soul. Christ wept and lamented over Jerusalem, as he always weeps over the souls of the unrepentant.

This is our King. Let us worship him with all that we have!

The choice is yours?

Will You Choose Christ and receive him or reject him?

Our purpose in life to share the gospel.

Prayer for church and net.

Say Good bye

Are Closing Chorus Nobody shares what we are in Christ.