As you know, we are celebrating Palm Sunday today and we will be looking at Christ’s example of steadfastness, faithfulness, and perseverance in commitment to the Father’s will.
Luke 9:51 tells us that in the last week in His earthly ministry, when the time was approaching for Him to be taken up to heaven, He was determined to go to Jerusalem to fulfil His purpose. He walked the perfect path of righteousness for our sake.
1 As Jesus and the disciples approached Jerusalem, they came to the town of Bethphage on the Mount of Olives. Jesus sent two of them on ahead. 2 “Go into the village over there,” he said. “As soon as you enter it, you will see a donkey tied there, with its colt beside it. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone asks what you are doing, just say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and he will immediately let you take them.”
4 This took place to fulfill the prophecy that said, 5 “Tell the people of Jerusalem, ‘Look, your King is coming to you. He is humble, riding on a donkey, riding on a donkey’s colt.’ 6 The two disciples did as Jesus commanded.
7 They brought the donkey and the colt to him and threw their garments over the colt, and he sat on it. 8 Most of the crowd spread their garments on the road ahead of him, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 Jesus was in the center of the procession, and the people all around him were shouting, “Praise God for the Son of David! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the LORD! Praise God in the highest heaven!”
10 The entire city of Jerusalem was in an uproar as he entered. “Who is this?” they asked. 11 And the crowds replied, “It’s Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.” 12 Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out all the people buying and selling animals for sacrifice. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves.
13 He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves!” 14 The blind and the lame came to him in the Temple, and he healed them. 15 The leading priests and the teachers of religious law saw these wonderful miracles and heard even the children in the Temple shouting, “Praise God for the Son of David.” But the leaders were indignant.
16 They asked Jesus, “Do you hear what these children are saying?” “Yes,” Jesus replied. “Haven’t you ever read the Scriptures? For they say, ‘You have taught children and infants to give you praise.’” (Matthew 21:1-16, NLT)
There is a lot happening in this passage. But let’s break it down into three main points:
Jesus’ Preparation
Jesus’ Passion for the People
The Persuasion of the Pharisees
Jesus’ Preparation
Today, Christians around the world are celebrating Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem or “Palm Sunday.” As mentioned earlier, in Luke 9:51, we read about Jesus in the final week before fulfilling the very purpose for which He had come to the earth.
“Palm Sunday marks the “beginning of the end” of Jesus’ work on earth. ”
Jesus knew what he would be facing from the crowds - first their praise and adulation and then within days their hatred and ultimate rejection.
He knew that He was going to the Cross, and that on the Cross all that was ours would become His - our sin, our guilt, our shame, our failure, our condemnation and the judgment we deserved would all be put on Him so that all that was His could become ours - His righteousness, right standing with God, His Life, the right to become children of God.
He would make it possible for every person to have eternal life and share in His inheritance and this was His desire.
On the other hand, He also knew what would happen if He had even once swerved of the path God laid out for Him. If He had one misstep, committed one sin, He could not have taken our sin on the Cross. He would be disqualified as our Redeemer, disqualified as the once and for all perfect sacrifice.
But He considered the path of His feet, He remained steadfast and sure, He did not turn to the right nor to the left but instead turned away from the path of evil.
At the weakest points in His humanity, He resisted the devil’s invitation to go down the path of darkness. He was actually tempted in every respect as we are, yet without committing a single sin (Hebrews 4:15).
He set His face like a flint toward Jerusalem and the Cross of Calvary as Isaiah prophesied 800 years before it came to pass (Isaiah 50:7). This was a declaration of His unwavering determination to persevere in the excruciating task set before Him.
“His mental preparation for this unfathomable task started with His complete confidence in God His Father for the plan. ”
Therefore, He would not shrink back from His mission, despite the awareness of the suffering, opposition, and humiliation He would endure. He did not turn to the left nor to the right or look for another path.
But Jesus was not only mentally prepared, He made practical preparations as He planned to enter Jerusalem. He gave express instructions to his disciples about where to go, who to ask, and what to say when procuring the young colt to ride on. As Jesus came near the city the crowd welcomed Him by laying their coats on the ground and spreading palm branches in His path.
Those who greeted Jesus on that day understood the significance of Zechariah 9:9, and laid palm branches on the ground to welcome the victorious Messiah, the “anointed one”, sent by God to establish His Kingdom on earth.
Jesus’ Passion for His people
Luke also records on the day when Jesus rode into Jerusalem, He stopped and looked over the city and wept. He wept because they had rejected the only One who could bring them peace and He knew that within 40 years their homeland would be destroyed and many of them would be massacred by the Roman army (Luke 19:41-43). Yet He remained resolute and would not be moved from His purpose.
The people who were welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem were expecting Him to come in and vanquish their enemies but He didn’t come galloping in on a war horse.
Instead, He came into Jerusalem in gentleness, humility and peace, riding on the colt of a donkey. He was making a statement about Himself and His Kingdom. He did not come to defeat the enemies of Israel, He came to defeat more formidable enemies - the power of sin, death and the devil.
They wanted Him to set up His Kingdom but His mission was not to set up a new political system. He declared during that last week, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight. … My kingdom is from another place” (John 18:36). Jesus didn’t come to set up a physical kingdom - He came to set up a spiritual Kingdom that would reign over people’s hearts.
The crowds could not grasp or accept this. They were too short-sighted and temporally oriented to recognize the essence of His humble nature and the ultimate aim of His mission.
The purpose of God’s house should have been to bring the nations in together, but the religious leaders had actually pushed the foreigners and God Himself out of the Temple. In verse 14 Jesus first cleaned out the house of God and then He stayed in the temple courts and taught the people, he healed the blind and the lame.
This should be the purpose of the church - the purpose of our church - to be a house of prayer, to teach people God’s ways and His Word, no matter what nation or what socio-economic strata they come from.
The Persuasion of the Pharisees
How was it possible for this crowd who praised Jesus and welcomed Him into Jerusalem in one moment to be so easily swayed in the next? How could such praise be turned into hatred? Why such a radical change? The Scriptures reveal that they were swayed by a few factors:
Distorted expectations
The people had been influenced by years of teaching by the various religious communities. They were expecting the Messiah to establish an earthly political kingdom. That He would be king and lead the people to victory against their oppressors.
They believed He would purify the temple and rule the earth with perfect justice. But Jesus refused to meet their expectations, he refused to reinforce their political and nationalist aspirations or agenda. The bottom line is Jesus didn’t do what the people wanted but what God had called Him to do and so they were persuaded and swayed by the religious crowd to turn against Him.
Distorted truth
In Matt 26:57 The chief priest and the whole council not only spoke falsely about Jesus, they were seeking out false testimonies, distorted truths against Him as reasons for putting him to death. These false testimonies had a huge influence on swaying the crowds against Him.
This is called the art of deception. The Pharisees found witnesses who would falsely testify against Jesus by taking His words out of context, distorting the truth. And these were accusations against a perfect human being.
Power of persuasion
The Pharisees used their position to their advantage and the power of persuasion. In John 16:2 Jesus said that a time is coming when the religious people will put you (the disciples) to death thinking they are doing God a favor.
Paul had to address these powerful, religious voices that were hindering people from following the Lord in Galatians 5:7.
“How is this relevant today?”
Like the crowds that surrounded Jesus, there are masses who profess to know the Lord, but have a form of faith that is event driven. They are always looking for something big, something exciting, prophetic and miraculous to get them motivated and inspired to follow Jesus.
This type of Christianity is highly emotional, unstable, situational, shallow, and easily swayed. They have subjective expectations of who Jesus is supposed to be and how He is supposed to act. And when He does not act or answer according to their expectations then their faith in Jesus is easily shaken.
Maybe you have heard people say, “I have lost my faith.” My question is which god have you placed your faith in, is it really in the God of the Bible? Where did you get these unrealistic expectations? Who or what influenced you to believe so many distorted truths about Jesus.
There are powerful postmodern voices out there distorting the truth and imposing their cultural and political interpretations of Jesus and the Word of God, saying this faith in Jesus causes people to become narrow minded, biased, intolerant, self-centered, unloving, violent, etc. Leading thousands of people down the path of compromise, unbelief and despair.
This is why it is vital that our church does not move away from our stance that the scriptures are inspired and inerrant.
Inspired means that the God breathed, inerrant means the scriptures are wholly true in all things they assert and they are God’s own words! We will not be moved away from the gospel of hope.
