The Triumphal Entry

As Jesus makes His way to Jerusalem, He tells His disciples to go into a village and get a cult. And it's almost as Jesus is telling His disciples to go and steal a donkey for Him.

But that's not what's going on at all. What He is consciously doing is fulfilling the prophecies of the Old Testament. Welcome to the Lord's Day edition of Renewing Your Mind and another sermon in Dr. R.C. Sproul's series from Mark's Gospel. His focus is on our Savior's triumphal entry in Jerusalem, those dramatic moments leading up to His betrayal, trial, and sacrificial death.

R.C. is going to refer to the Old Testament and make this story leap off the page with Messianic significance, but he's going to begin by reading from Mark chapter 11. When they drew near Jerusalem to Bethphage and Bethany on the Mount of Olives… One technical point here is that it mentions first Bethphage, which means house of unripe figs, and Bethany, which means a house of sorrow, that it seems as though in their journey to Jerusalem they first go through Bethphage and then to Bethany. And critical scholars look at the intersections of the roads today that come from the north into Jerusalem.

They say the order is just reversed. First you have to go through Bethany, then you go through Bethphage before you can go to Jerusalem. Ah, but what these critics overlook was Jesus wasn't traveling on modern highways. He was traveling on a Roman road, and we know now that the Roman road went just as Mark said that it did, but that's just an aside for those of you who like those little points of dispute. In any case, they came to the Mount of Olives, and He sent two of His disciples and said to them, go into the village opposite, and when you enter it you will find a colt tied there on which no one has ever set. Loose it and bring it. And so you hear the instructions that Jesus gives to His disciples at this point. Go to the next village, which probably was Bethphage, the house of unripe figs. And He said, you walk into that village, and you're going to find a colt that's tied up that has never been ridden. And you untie it, and you bring it to Me. Now that sounds strange doesn't it? And it's almost as if Jesus is telling His disciples to go and steal a donkey for Him.

But that's not what's going on at all. What He is consciously doing is fulfilling the prophecies of the Old Testament, where on more than one occasion the Old Testament prophecies of the coming Messiah said that the Messiah would enter the city riding on a donkey. We remember how the other gospel writers give a much more expansive report of what happens on Palm Sunday.

This is the most brief account that we have in Mark, typically of Mark's fashion of hurrying through things. But we think, for example, of Zechariah 9 where it says, Rejoice Jerusalem, your King comes unto you lowly and riding on a donkey. And so that prophecy was well known among the people who were waiting for their coming King. Most kings in the ancient world rode on great steeds, magnificent horses like Alexander the Great, but not so the King of the Jews. He was going to come riding on a donkey. And that prophecy that we find in Zechariah really has its roots much earlier in the Old Testament.

And let me just take a second to refer back to that. So this morning I'm going to be a bit of a flipper. I hear sometimes people say, Oh, I listened to that preacher last week, and he's a flipper. A flipper is one that keeps flipping between different chapters in the Bible and gets everybody confused.

But let's look for a second. In chapter 49 of Genesis, what we have there is the record of the patriarchal blessing that Jacob pronounced upon his sons. And you remember that the firstborn son was Reuben, but he was denied the patriarchal blessing because of his sin, and then Simeon and Levi were likewise denied. And when he comes then to the great patriarchal blessing in chapter 49 and verse 8, listen to what he said. Judah, you are He whom your brothers shall praise. Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies, and your father's children shall bow down before you, for Judah is a lion's whelp. From that day forward throughout the rest of sacred Scripture, the coming Messiah would be called the Lion of Judah.

It goes on. Judah is a lion's whelp. From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He bows down, he lies as a lion, and as a lion who shall rouse him, the scepter, that is the sign of royalty, shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes. And to him shall be the obedience of the people, binding his donkey to the vine and his donkey's colt to the choice vine. He washed his garments in wine and his clothes in the blood of grapes." So you see that deeply rooted in the Jewish consciousness of the Old Testament was this future hope of the king who would enter Mount Zion riding on a donkey as their coming Messiah.

And so now Mark tells us that this is happening. And Jesus instructs His disciples, go and get that colt that is tied there and untie it and bring it to Me. Now in the ancient world, including Israel, they had a concept of eminent domain that was much more limited than we have in our country, but one of the prerogatives of the king was to commandeer a beast of burden burdened whenever he needed it. And so Jesus as the king exercises that right here and commands His disciples to go get that colt. Now something else is in view here, that it was a colt that had never been ridden. Now I don't know if they have rodeos in Israel where they ride bucking donkeys to see how good you are, but the donkeys, just like the horses, had to be broken in order to become functional beasts of burden. And the whole principle again in Jewish history was that no one was ever allowed to ride on the king's horse or to ride on the king's donkey.

Only the king was allowed to ride on it. That's why Jesus specifies here, you get Me a colt that has never been ridden, because He's the colt now prepared for the king. And He says, if anyone says to you, why are you doing this? Say, the Lord has need of it, and immediately He will send it here.

Now there's a certain ambiguity here. When Jesus said, anybody asks you what you're doing, you just say, the Lord, the kyrios, needs it. Now that word can mean simply sir, or it can mean master, or it can have the more exalted significance of the supreme ruler and sovereign over the people. It's rare that Mark uses that term with respect to Jesus, but here Jesus uses it for Himself. And my guess, and it's not a wild guess, is that He's not simply saying, tell them the master needs it, but He's saying, tell them that the sovereign One, the King of the Jews, requires that donkey, and immediately He will send it here. And so they went their way and found the colt tied by the door outside on the street, and they loosed it. But some of them who stood there said to them, what are you doing loosing the colt?

And so they spoke to them just as Jesus had commanded, and they let them go. And then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their clothes on it, and He sat on it. Now again this detail, that when they brought the donkey to Jesus, His disciples took their garments and put the garments on the back of the donkey as a saddle, as it were, for Jesus. And then we are told in the other gospels as well that the people when Jesus began His procession took off their outer garments and threw them on the pathway of the donkey.

So that on Palm Sunday when Jesus makes His triumphal entry into the city, the donkey is walking over a red carpet, as it were, created by the clothes of the people. Now that also has its roots in the Old Testament. If I were to say to you, who was the worst king in the Old Testament? Would we have to debate it?

Would you hesitate? Isn't there one name that stands above or below the name of every other king? King Ahab with his consort Jezebel, how they introduced radical paganism and idolatry into the royal court of Israel, and how Ahab sought the life constantly of the prophet Elisha, and his wickedness was so great, that is Ahab's wickedness was so great, that finally God had enough of it, and He announced to Elisha that He was going to replace Ahab. And so according to the commandments of God, Elisha took a vial of oil and gave it to one of the sons of the prophets, and he said, Go to the house of Jehu, for the Lord has commanded that Jehu be anointed the king in place of Ahab. And so the prophet came to Jehu and explained to him what the Word of God had commanded. And Jehu, who had no aspirations of royalty, nevertheless submitted to the Word of God, and the prophet anointed his head with oil, and all of the followers of Jehu cried out, Jehu is king. And then they took off their garments from their outer garments and put them in the path of Jehu, so as that he came down the steps from his court, he walked over the garments of his people.

That same principle at the anointing of the king is being used here when the people take off their garments and put them in front of Jesus. Now we notice also that when Jesus is involved in this procession, this triumphal entry, it begins at Bethany, and Bethany is where the Mount of Olives is, and the Mount of Olives is something of a misnomer. There at the top of the Mount of Olives is the little village of Bethany, and it looks out across the Kidron Valley down to the city of Jerusalem. And the Mount of Olives is three hundred feet higher than Jerusalem. It's just a big hill.

It's not a great glacial mountain or anything like that. But anyway, the procession starts at Bethany. So what on the Mount of Olives?

So what? Well, back in 586 at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of Jerusalem to Babylon, when Jerusalem fell, God gave a vision to the prophet Ezekiel, and the vision Ezekiel has, what he could see in his mind's eye, Jerusalem and the temple. And in that vision, beloved, he saw the glory of God rise up from the temple, and the glory of God departed from the east side of the city, and the glory of God went up the three hundred feet and then came down on the Mount of Olives. When I was in Jerusalem, I stayed on the Mount of Olives overlooking the holy city, and I can remember one night standing out on the patio from our hotel, and all the lights were illuminating the walls of Jerusalem, and I looked down across that Kidron Valley. I've told you before of haunting memories I had of envisioning David fleeing the old city from Absalom, his son, but on another night I was looking across the valley and looking into the city, and I remembered that vision of Ezekiel. And in my mind's eye I saw the glory of God rising up from the temple, hovering, coming from the east gate, then going up to where I was on the Mount of Olives, and then coming down and landing there. Remember the story of Ichabod when the glory had departed from Israel. This was even a much worse moment of Ichabod, the departure of the glory of God as the people were now taken away into captivity.

For the Jewish people, it was a holocaust of sorts, all surrounding the Mount of Olives. Then we read, Jesus began this journey, and other people cut down leafy branches from the trees and spread them on the road. We look at that every year on Palm Sunday, of the waving of the palms and so on, and the people crying, Hosanna, which means, Lord, save us now.

Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Now here's another little technical point you may or may not be interested in, that some scholars say that Mark compresses the time that Jesus spends in Jerusalem before His death. We celebrate Holy Week as starting on Palm Sunday, and then on Friday is the crucifixion, and then Sunday is the resurrection. But actually John's gospel has Jesus in Jerusalem for four months before He's executed. And so the idea is that probably Mark is compressing this event, and probably it really took place rather than in the spring, in the fall, during the time of the Feast of Tabernacles where people characteristically had their palm branches as part of the celebration of that particular festival.

We don't know for sure. But in any case, all of the gospels tell us that the people took these palm branches that were symbols of victory and waved them in the air, crying out, Hosanna, Lord, save us now. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. That the song of the people when their king came riding to them lowly and on a donkey was the first singing of the songtus that we sing almost every Sunday here at St. Andrews when we sing Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He who cometh in the name of the Lord.

But there's something very, very strange about Mark's version. After the blessed is the kingdom of our Father David that comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest, we read in verse 11, And Jesus went into Jerusalem and into the temple. And when He had looked around at all the things there as the hour was already late, He went out to Bethany with the twelve. Mark's conclusion of this episode is anticlimactic. It's like, well, He got into Jerusalem, went to the temple, looked around, and went home, went back to Bethany as if nothing significant had taken place.

No, no, no. There's a little detail here that's crucial to our understanding of this event in the life of Jesus. You know, all along we've been waiting for Jesus to arrive in Jerusalem. He had set His face like a flint to Jerusalem. We've been looking at that since He announced to His disciples that He was going to the holy city to suffer and to die. But Jerusalem was not His ultimate destination.

It was the penultimate destination. His destination wasn't just the city in general. His destination was the temple. He was going to the temple.

He was going and looking around at the place where historically the sacrifices were offered. He was going to the temple that replaced the tabernacle, which in its own structure and its use was a living prophecy of the Messiah who was to come. Do you remember in John's gospel he begins, the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, and then a little bit later in the prologue, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, right? But that phrase, He dwelt among us, literally in the text says, He tabernacled among us. Because you see, Jesus is the tabernacle. He is the fulfillment of everything the tabernacle pointed to. He is the temple. You can tear this temple down. Not one stone will be left among the others.

But after three days, I will build it again. He was speaking of Himself because He is the temple. And so He goes to that place that He was born for in Bethlehem.

And here is the supreme irony. In 586, Ezekiel saw the glory of God leave the temple, leave the holy city, and come down on Bethany at the Mount of Olives. And now the one whom the Scriptures define as the brightness of the glory of God comes from Bethany, comes from the Mount of Olives, goes in the eastern gate, goes to the holy city, and goes to the temple.

Do you see it? In 586, the glory of God left the temple, and now the glory of God comes back. But no one understood it, that the King was the King of glory, who here is about to meet the destiny to which He was called and for which He was born.

When we see the triumphal entry in its context, we see the incredible prophecies it fulfilled, and we get a much better understanding of this monumental event. Each Sunday here on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. R.C. Sproul is showing us the riches we find in the Gospel of Mark. And I think you'll gain more insight into this verse-by-verse study when you request our resource offer today. It's the nearly 400-page commentary of Mark's Gospel by Dr. Sproul.

It goes in-depth and helps you understand the context of every passage. You can go online to request this resource with your gift of any amount. Our web address is renewingyourmind.org. Your support allows people around the world to access resources from Ligonier, the teaching of Dr. Sproul, along with our Ligonier Teaching Fellows, podcasts, books, and our monthly devotional magazine, Table Talk. So we're thankful for your generosity. Well, I hope you'll make plans to join us as we return to Mark's Gospel next Sunday. Dr. Sproul's message is titled, The Fig Tree and the Temple. We hope to see you right back here for Renewing Your Mind. you