Triumphal Entrance

We don't repeat animal sacrifices in the Christian church today because everything that the animal sacrifice pointed to was fulfilled in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus. And Jesus not only was the subject who offered the perfect sacrifice, but He was the object of His own sacrifice because He was sacrificing Himself. We often speak of Jesus, using the words of John the Baptist, as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. But did you know that in addition to being the Lamb, that sacrifice, He is also a priest? In fact, He functions as prophet, priest, and King.

That's what R.C. Sproul will consider today on Renewing Your Mind, as we turn our attention to the triumphal entry of Jesus. The triumphal entry of Jesus marks the beginning of what many call Holy Week, and it ends on Easter or Resurrection Sunday. This was the most important week in history. It is the week that changed the world. We'd love to send you a new book from R.C. Sproul called Holy Week, the week that changed the world. We'll send you this hardcover book when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org in support of the proclamation of the good news of what Christ has accomplished. We'll also give you digital and DVD access to the series you're hearing from this week, What Did Jesus Do?

I'll tell you more about these resources after today's message. Well, here's Dr. Sproul on our prophet, priest, and King. At the transfiguration of Christ, this was a moment of unsurpassed glory and joy for those that observed it, namely Peter, James, and John. But also, the text indicates that that joy rapidly turned to despair when Jesus announced to them that they were going to leave that mount of transfiguration and make their way to Jerusalem. And our Lord told them that in Jerusalem He would be betrayed and that He would undergo suffering and death.

And so they made the journey. And when Jesus was ready to go to the city, He came by making particular arrangements for His entrance, and we have the record of that in Matthew 21, and I'd like to read it briefly for us from the first verse. Now when they drew near Jerusalem and came to Bethphage at the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent the disciples saying to them, go into the village opposite you and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her.

Loose them and bring them to Me. And if anyone says anything to you, you shall say, the Lord has need of them, and immediately He will send them. Now we ask the question at this point, which Matthew is about to answer, and that is, why these elaborate plans? Why did Jesus in a sense stage His grand entrance into Jerusalem in this manner? The answer to that question is found in the next passage of the text where Matthew cites an Old Testament prophecy from Zechariah and says, all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet saying, tell the daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming to you lowly and sitting on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey. And so the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them. They brought the donkey and the colt and laid their clothes on them and set him on them.

And a very great multitude spread their clothes on the road, while others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And then the multitudes who went before and those who followed cried out, Hosanna, to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest. And when he had come into Jerusalem, the city was moved saying, who is this? So the multitude said, this is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee. Now what I want us to observe in this particular account of Palm Sunday and of the triumphal entry of Jesus is that two distinct Jewish offices are in view.

First of all, the office of a king and second of all, the office of a prophet. But when Jesus enters into the city, He comes in in the guise of royalty, lowly to be sure, in humiliation without a doubt, but consciously fulfilling the Old Testament announcement through Zechariah that the King of the Jews will come to Jerusalem riding on a donkey. Now at this point, a carefully guarded secret that Jesus had kept His disciples under wraps concerning was now made public. Any time there was mention during Jesus' earthly ministry about His being the Messiah, He would instruct His disciples as He had at the transfiguration, tell no man. We call this the Messianic secret, and we have to guess as to why Jesus insisted on secrecy regarding His Messianic vocation, and the obvious guess is that He understood that the people had an incorrect understanding of what the Messiah would actually do. The popular hope, the popular expectation of the Messiah who was to come, would be a great warrior who would overthrow the Roman oppression and liberate the people of Israel from the yoke of Rome. But Jesus' understanding of the Messiah was much deeper. He took all the strands of expectancy in Old Testament prophecy and knit them together into a complex portrait of what it would mean to be Messiah, and the element that was most important in that was the element of being a lowly servant who would suffer.

Isaiah's portrait of the Messiah in the latter chapters of that book was the portrait of the suffering servant, and that was not popular in the public appeal. And so Jesus had kept His identity under wraps until now. Now the cloak of concealment is removed, and Jesus now, clearly fulfilling Old Testament prophecy, comes into the city in a triumphal procession indicating His position of royalty.

And when the people said, who is this who's coming in this manner, when the people were shouting, Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, one of the answers that was given was, this is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee. So we see two elements of Jesus' work being mentioned in this particular passage, His work as King and His work as a prophet. But if we look further in the New Testament, we understand that there are not merely two offices that Jesus fulfills, but there are three. And those three offices we call in theology the munis triplex, that is the threefold office of Jesus. And the three offices that He is called to fulfill in His work are the offices of prophet, priest, and King. All three offices are fulfilled in His person and in His work.

And I'd like to take a few moments today to distinguish among these three offices so that we can understand what's going on here in this particular moment of His life in the triumphal entry. In the first instance, all three offices, prophet, priest, and King, are offices performed by some kind of mediator. And I'm using the term mediator in a lowercase m, not with a capital M, because the Bible tells us in the ultimate sense there's only one mediator between God and man, and that is Jesus. Now, when the Scriptures say that and speak of Christ's uniqueness as the mediator between humanity and God, that does not exclude the lower forms of mediatorial service that were functioning in Old Testament days in the offices of the prophet, the priest, and the king. Now, what made them mediators was that they, in some way, stood between the people and God. I like to say that the basic difference between the prophet and the priest was this, that the prophet was God's spokesman.

The prophet would announce his statements with the preface, thus saith the Lord. The prophets were agents of revelation. God put His Word in their mouths, and so they were the spokesmen for God to the people. The priests, on the other hand, who were in a regular office and not a special, charismatically appointed office like the prophets were, they had the function of carrying out the normal duties of the religious organization of Israel.

And the two functions, more than any other, that they performed were, first of all, the offering of sacrifices, and second of all, the offering of prayers. And so, the priest was the mediator for the people to God. If you watch how the activity goes in the Roman Catholic liturgy, you will see times when the priest has his back to the people, and when is that?

That's when he's offering up the sacrifice. And when he addresses the people from the pulpit, he is speaking for God to the people. And so, in the church today, the roles in the offices of prophet and priest have been combined. If you look at the liturgy of a Protestant worship service, there are certain elements in it that are priestly and other elements that are prophetic. When the pastor gives the pastoral prayer and he prays for the people, he's engaged in a priestly activity. When he reads the Scripture and gives the sermon, he's engaged in a prophetic office at that time.

But we see that basic distinction. Now, as far as the prophets were concerned, in New Testament categories, the supreme prophet of all time is Jesus. Jesus doesn't just speak the Word of God. He is the Word of God.

He's the very incarnation of the Word of God, and He speaks with the full authority of the Father when He speaks. Now, He also makes prophecies about the future, and that was also the case of the Old Testament prophets. But the amazing difference between the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament prophet Jesus has to do with what I call the subject and objective and objective elements of prophecy. The subjective elements of prophecy refer to the prophets themselves as human subjects, and they would speak their words, and they had a content of future prediction that was a description of the One who was to come. The object of their prophecy ultimately was Jesus.

Now, Jesus in His subjective personality was also a prophet, but the difference between Jesus and the rest of the prophets is that Jesus was both the subject and the object of prophecy. That is, most of the prophetic statements that He made were about Himself. One of the things that's often missed in studies, for example, of the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew when some people want to reduce Christianity to a set of moral guidelines and restrict Jesus to the role of ethical teacher or moralist, they fail to observe that so much of what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount and in the Beatitudes is about Himself, where He talks about those who will receive the blessings.

The blessings find their fullest expression in Him and in His kingdom. And so, even there in the Beatitudes, Jesus is making statements about His own personal work in the kingdom of God. Now, we also look at the priesthood, and we see that the priests also had a subjective and objective dimension to their work.

As persons who were performing various tasks, they had their own subjective involvement in it, but what was the object of their work? The principal object of the priestly task was to offer sacrifices in behalf of the people. But in Jesus, the priesthood finds the marriage once again of the subject and the object, because when Jesus offers the sacrifice, the sacrifice that He offers is the sacrifice of Himself. And all the sacrifices that had been offered by the priests in the Old Testament were basically symbolic, and they were mere shadows of the full and perfect sacrifice that was to come and that would be offered once and for all. We don't repeat animal sacrifices in the Christian church today because everything that the animal sacrifice pointed to was fulfilled in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus. And Jesus not only was the person or the subject who offered the perfect sacrifice, but He was the object of His own sacrifice because He was sacrificing Himself. Now, it's very important that we understand Jesus' work in this regard because the book of Hebrews goes into great detail to talk about Christ as our great High Priest.

We'll speak more fully about that with respect to the cross and also with respect to the ascension and His session in heaven. But I remind you that this was a difficult problem for the contemporaries of Jesus because they said, how can He be a priest and be a king? Because the Old Testament prophecy, the Messiah's kingship, was related to the tribe of Judah. The promise that God had made to the people of Israel of their future and perfect king, whose kingdom would reign forever, was a king who would come from the loins of David and who would come from the tribe of Judah.

As early as Jacob's blessings in the Old Testament, he said the scepter shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh comes. And so, the office of king was not given to Simeon or Issachar or Dan or Levi, but rather to the tribe of Judah. And the New Testament goes to great lengths to demonstrate that Jesus was of the tribe of Judah so that He would be qualified to be king. But He's also called the priest. How can He be priest and king at the same time? Because the priests were from the tribe of Levi in the Aaronic priesthood. And so, the answer to that is given in the book of Hebrews when we are told that Jesus was a priest after the order of Melchizedek. And the argument the author of Hebrews makes is that the priestly order of Melchizedek was a higher order of priesthood than that of the Levitical priesthood.

How did they make that argument? Well, the author of Hebrews says that when Abraham met this strange man named Melchizedek who was the king of Salem, and his name means king itself, king of righteousness, and Salem means peace, so he could be known as the king of peace and the king of righteousness, that Melchizedek blessed Abraham and received tithes from Abraham. And in Old Testament categories, it was the greater who blessed the lesser, and the lesser paid tithes to the greater. And the author of Hebrews says, well, Levi wasn't even born yet, and if Melchizedek is greater than Abraham and Levi is a descendant of Abraham, making Abraham greater than Levi, do the math, do the logic, QED, Melchizedek is superior to Levi. And so the priestly office that Jesus fulfills surpasses everything in the Old Testament Aaronic or Levitical priesthood.

But in this occasion with the triumphal entry, the accent is on the third office, which is the office of king. And again, I mention the term mediator because in the Old Testament economy, the king was not autonomous. The king did not have supreme authority, but the king himself was subject to the king's law, that the king was supposed to mediate the righteous rule of God to the people. And the king himself was accountable to God for how he carried out his office. By the way, the New Testament makes it clear that all officials in government and authority are likewise subordinate to the authority of God and will be judged by God for how they carry out their office.

But that was to be understood in the Old Testament, and what was so egregious about the corruption of the kings, particularly in the northern kingdom, was that they sought supreme authority for themselves, and they flagrantly disobeyed the king's law. But the king that is now coming into Jerusalem in the triumphal entry, who is hailed as the king of the Jews, and even the epitheth king of the Jews is placed on his cross at his execution, is the one who is David's son and at the same time David's Lord. And he is the one that fulfills all of the promises of the Old Testament of the coming king who would restore the fallen booth of David and who would usher in the kingdom of God himself. And to this king, God would give all authority on heaven and on earth, and the extent of his reign would be eternal.

There would be no dynastic succession following him where he had to appoint his son or his grandson or his daughter or granddaughter to assume his throne. His throne is established for all generations as he is now made not just a king, but he is the king who is the king of the king and the Lord of the lords. And so, here we see in this moment where Jesus enters into Jerusalem, this moment of crisis, the culmination of who He is and what He does as prophet, as the supreme prophet, as the ultimate priest who gives the ultimate perfect sacrifice. And the king who fulfills the prophecy that God made in Psalm 110, the Lord said to my Lord, sit down at my right hand.

That was R.C. Sproul on this Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind, teaching on Jesus, our prophet, priest, and king. Studying the life of Jesus and His earthly ministry should be a great delight for the Christian. It was a passion of Dr. Sproul's to help people know more about Christ and to plumb the riches of sacred scripture. The message you heard today is one of 12 in a study he recorded titled, What Did Jesus Do?

It begins with His incarnation and His infancy and concludes with the return of Christ. If you would like this series, we'll send it to you on DVD along with digital access to the messages and study guide when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800 435 4343. In addition to the popular series, we'll send you a brand new resource from Dr. Sproul, a hardcover book called Holy Week, the week that changed the world. This new book recalls Jesus' final days in Jerusalem, when the Son of God accomplished His mission to bring forgiveness of sin and eternal life to all who trust in Him. Request both at renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast show notes. You can also request a digital resource package of the series, study guide, and ebook when you donate at renewingyourmind.org slash global. Thank you for your generous support, which makes Renewing Your Mind possible. Tomorrow is referred to by some as Maundy Thursday, commemorating the night Jesus gathered with His disciples for the Passover and gave them a new commandment. And it's that evening and the Last Supper that R.C. Sproul will explore tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. .