WHO IS THIS?

Introduction

-{Matthew 21}

-I enjoy watching game shows, even game shows from decades ago. Some of the interesting ones have been where you try to figure out someone’s identity. Back in the 50’s and 60’s there was a game show called WHAT’S MY LINE where celebrity judges would try to figure out someone’s line of work by asking them yes or no questions. Then at the end of the show the judges would be blindfolded and have to ask yes or no questions of a special celebrity guest to try and figure out who they are based on their answers to the questions. A more modern example might be Masked Singer, where celebrities of all sorts are put in costume and sing songs and the celebrity judges have to try to guess who it is under the mask based on their singing and clue packages that are given. It’s all about trying to figure out someone’s identity—who in the world is this?

-For about 2000 years there has been something similar going on in real life as the world throughout history have been debating on the true identity of Jesus Christ. Not that Jesus hasn’t made abundantly clear who He is, but the vast majority of people do not like His answers to His identity, so they try to make up a Jesus that better suits their tastes. The problem is that the Jesus that they make up is not the Jesus who lived and died and rose, and so they have an inadequate Jesus. And an inadequate Jesus isn’t going to do anybody a lick of good. People need the real, historical, revealed Jesus.

-What we see in the passage that we’re studying today is that while the Jews may have had some right ideas about Jesus, they were incomplete and inadequate. Unfortunately, the same is true today, even by some supposedly Christian ministries and ministers. They get Jesus wrong. What we need to take from this is that only a true understanding of Christ’s identity will be of any help to us for salvation and life. This is important because knowing the true Christ is life-impacting and life-changing.

Matthew 21:1–11 ESV

1 Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and he will send them at once.” 4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, 5 “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.’ ” 6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. 8 Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” 10 And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, “Who is this?” 11 And the crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.”

-{pray}

-We know this as the triumphal entry. Jesus had been making His way to Jerusalem. He had gone through Jericho, made His way to the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, came to the villages of Bethany and Bethphage, got Him a ride, and made His way into Jerusalem for the Passover being followed by a group of pilgrims from Galilee and Jericho and then also being met by a crowd from Jerusalem to usher Him into the city. There is a whole lot of commotion going on with Jesus’ coming. As v. 9 says, the whole city was all stirred up. And the question that people asked was WHO IS THIS? Who could cause such a stir in this holy city? Why was there all this upheaval with His arrival? Maybe, more colloquially, what’s with all the hubbub bub?

-Unfortunately, the answers that were given about Him, although some were true, they were not the full picture. Some said that this is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee. Yes, Jesus had a prophetic office, but He’s so much more that that. The people even recognized that Jesus could possibly be the Messiah, which He was, but their idea of Messiah and God’s idea of Messiah didn’t match up. They were thinking this Messiah would bring Israel to its former earthly glory and get rid of all the Gentile oppressors. But that wasn’t it. They had some truths of Jesus but they didn’t have a grasp of His true identity.

-But what is interesting is that the words and actions of Jesus in this passage actually speak loudly and give us a fuller understanding of who He is. And it is only knowing this Jesus as He has revealed Himself that will do anybody any good. And if you’re following any faulty beliefs about Jesus or incomplete ideas about Jesus, then you need to ditch those and replace them with the Jesus that is revealed here, otherwise you are going to miss out on the spiritual blessings He brings, and depending on what you have believed about Him, you might even miss out on eternal life. So, we want to get that straightened out and answer the question, WHO IS THIS? So, what did Jesus reveal about Himself here?

1) Jesus is the sovereign God

-What we find in our passage is that Jesus exhibited traits and characteristics that can only be attributed to Him being deity. We see that as they are approaching the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, they are approaching the villages of Bethany and Bethphage, and Jesus tells two of His disciples to go ahead of the rest of the group into the village that they are coming to. There they will find a certain female donkey with her young colt tied up. They are to get them and bring them to Jesus. And if anyone says anything, just say that the Lord needs them.

-Jesus and His followers and those accompanying them from Jericho hadn’t yet reached that village. How would Jesus have known that there would be a donkey and colt there for His use? He wouldn’t have known that if He were not God.

-What we have on display here are two important attributes. First, we see His divine knowledge—Jesus knew things He wouldn’t have known if He were not God. But it goes beyond mere knowledge. Jesus didn’t just supernaturally know that there would be these animals there for His use. Jesus, in His divinity, ordained for it to be so. In His sovereign providence Jesus had those animals prepared for Him to ride.

-Jesus is the God who is sovereignly in control of the affairs of this world, and there is no detail, big or small, that is beyond Him. There is nothing that happens without His knowledge, and He has control over every situation that there is. Of course, since that is the case, we wonder why He allows evil and trials and troubles in this world. First, we need to remember, that mankind was created with a modicum of free will, and often we use that free will in ways that are detrimental to ourselves and others. A lot of times we are the source of our own problems, but Christ is also the one that can redeem and restore and can save us from our own stupidity. Second, and to go along with this, since mankind’s nature is twisted and sinful, we need to remember that mankind is evil and uses their energies for many selfish, wicked things, and people are affected by their choices. Even Christians can be the source of the problem or on the receiving end. Third, we also need to remember that the world is cursed because of sin, and is therefore filled with natural disasters and the like.

-But another thing to keep in mind is that Christ is so sovereign over even the wicked things that happen in this world, we are told by the apostle Paul that God can take the wickedness of man against us, or our own sinfulness, or the natural curses of this world, and He can still use them for some sort of good in the life of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, be it for character development or discipline, for training or correction or reproof. That is the Jesus of the Bible. He is not a mere prophet or a mere teacher, He is the sovereign God.

2) Jesus is the fulfiller of prophecy

-We are told in v. 4 that not only was Jesus sovereign over what was about to happen, but what He was doing was a direct fulfillment of what we would call Old Testament prophecy written hundreds of years beforehand. Matthew combines a verse from Isaiah with a verse from Zechariah to demonstrate that these words inspired by the Holy Spirit so long ago were being fulfilled at that moment by Jesus.

-We are not making the claim that every prophecy ever given in Scripture is about Jesus, but they do relate to God’s plan of redemption and in some way they move that plan forward, and that plan of redemption was always about Jesus. This fulfillment, along with so many others, were not some mere coincidence, nor did they happen by chance. This was the sovereign plan of God all along to bring a sinful humanity back to Himself, and the plan always involved Jesus. In fact, Paul tells us that these things were in motion even before the foundation of the world.

-Therefore, as we read Scripture, we read the Old Testament as it looks forward to Jesus and we read the New Testament as it looks back at Jesus, of course with the promise and hope that Jesus will return in the future. But as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians, Jesus is the Yes and Amen of all the promises and prophecies of God. Within its context, if we find a promise that we can claim for ourselves, it is ours through Jesus since that is what was always intended. And if there is any prophecy or promise that is left unfulfilled, then we look to Jesus alone for it to come true. We don’t look into ourselves or to some guru or to some sharp-tongued preacher, but we look to Jesus with hope and anticipation.

-And so, it is only through the Jesus revealed in the Bible that we have a living hope, and that we receive every good and perfect gift, and that we can find refreshment for our soul, and that we will be raised from the dead. If you have looked elsewhere for promises fulfilled, stop looking at yourself or your family or anything else in the world, and start resting in the Christ of the Bible, because they are only so because Jesus is the fulfiller of prophecy.

3) Jesus is the authoritative king

-First, when you look at those prophesies that are used to describe Jesus, they speak of Him being a king. BEHOLD, YOUR KING IS COMING. But Jesus was not merely King of the Jews, He was always meant to be the King of the entire world. It begins in the hearts of those who believe, but there will be a day when He will rule and reign over a people in a new heaven and earth. It was prophesied in Daniel 7 that He would be given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. If Jesus is to be King of all peoples, nations, and languages, that means that He is King over you and me because we are part of those categories.

-But not only do we recognize His kingship because of that prophesy, but also the actions that Jesus took in this passage were a declaration of His kingship. It might sound strange to us that a king would come to His city on a colt. We would imagine that a king would come on some large steed or something. But a king that came by horse would be seen as coming either to conquer or was coming in victory from battle. A king that would come on a donkey or colt would be seen as coming in peace. Jesus was coming in to usher in peace between humanity and God.

-Jewish history and ancient near eastern tradition give us a foundation for these beliefs of the Jews that these are actions taken by kings. If you read the inauguration of some of the kings of Israel, they included the riding of a donkey or mule into the city. We read in 1 Kings 1 that David had Solomon ushered into Jerusalem on David’s own mule so the people knew that Solomon was chosen to reign in David’s place. Another tradition found in the Bible was the laying of garments on the ground before the king as he was ushered in at his inauguration. We see in 2 Kings 9 that when Jehu was anointed King over the northern kingdom of Israel that the people laid out their garments before him, blowing the trumpet and proclaiming that Jehu was king.

-What Jesus was doing by His entrance into the city hearkened back to Jewish kings of the past. The Jews in Jesus’ day, knowing prophecy and knowing Jewish history, would have recognized what Jesus was claiming by His actions, and so as was tradition the people in the city came out to meet their king, and the whole procession would usher the king into the place from where He would reign. And that’s what the people did, they brought Jesus in as their King. Unfortunately, later that week, they would decide that Jesus wasn’t the King they were expecting or the King that they wanted.

-And therein lies the danger for many today. A King has all authority—He rules and reigns and He makes the laws and commandments that the people must follow and obey. That means for the entire world, Jesus makes the laws. He determines right and wrong. But the Jesus of the Bible is not the King that people expect or want, and that’s when they start forming a Jesus after their own desires. But if you want to follow the Jesus that actually exists, that means you place yourself under His authority. Jesus is King, and He ruling and reigning from heaven, and if we want to call ourselves His we place ourselves under that authority.

4) Jesus is the Savior Messiah

-As Jesus is entering the city, the crowds shout out HOSANNA TO THE SON OF DAVID. This is a quote from Psalm 118:25-26. Although it turned into more of a phrase of honor, the Hebrew and Aramaic word HOSANNA means PLEASE SAVE US. And then the title SON OF DAVID has messianic implications. You could say that they are literally crying out SAVE US, MESSIAH! From the perspective of those Jews at that time, in their minds they are crying out to the Messiah to deliver them from their oppressors, namely, the Romans. Little did they know that this Messiah came to deliver them from something that oppressed them even more. He came to save from sin and death, which are worse oppressors than anything found on earth.

-And whether they know it or not, or fully understand it or not, the heart of every man and woman is crying out for deliverance. Everyone knows there is something messed up in this world and there is something messed up in their lives. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, everything is broken. We live in a broken world and we are broken people, and we may not verbalize it, but our spirits cry out for somebody to come save us out of that futility. The problem is where people look for that deliverance.

-They begin to look at the things of the world to give them meaning and purpose and solace, only to find that it doesn’t work. Thinking that the things of this world, which themselves are fleeting and temporary, can fix the brokenness is like thinking a band-aid can stop the flooding of a broken dam. Your soul cries out for healing and restoration, and your soul also knows that you have broken the laws of a holy God and your soul need salvation from His justice. You cannot hide from the judgment of God. But God provided a Savior Messiah to fix the broken and save the sinner.

-So, people ask about Jesus: WHO IS THIS? Now we know, He is the Sovereign God, He is the fulfiller of prophecy, He is the authoritative King, and He is the Savior Messiah. This is who Jesus is. And because of that, there are some applications for our lives.

*This is the only Jesus to seek for your needs

-The false religions offer a Jesus of pop psychology that can give you a quick fix for some temporary relief, but only this Jesus of Scripture can offer you a long-term solution to whatever it is you might be going through, whether it be physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. Jesus not only has the answer to what ails you, He IS the answer to what ails you. Instead of seeking the world or seeking the pleasures of sin to help you cope, come to the one who IS the hope.

*This is the only Jesus worthy of your praise

-You have a choice of who it is you are going to worship. You can worship a false god. You can worship yourself. You can worship the sun, moon, and stars. Wherever you place ultimate worth is where you will concentrate your praise. But anything and everything else that is not Jesus is an idol. And this includes the Jesuses that do not match what He revealed of Himself. You might follow a guru Jesus, or a Dr. Phil Jesus, or a prosperity Jesus, but then you are worshipping an idol. Only this Jesus as He is revealed is worthy of worship.

*This is the only Jesus that can save your soul

-No other Jesus can forgive your sins and usher you into heaven. Believe in this Jesus and be saved. Only this Jesus died for you and rose again. The Jesus that revealed Himself as sovereign God, fulfiller of prophecy, authoritative King, and Savior Messiah is unique and can uniquely save.

-If you are a Christian, maybe you need to come to the altar and turn from your idols and seek that face of the real Jesus. Or maybe you have never trusted the true Jesus, today is the day...