Palm Sunday Perspective (Part 3 of 3)

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Pageantry, the kind you'd expect from a royal entrance. So what does this mean, and why should it matter? Today we'll look at the answers to these two vital questions as Alistair Begg concludes a message titled Palm Sunday perspective on Truth for Life. Well, we'll just turn back to Mark 11 although we could we could really stay in John or go to Matthew or even even Luke if we chose, because they are all correlative passages concerning the dramatic approach of Jesus into the city. Now, we tried to cover that this morning, and we said that it remained for us only to address two questions. And I'm not going to take a long time on them.

At least it's not my plan to. Question number one was, what does all this mean? And question number two was, why should any of this matter? Now, you'll notice from our reading that Jesus had arrived in Jerusalem from the east. He had come down the Jericho road. It was possible for him to slip out through the crowd.

He was able to make his way into various places undetected. We read that in the Gospels in various parts. And so the very fact that he comes as he comes to Jerusalem tells us something very important—namely, that on this occasion he planned to be noticed. He is in some senses throwing down the gauntlet.

He is making it perfectly clear to the crowds by his actions that all that he has been teaching them in these previous three years is now coming to one great and dramatic conclusion. And in Matthew's account, he tells us that Jesus acted this way in fulfillment of the ancient prophecy of Zechariah. And if you're using the NIV, you will be helped by the heading here that comes at the ninth verse, the coming of Zion's king. And we read these words, 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. You'll notice that this prophetic statement in verse 9 finds its fulfillment here in the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem.

The prophetic statement in verse 10 still awaits the totality of its fulfillment. For he who is the Prince of Peace has not ushered in a peace that is the Pax Romana or is the experience, the present experience, of men and women on earth, but his peace, the peace that he longed for Jerusalem to know, was going to be the peace that comes about through his blood shed on the cross. And John is very honest, as we noted this morning in John 12 and verse 16, to tell us that the disciples weren't getting this, and it was only when they were able to look back over their shoulders that they understood exactly what Jesus had been saying and what he was actually doing. Peter acknowledges this as well when he writes to the scattered Christians in his first letter, and I'll just read this for you. First Peter chapter 1 and verse 10, concerning this salvation, the prophets, including Zechariah here in chapter 9, the prophets who spoke of the grace that was to come to you—that's what Zechariah is doing. He's speaking of the grace that is going to come.

See, your king comes to you. When the prophets spoke of the grace that was to come to you, they searched intently and with the greatest care. And what they were doing, verse 11, is they were trying to find out the time and the circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. And it was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves.

This is so helpful, isn't it? You say, Well, how did Zechariah feel about this? When he penned the words, See, your king comes to you, riding on a colt on the fall of a donkey, what did he think when he went to his bed at night? Well, the Spirit of Christ was at work within him, enabling him to write as he did in the awareness of all of his understanding of the unfolding platform and plan of God. But it was also made clear to him in his spirit, as he settled his head on his pillow at night, somehow the Spirit of God said to him, Zechariah, you don't need to get too perplexed about this, because the things that you've been writing down today, you haven't been writing down for yourself, you've been writing down for generations still to come. And that must have been a great encouragement to him, because he must have said to himself, Well, I'm so relieved to have that sense before I go to bed, because for the life of me, I hadn't a clue what I was on about when I was writing that. When they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven—and these are even the things that angels from the ramparts of heaven are looking down over the ramparts, trying to make sense of the unfolding panorama of redemption.

Now, all of that is wrapped up in what is taking place here. Now, this morning we made something of Jesus sitting on this unwritten donkey, and we need just to come back to it for a moment and ask the question—because we're asking, What does this mean?—we must ask the question, Was there any significance in the fact that the donkey had never been ridden upon? And I think the answer must definitely be yes, given that Jesus was moving with such precision and care in the awareness of Old Testament prophecy. But you will discover when you go back into the Old Testament that the beasts of consecration to God were always unyoked or unwritten. God, when he selected the heifer or when he selected a beast to be used in a consecrated dimension, always asked that this beast of burden or beast of sacrifice would be one that was in its purity. You see that in terms of a lamb without spot and without blemish and so on in terms of the Passover lamb. And so Jesus clearly intends, in a deliberate way, by his entry into Jerusalem, to declare that he, as he rides upon this donkey, is fulfilling the words of the prophet from hundreds of years before as he rides into town in this lowly pomp, as the hymn writer puts it. Tremendous paradox, isn't it?

Riding in as a king on a donkey, but doing so purposefully. James Denny—I was just looking at Denny this afternoon on the atonement—and he has this wonderful sentence, or two sentences. He says, Christ's death is not an incident of his life.

It is the aim of it. The laying down of his life is not an accident in his career but his vocation. In it, the divine purpose of his life is revealed.

So as he sits upon this donkey and moves up into the city, he knows exactly what he's doing, and the discerning and the crowd know what he's doing, and some who are as yet wondering what he's doing, finally, when the jigsaw pieces fall into place and the picture becomes apparent, they too will trust in Christ, they too will benefit from his sacrifice, and they too will rejoice to call him Savior. I wonder, has it occurred to you—perhaps you've thought about it during the day—perhaps you've asked yourself the question, I wonder why the Roman authorities never stepped in. After all, they were very concerned, weren't they, about the possibilities of insurrection, of uprising, at these times of festivals. The Jews, with nationalistic fervor, with political interest, could so easily form themselves into a riotous mob and make the time of celebration far more difficult for their Roman overlords.

But there is no indication whatsoever of the Roman authorities stepping in. The kingdom of God has never come and never will come by political intrigue and by the marching of army boots. How would you expect the Prince of Peace to come? By his actions, Jesus is outlining a kingdom that isn't brought about by routine warfare, but rather it is a kingdom that is going to come as a result of weakness, conquering apparent strength. So what does all of this mean, then? Well, it simply means that the lines of prophecy are converging as Jesus moves towards the very reason for his life. In Ephesians chapter 1—I never thought of Ephesians 1 in these terms, but I'll finish here and move to my second question so we can conclude—in Ephesians 1 and verse 9, in this wonderfully purple passage concerning the nature of salvation, Paul says, And he made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. And part of what Paul is referring to there is finding its fulfillment in the events that are transpiring. So what does it mean? Well, it means that Christ is coming in the fulfillment of prophecy. Christ is coming not trapped in some mechanistic plan that has been created by men.

Christ, who has the power to take his life, to lay it down and to take it again, is moving now in a quite unashamed way, directly confronting all of the authorities and all of the crowds and even the Roman authorities themselves. Finally, why should any of this matter? Why should any of this matter?

Well, there are many reasons why it should matter, and we can't go into all of them, but let me just make a couple of points by way of application. You remember that the crowds were calling out from Psalm 118, don't you? And you perhaps recall that they had petitions as well as exclamations in their cries.

You can go back and check it for yourselves. And their petitions were essentially two. Number one, O LORD, save us. And number two, O LORD, grant to us success. Now, what did that mean for many of them as they cried those words? Well, we can say with conviction, but there is every indication that many of them were not thinking beyond the jurisdiction of their family life, the framework of their economic circumstances, certainly their existence as being occupied by the forces of Rome, and the expectation was that in this messianic figure, perhaps, now finally, they would know the kind of safety for which they had longed, no longer the oppressor there, and they would know the kind of success that they believed themselves very capable of. O LORD, we want you to save us. O LORD, we want you to grant us success.

Well, not a lot has changed, has it? You don't have to be particularly perceptive today to listen to men and women talk, and we could, of course, summarize their expectations in other phrases, summary phrases. But routinely, I hear people say, Well, we really would like to be safe, and we would like to be successful.

Isn't that what people say? They might say, I'd like to be happy. But if you ask them to unpack happy, you'll find that in happiness is safety, and in happiness is success. So, in other words, the cries of the crowd were contemporary cries. They'd like to be free of oppressors, and their oppressor may be their boss in the office. Their oppressor may be their spouse, and they're trying to find a way to wiggle out of their convictions and their responsibilities and their fidelities, whatever it may be. In other words, they had a felt need. Their felt need was obvious.

I need safety, and I need success. So, if we could only marshal our message, right? If we could only pitch Christianity to these great needs, then presumably we can begin to pack this place, build an auditorium three times this size, and we'll simply go out into the community and let them know, Jesus came to make you safe and to make you successful.

Why don't you come and be a follower of Jesus? Well, in fact, he did come to make them safe, and he did come to make them successful. But not in the way they're thinking.

At least not, first of all. You remember earlier in Mark, when the man is brought by his friends and he's let down through the roof? The man who has been paralyzed for all these years?

And they break open the roof and they let him down? And Jesus, in a quite dramatic statement after the Bible study, has been broken up by the strange arrival of this character—a character that would have been known to the people in the group. They would have known that he was a cripple.

They would have known that he was unable to remedy himself. And when he finally presents himself down into the middle of the throng, you remember what Jesus says to him? Your sins are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven.

Now, the man might legitimately have said, My sins are forgiven. Did you think these fellows hauled me along here, went up on the roof, broke the roof, dropped me down on the bed in my paralyzed state in order to have my sins forgiven? Jesus, don't you realize what I really need? I can't be successful lying on this bed. My life is jeopardized on this bed.

I need to be safe. I need to be successful. No, he didn't. He needed to be saved from his predicament as a sinner in the sight of a holy God. What will it profit a man to be very, very successful and lose his own soul? What will it profit a man or a woman to be exemplary in the community, knowing safety and success in the borders of their family or their business or their lifestyle or their finances or their respectability? What a false gospel that is, that Jesus showed up making an entry into Jerusalem to grant that kind of superficial stuff.

No. You see, you will never cry out for the safety that he comes to bring by way of the cross unless God is at work within you. You will never cry out for the success that may come as a result of losing yourself in consecration to Jesus unless God is at work within you. Because in our natural state, all of these superficial things are the things that make sense of our existence. They are the things we long for, and they are the things that in our foolishness we believe represent security and stability to us.

But they don't. Or sometimes it takes dramatic illness, or it takes the loss of a friend, or it takes some circumstance crushing in upon us to point to the eventual futility of it all, and then we have an insight into eternity. Have you ever cried, O God, save me?

O God, grant to me the success which will come as a result of losing my life in you, sublimating my desires and my dreams, my small ambitions, in order that my life might be unreservedly yours to do with as you choose, to take me where you desire, to use me as you intend? Doubtless there were some in the crowd who would cry in that way. Perhaps there are some this evening who will do the same. Why does it matter? It matters because eternity is in focus. And it matters because it is just as easy today as it was then to lose oneself in the crowd, albeit an enthusiastic crowd, albeit a crowd that is able to quote the Bible, sing the Bible, read the Bible, and proclaim the Bible, to be lost in that crowd, to employ our voices in what are essentially empty chants, the empty chants of religious orthodoxy, without ever knowing the reality of that to which they point.

Well, just a final thought. I find it interesting in this to realize that when Jesus decides to be noticed, he decides to be noticed in this particular way. I've read enough history, I've read enough old books, and certainly in Britain, to know that when it comes to pageantry, we've got it down. I'd be prepared to argue that out of all the world, the British Empire put pageantry on the map. I know some of my Hungarian friends will fight with this notion, and some of the Germans and the Dutch that are here, and so on.

So I don't want to start some kind of international brouhaha, but let's just say that at least we're in the top five. And you read, for example, the stories, or you look at the old pictures from your grandmother's house of the arrival of George VI, and you say to yourself, this is unbelievable, being able to come into town in this way, in a golden carriage, with these dramatic soldiers and accompanying riders and horses and trumpets and paraphernalia that just literally stops the world. It's what you expect with a king, not a donkey. If you're a king, Jesus, why a donkey?

Well, the answer is so clear, isn't it? You'll have to check this as well, but I think that the only characteristic in Christ to which he is prepared to draw attention is this characteristic of his meekness. You remember, he says, Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest, and take my yoke upon you and learn of me.

Why? Because I'm meek, and I'm lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. This is no unapproachable king. This is an amazingly approachable king. Just go back through these four sections in Matthew 21, in Mark 11, in John 12, in Luke 19, and just circle all the doing words as they relate to Christ.

I just wrote these down in my notes, just the first four that came to me. How approachable is this Jesus, sitting on a donkey, weeping over the city, looking round the temple, seeking those who will admit their lostness, their need of a prophet to speak to them, their need of a priest to offer sacrifice on their behalf, their need of a king to rule in the topsy-turvy world of their lives. Do you have a king whom you have invited to rule in the topsy-turvy world of your life? Are you relying on an earthly priest to pronounce your absolution?

It cannot be done. And here, as he makes his dramatic approach to the city, he is moving towards the events to which we will come on Good Friday evening. But you don't need to wait until then to cry out from the reality of your heart, O Lord Jesus Christ, save me. O Lord Jesus Christ, grant to me true success. Jesus is our mighty and yet meek and approachable king. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life.

Alistair will be right back in just a minute. Our mission at Truth for Life is to teach God's word every day in a way that's easy to understand so that unbelievers are converted, believers can grow in their faith, and pastors are encouraged and equipped for the work of the gospel. And we pray that local churches will be strengthened as a result. We often get phone calls from people asking, what should I look for in a church home? Some of these people are new to the faith, others are relocating to an unfamiliar place.

If you're looking to join a Bible teaching church, Alistair has some thoughts in a blog, some helpful tips on what attributes to look for in a local church. You'll find the blog on our website at truthforlife.org slash find. Now tomorrow is the last day we're going to be offering a book titled With a Mighty Triumph. This is a great book to read even after Easter. It's a book that'll help you really sink your teeth into the reality of Jesus' victory over death.

What does his resurrection signify in the battle of good versus evil? What does it mean for you and me? Discover eternal hope as you read through your copy of With a Mighty Triumph. You can request it today when you give a donation to Truth for Life.

You can donate through the mobile app or online at truthforlife.org slash donate, or call us at 888-588-7884. Now here's Alistair with prayer. Father, we want to hear your voice beyond the voice of a mere man. We are earnestly concerned that our songs and our praises should not be the empty chants of those who take comfort just from being gathered up in the throng. And so we do pray that you will come and visit us and show us that we do need you as our prophet to speak truth to us, as our priest to bear our sin, and as our king to rule our lives. And we do so with glad and thankful hearts in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. At the Last Supper, when Jesus took the bread and wine and said, do this in remembrance of me, what exactly was it he wanted them to remember and why? We'll hear the answer tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.