So Right And Yet So Wrong

Here is the transcript revised for grammar, spelling, and punctuation, kept in full paragraph format:

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I want you to imagine that you have waited your entire life for something. And it hasn't just been you who has waited for it. It has been your parents who have waited for it, and their parents have waited for it, and their parents' parents waited for it. Multiple generations, hundreds of years of waiting for something to happen. In this case, it's the people of Israel who have waited, and it is seeming to them like years and years of silence from God. Years and years of no prophets, no word, just a promise that seems to be getting older and older with every generation, wondering when is this going to happen? Is this going to happen? And then finally, in a moment, it happens, and it's nothing like you or your parents or their parents or their parents' parents expected. It's completely different. That's what's happening in Jerusalem on this particular Sunday — the Sunday we call Palm Sunday — as Jesus makes his way from Bethany into the city of Jerusalem, and there's this ecstatic crowd, electric with energy, waving palm branches, throwing their cloaks down in the road, quoting ancient psalms. They are completely right that this is the fulfillment of what was promised for so long, and yet they're completely wrong about what they're celebrating. They don't understand it. To them it is still a mystery. They are participating in something that they really don't yet comprehend. And that is a tension that comes really to the surface in the passage we're going to look at this morning. If we're honest, it's a tension that follows many of us even to this very day, right into our own hearts. We have a certain understanding about Jesus. Maybe we're right about some things, but we're often so wrong about others.

I want you to turn to John chapter 12, and we're going to look at verses 12–19 this morning. Jesus' triumphal ride into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday is one of the events in Christ's life that is recorded in all four of the Gospels. That alone should let us know that it's quite significant. Verse 12 of John 12: "The next day, the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, 'Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel.' And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, 'Fear not, daughter of Zion. Behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt.' His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. The crowds that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. The reason why the crowd went with him was that they heard that he had done this sign. So the Pharisees said to one another, 'You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.'"

Here it is — testimony that you can be so right about Jesus and yet so wrong about Jesus. This whole event is messianic. We could say it plainly: it's about Jesus as the Messiah. But because I'm trying to make the case that you can be so right about Jesus and yet so wrong, I don't want to presume that everyone here knows what "messianic" even means. Maybe some of you are new to the Christian faith and you've heard that term before. Maybe you've never heard it before and you don't know what it means. Maybe you've been a Christian for years and years and have always kind of scratched your head — what does that mean? What does it mean for Jesus to be the Messiah? What does it mean for something to be messianic?

Well, the term "Messiah" is derived from a Hebrew term that literally just means "anointed one." There would be an anointing oil — a ceremonial oil designated to appoint someone to a sacred duty. At times, priests would be anointed to designate them as priests in Israel. Most commonly, it was used for kings, and this is something we see throughout the Old Testament. Kings would be anointed to identify them as the new king or the soon-to-be new king — as Saul was, as David was, as Solomon was, and so many others. It was Nathan the prophet, though, who promised to King David that God would establish a throne for David's descendants, and that throne would be eternal. This is what we often refer to as the Davidic covenant. You can find it in 2 Samuel chapter 7, and I'll just read a few verses of what Nathan told David. In 2 Samuel 7:12–13, we read this: "When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever."

So this is part of a promise that God made not just to David but really to his people — that there was going to be a person who would come from the line of David, a descendant of David, who would rule over God's people on a throne that would be an eternal, forever throne. This descendant of David would preside over an everlasting kingdom that would be characterized by peace. And so throughout the history of Israel, there would be prophets — men like Isaiah, men like Jeremiah. Even when the people of Israel were in captivity in Babylon, there would be individuals like Ezekiel who would deliver similar prophetic messages, that even in the most dire times for this nation under captivity and rule by Babylon, there was still this promise that this descendant of David would shepherd God's people and restore them to the glory that God had promised them. For example, Ezekiel writes this in Ezekiel 34:23–24: "I will rescue my flock, and they shall no longer be a prey, and I will judge between sheep and sheep. And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them. He shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the Lord. I have spoken."

What is so interesting about that prophecy is that it happens long after David has died, so it's clearly not talking specifically about David himself, but about this promised descendant of David who was going to come. This messianic hope — this king who would bring peace, restore fortune to God's people, and rule over a never-ending kingdom — was held by God's people from the time that Nathan gave this prophecy to David, right up until the time of Jesus' birth, through the exile, through the return, through this time of silence between the two testaments, and on into the birth of Jesus Christ. When we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, and so much of the message delivered either to Jesus' earthly parents, the shepherds, or the people surrounding Jesus tied directly to this promise made to David. Often it is angels who deliver the message. In Luke 2:10, the angel says to the shepherds on the hills outside of Bethlehem, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy, which will be for all the people, for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ" — and that word "Christ" just means "Messiah" — "the Lord."

You remember when the wise men come to Herod and they want to know where Jesus is — what do they ask Herod? They say, "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star when it rose and have come to worship him." There is a king that has been born, somebody from this line of David. That is made clear in the genealogy that precedes this in Matthew chapter 1. And even when the angel Gabriel comes to Mary to tell her about this special baby she is carrying in her womb, the angel says to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." That is a huge component of what we're talking about when we're talking about Jesus being the Messiah, and this occurrence outside the city of Jerusalem being messianic.

Let's talk about why the people who are cheering Jesus on say the things they do. Why do they say "Hosanna"? Why do they shout, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel"? Why would they say that? Well, first, it's to identify who it is who is riding into Jerusalem. And here again, we see the crowds are so right and so wrong. They thought they understood what was happening. They see him as the Lord. They see him as one who would save — that's what the word "Hosanna" means: "Lord, save," or simply "save." Matthew tells us in Matthew 21:9 that they even declare him to be the Son of David, and they declare him to be a king. So much of this seems to be spot-on. The excitement, the pageantry, the sense of anticipation — all completely appropriate. In Luke's account, Luke 19:38, Luke gives us a little more expansion about what they say: "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest." But then Luke tells us that some of the Pharisees say to Jesus, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples." And what does Jesus say? Maybe you remember this. Jesus says, "I tell you, if these were silent, even the very rocks would cry out." This is Jesus' way of saying: they are right. They're not mistaken. They're not proclaiming falsehoods. They're not speaking blasphemy. They have correctly identified who I am. I am the Lord. I am the one who will save. I am the Son of David. I am the King. They are not wrong. In fact, they're so right that all of creation wants to scream it out.

But their expectations about what Jesus was going to do in Jerusalem and how he was going to establish this kingdom — that is where they are completely wrong. Maybe some of you have wondered: why are they waving palm branches? Why would that be a thing? Well, palm branches were used to recognize heroes returning from battle and for special times of rejoicing. They symbolize victory. They symbolize triumph. That's why we refer to this as Jesus' triumphal entry, even though that phrase never appears in any of the passages of Scripture. It's just something we've used to describe it. Jesus riding into Jerusalem triumphantly — because the way the people are celebrating him, with this sense of anticipation, is very much like a victorious king or warrior returning or coming into a city with this air of excitement all about him. The palm branches also became a sort of unofficial symbol of Jewish nationalism, tied to the Maccabean revolt. Because of the victories that the Maccabees were able to win, the celebrations were marked by the waving of these palm branches, and even some of the coinage later on was adorned with symbols of palms.

Their expectation is that this is going to be a victorious entry of a mighty king, which seems right if it's tied to King David, because King David was a mighty warrior — a truly violent man, a man of bloodshed, a man who went into battle again and again and proved his worth again and again. He fought, he defeated, he conquered, he overthrew coups, he survived assassination attempts, he did all sorts of things using his military cunning and his mighty swordsmanship — whether it was relying completely on God to defeat Goliath, or functioning as a king, or operating with his band of mighty men as a vigilante peacekeeper in the region while running from Saul. This man was the epitome of the conquering king. And so if you're thinking somebody is coming as a descendant of David on David's throne, you would most likely associate it with some sort of warrior king — a mighty man, a man of battle. In addition to this, the crowd was still hoping that Jesus would give them all the blessings he seemed to be handing out throughout his earthly ministry: feeding thousands of people, raising the dead, healing people. Sort of the goodie vending machine they wanted Jesus to be — the best of both worlds. This was their expectation.

So this excitement, the palm branches, the pageantry, the unbridled enthusiasm — all of that was there to identify Jesus as the fulfillment of this promise made to David, that he is the Messiah. But they were completely wrong about what he was going to do and how he was going to bring about this messianic kingdom. And that leads us to the second reason why this happens the way it does, and why the verses that are quoted are the ones that are quoted — and that is, Jesus came in this way to shatter their expectations, to completely tear them down. In fact, this may be where they would be most confused, because riding on a donkey doesn't exactly inspire a whole lot of confidence. This is not what you expect from a conquering, battle-hardened king coming to establish his dominion over the current ruling empire, the Roman Empire. I love to read Revelation 19 on Palm Sunday, because it's the polar opposite of this. In Revelation 19:11–16, we read: "Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse" — not a baby donkey — "and the one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems. And he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is the Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of the Lord God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords."

Now I won't get into all of the significance of that passage, other than to say that is a mighty warrior king riding on a warhorse. This is what you think of. This is what we would expect. And yet what happens in Jerusalem is it looks like Jesus borrowed something from the pony ride at the fair and he's riding into town on that. This is clearly not what they should have expected. Not very David-like at all. And this is why even the disciples don't understand what's going on — his own disciples. It says in this passage that they didn't understand these things at first. Verse 16: "But when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him." They were like: why? Why are they saying this? Why are these people celebrating this way? What is going on here? We have been avoiding Jerusalem intentionally because Jesus has not wanted to be accosted, not wanted to be arrested, not wanted bad things to happen to him — his time had not yet come. And now he rides into Jerusalem and everybody is just going crazy. In fact, they are participating in things they don't even understand. They were the ones who had gotten him the donkey — he had told them to go secure it, and they did, and now he is riding on it, and they are like, "What is going on? Why? I don't get it." They are participating in things they don't understand, because they no doubt had very similar expectations as the people waving the palm branches — that the Messiah is going to be this delivering, conquering king. And this doesn't seem like it to them. This seems like a guy riding on a little donkey.

They don't understand that the kingdom of God that the Messiah is going to bring is going to come in stages. And the first throne is actually going to be a cross. And the first diadem, the first crown he wears, is going to be a crown of thorns. And his coronation ceremony is going to be mockery and beating. Jesus is going to establish his dominion — his ruling dominion — by fulfilling the prophecy made all the way back in the book of Genesis to Adam and Eve, that Eve's seed is going to crush the head of the serpent, that is, of Satan, through his death on the cross. Even at the beginning of the book of Acts, after Jesus has risen from the dead, the disciples ask him in verse 6, "Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" Jesus, doesn't it seem like about time that you do this? And Jesus says it is not for them to know the time. But then he says, "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." In other words, Jesus is saying, "Don't worry about when I'm going to usher in this earthly kingdom. You are going to be the ones who grow the spiritual kingdom that I have inaugurated." And that's why in Acts 1:11, after Jesus has ascended into heaven, there's an angel that says to the disciples, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." In other words, the angel is saying: the coming earthly kingdom, this final stage of this inaugurated kingdom, is going to happen in the future. He is going to come back. He is going to establish that. Now is the time for you to go out and be obedient to the commands he has given you. Now is the time for you, disciples, to go out and tell people about Jesus Christ, who rules and reigns from his throne in heaven over this spiritual kingdom here on earth.

Which leads us to the third big implication of this triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and that is that it was to fulfill Old Testament prophecy. In this passage that John records for us, there are two quotations from the Old Testament. One is the cry of the people where they say, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel." The other is not shouted by the people, but rather John adds it as a narrative comment: "Jesus found a donkey and sat on it, just as it is written." And then the quote is this: "Fear not, daughter of Zion. Behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt." The first quotation, the one shouted by the crowds, is found in Psalm 118. It is a rough paraphrase of verses 25 and 26, which say this: "Save us, we pray, O Lord. O Lord, we pray, give us success. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord."

Psalms 113–118 were psalms associated with the celebration of the Passover, and this is what was happening in Jerusalem at the time Jesus came in. That's why there were so many people gathered there — they had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast of Passover. In Psalm 118, if we read the whole psalm, we would see it is a song of victory: the nations have surrounded and attacked, but the Lord has delivered his people. He has saved them, and his people worship him, for his steadfast love endures forever. Matthew and Mark include statements about Jesus being the Son of David and being the Messiah, and this is the connection they make to God's covenant with David when they reference this passage. Without even realizing what they are doing, the people are declaring the fulfillment of this prophecy about the deliverance of the people of God by this descendant, this Son of David, this Messiah.

The other quotation is not just a reference to prophecy — it points to an amazing prophetic fulfillment. It comes from Zechariah 9. Verse 15 of John 12 is a direct quote of Zechariah 9:9: "Fear not, daughter of Zion. Behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt." In this section of Zechariah, what is depicted is a king who saves his people and brings peace to the whole world. In fact, this peace is so dominant, so all-encompassing, that in that prophetic word, peace is so pervasive that the implements of war are no longer needed and so they are destroyed. We don't need offense or defense anymore. We're going to get rid of this. We don't need chariots. We don't need bows and arrows. We don't need swords and spears. We just get rid of it, because it can be repurposed. Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem is a fulfillment of these prophetic declarations, and they show him not to be just an ordinary king asserting his right to an ordinary throne, but the promised coming Messiah — one who is going to do extraordinary things and claim an eternal throne over a kingdom that would first be established in the hearts of his people. And we can look to the book of Revelation to see how he is going to bring about the final phase of this physical kingdom over the earth.

I love this quote from the commentator Robert Reymond. He says this: "In presenting himself as Zechariah 9:9's promised king by consciously arranging the circumstances of his entry to conform to Old Testament prophecy, Jesus was claiming by implication to be the fulfiller of every other Old Testament messianic prophecy." What he is saying is this: the prophecies about the Messiah are going to be fulfilled to even the most minute detail — not just the big, significant ones like the virgin birth or the descent from David, but even the tiny ones, like the way in which he rides into Jerusalem sitting on a donkey. Even the kind of animal he rides into Jerusalem on is significant and will be fulfilled.

And this is what the disciples, in the heat of the moment, don't understand. They weren't able to connect all the dots — and who could blame them, with all the frenzy and activity going on, for not perfectly recalling all the prophetic things said about the Messiah throughout thousands of years of Old Testament writings? But part of the reason they didn't connect the dots, and still struggled to connect them even after Jesus' resurrection, lay in the fact that the predictions about the Messiah were not limited to him being a king. If you had tunnel vision focused only on the Davidic descendant, the king, the throne, and the kingdom, then you were going to miss things. For example, the Messiah would not just be a king, but would also be a priest — a priest after the order of Melchizedek, which is discussed in Hebrews 5 through 7. What did priests do? Well, priests represent people before God. They intercede on behalf of the people. Priests offer sacrifices to make atonement for sin so that the people can remain in covenant relationship with God. Sin created this separation, this barrier, between humanity and God. And so the priest was able to enter behind that curtain into the Holy of Holies and make the atoning sacrifice on behalf of the people. The priest taught the law. The priest blessed the people. And so Jesus, in part, is riding into Jerusalem not just to fulfill the prophecies made about this descendant of David, but to fulfill prophecies about the Messiah as priest — going into Jerusalem to radically put an end to that whole sacrificial system by himself being the priest who offers his own body as a sacrifice and sheds his own blood to atone for the sins of the people.

It also misses the prophecies that the Messiah is going to suffer and die. We read some of those earlier as I opened the service from Isaiah 53: "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned, every one, to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." And this is the one that Jesus' disciples perhaps had the most difficulty accepting, because again and again and again he told them, "I'm going in, and I'm going to die. They are going to kill me. They are going to crucify me. I am going to rise from the dead three days later." And they were like, "No. Not going to happen. I think you're wrong, Jesus. That's not going to happen to you. You're the Messiah. You're the descendant of David. You're going to rule on this throne." And Jesus had to say, "Well, you're only getting part of that equation. The Messiah would suffer and die. The Messiah wouldn't just offer sacrifices for the people — he would be the sacrifice for the people."

Hebrews 7 says this: "For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself." He is a different kind of priest, just as Jesus is a different kind of king and a different kind of sacrifice. He is fulfilling all these things in a way that goes beyond what they were anticipating and expecting. So they got so many things right and they were celebrating that, but they didn't capture the full picture of what Jesus was coming to do. And so they got so many things wrong.

You and I need to make sure that when we believe in Jesus, when we put our trust in him, when our faith is in him, we are entrusting ourselves to what he has truly done and to what he truly is — not just what we want him to be. We must truly trust that he is the sinless Son of God, that he is our substitute, that he is the one who can stand in our place and take the punishment for our sins on himself, and that his sacrifice was sufficient to satisfy God's demands for justice. So that as he hung on the cross, there at the very end, he could cry out with full confidence, "It is finished." He had completed the work of atonement for the sins of the people. And he could be buried in the ground. He could rise three days later, victorious over sin and death, as our victorious Savior — securing for all who believe, atonement for sins, justification from sins, adoption into the family of God, making us heirs of his kingdom. We can trust in what he has done rather than reducing him to the status of a genie who grants our wishes, which is kind of what the people were hoping he would be when he rode into Jerusalem.

There are lots of misconceptions about the Messiah, lots of misperceptions about what Jesus was and what he would do. Many people wanted to force him into the box of their own shortsighted, short-term, limited desires — just as we so often do. They only saw him as a solution to their small earthly problems. He can get us food. He can make us healthy. He can maybe on occasion raise people from the dead. He can walk on water. Oh, and he can turn water into wine — that's pretty cool, right? But those are insignificant compared to what he really came to do. Those were all just pointing to the identity of who he was. Of all the things you understand Jesus to be, do you recognize him as the Savior of your soul? Do you realize that he is the King of your life, the sovereign over you? If you want to understand Palm Sunday, you really need to understand the full and total picture of what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah — not just a shortened, tunnel-vision, narrow-minded view of it.

Let us pray. Dear Lord, we thank you so much for this amazing occurrence in the life of Jesus Christ. We thank you for the foreshadowing it provides, pointing us to so many things that were to come — things that were to come in the short term, both through Jesus Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, and also things that are more long-term, some of which we still anticipate their fulfillment. We ask that you would help us, as we think about Jesus Christ as the Savior, as we think about what it means for him to be your anointed Messiah, what it means for him to be King over our lives, to examine that with the full perspective of your Word and not just our own temporary, earthbound desires. Help us to be right — not just right about a few things and wrong about so many others, but fully convinced of all that your Word tells us about who Jesus Christ is. And thank you for this. Amen.