Bryan Clements - It's About Time
Palm Sunday
Can you keep a secret? Have you ever asked someone that question? The answer is always, “You know I can.”
Okay, I’m going to tell you this, but you can’t tell anyone. So the person tells you their secret and then what happens? You have to tell somebody. This is how it usually works isn’t it.
Why do we have such a hard time not telling anybody after we have been told not to?
Over and over again Jesus told people not to tell.
In Matthew 8 we find the story of Jesus healing the leper. After healing him Jesus tells him to tell no one, but to go and offer worship as the law requires.
How do you not tell anyone?
In Mark 3 we find:
Whenever the unclean spirits saw Him, they would fall down before Him and shout, “You are the Son of God!”
And He earnestly warned them not to tell who He was.
The time wasn’t right.
Mark 7 Jesus heals the deaf man. “And his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was removed, and he began speaking plainly. And He gave them orders not to tell anyone; but the more He ordered them, the more widely they continued to proclaim it.
They had to be thinking, “This is the Mesaiah!”
Jesus healed Jairus’s daughter, brought her back to life. And then He instructed them to tell no one what had happened. (There were people there who knew what happened.)
You know they told people what they saw.
In Matthew 12 we see the Pharisees plotting against Jesus. And then it says, “Many followed Him, and He healed them all, and warned them not to tell who He was.
To publicly announce who he was would just bring more opposition.
Jesus’ command not to tell others about the miracle must have stemmed from His desire not to be openly proclaimed as the Messiah until He was ready to formally proclaim it in Jerusalem. The time wasn’t right yet.
People were thinking it. Some of them were sure of it, but Jesus knew the timing wasn’t right for him to be publicly proclaimed as the Messiah. He had work to do and nothing was going to interfere with it.
Then Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” Some say John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. Who do you say that I am? Simon Peter responds with “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus says, “You’re right.”
The disciples had to be thinking, “Now is the time. Here it comes. He is going to announce it to the world!”
but Jesus doesn’t do what you would expect him to do Matthew 16:20
20 Then He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ.
The time just wasn’t right.
You know that the disciples, his closest followers had to have been wondering when he was going to announce it. They were waiting to see the long awaited Messiah take charge and set things right. They were right in saying that Jesus was the Messiah, but they didn’t fully understand. They thought the kingdom of God would come immediately. They didn’t understand that Jesus was not coming as the ruling king. He wasn’t there to run the Romans out of Jerusalem. He had different plans
I think that Jesus was also telling his disciples that it would be fruitless, at this point to try to convince people that he was the Messiah. For those people who didn’t believe, telling them wasn’t going to work. They had witnessed Jesus ministry, and if his teachings and miracles did not convince them, words from the disciples would not have much impact either.
But, Jesus was preparing the disciples for what was about to happen in Jerusalem. He told them that he would have to suffer and be killed and then be raised up on the third day. They didn’t understand this. That is not what they were expecting of the Messiah.
If he dies, how can he rule? If he dies, what happens to us?
But still, Jesus was preparing them for what was coming.
He did this over a period of a couple of weeks. Each time he told them, he was a little more detailed and a little more graphic about what was going to happen.
The last time, on the road to Jerusalem, which was at least the fourth time, he told them as plainly as he could that he would be betrayed, mocked, flogged, and crucified.. But He also reminded them that death was not the end for Him, for He would rise again on the third day.
Jesus was preparing the disciples and now it was time to make his preparations for his Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem.
It was the Passover time, and Jerusalem and the whole surrounding neighbourhood was crowded with pilgrims. Thirty years later a Roman governor was to take a census of the lambs slain in Jerusalem for the Passover and find that the number was not far off a quarter of a million. It was the Passover regulation that there must be a party of a minimum of ten for each lamb which means that at that Passover time more than two and a half million people had crowded their way into Jerusalem. The law was that every adult male Jew who lived within twenty miles of Jerusalem must come to the Passover; but not only the Jews of Palestine, made their way to the greatest of their national festivals. Jesus could not have chosen a more dramatic moment; it was into a city surging with people keyed up with religious expectations that he came.
This morning I want us to turn to Matthew 21 as we prepare for Easter this passage sets the stage for everything that happens leading up to the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus. Most of us have read this passage multiple times but I want to take the time this morning and unpack it and make sure that we don’t miss what is happening here.
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Look at Matthew 21 with me.
Matthew 21:1-3 (NASB95)
1 When they had approached Jerusalem and had come to Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied there and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to Me. 3 “If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord has need of them,’ and immediately he will send them.”
Bethphage and the Mount of Olives are just outside of Jerusalem. The Mount of Olives looks down on the city.
It was fitting that He enter the city by way of the Mount since it had Messianic associations.
Several passages in the OT speak of the Mount of Olives (cf. 2 Sam 15:32; Ezek 11:23; Zech 14:4–11). It was from there that it was thought that the Lord God would appear to establish the kingdom; and from there the deliverance of Israel would take place. The Mount of Olives was the place that the Messiah was going to return to and resurrect the dead. They took it so literally that the side of the mount was used as a cemetery. It was the holiest of the cemeteries. They believed that if the Messiah was going to raise the dead, the ones buried right there by Him would be the first to be raised.
It was a widespread Jewish belief that stated that the Mount of Olives would see the coming of the Messiah. This belief is based upon Zechariah 14:3-4 which says:
Then shall the Lord go forth and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle./ And his feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east.
This was the place that the Lord would return to and be victorious. It is where he would come and then be Lord over all the earth. That’s what they were expecting.
In preparation, Jesus picked the place.
Then he prepares the process. He tells the disciples to secure a donkey for him to ride in on.
The remaining distance into Jerusalem was less than a mile. It would have been no problem to walk the rest of the way. He didn’t do this jus to have something to ride on. I have heard some people say that he just must have been tired.
It had been predicted that He would enter the city in this manner. This act was specified in the program for the Messiah as definitely as was His birth of a virgin in Bethlehem. Every instructed Jew was aware of this. The prophecy reads: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon a donkey, and upon a colt the foal of a donkey”
It was all part of the preparation.
I also want you to catch how this is done. Don’t miss the significance.
Some scholars believe that Jesus must have known the owner of the donkey and pre-arranged it with him for the use. The text does not give that idea, though. If this had been prepared ahead of time with the owner, why would the owner ask why they were taking the animal? He would have already known. Or, if it were pre-arranged, it would have been simpler to just state that the master had taken care of the arrangements?
Jesus not only knows that a donkey and a colt will be available for his service in the next village, he is also confident that any questions concerning the requisition of these animals will be fully satisfied merely by the explanation, the Lord needs them.
This third verse shows that Jesus was in control and that none of what was happening was left to chance. As the king he had the right to request whatever he needed.
Jesus was proclaiming that he was the King. Now was the time. As the king he has a right to everything within His kingdom.
If we are going to proclaim Jesus as our Lord and as our Savior we have to acknowledge that he is the King. That means that we are subjects in his kingdom and that he has still has a right to everything in his kingdom. Don’t miss this! Everything that we have is His. Are you willing to say that? Are you willing to say that all your stuff is available for His use? Are you willing to acknowledge that all your possessions belong to Him anyway? This is hard for some of us. I worked hard for my stuff, what do you mean it is not mine? No it’s not! It is his.
I have to be willing to use my stuff, my time, my self, everything for him. When you hear that statement, “The Lord has need of them.” Are you willing to respond like the owner of the donkeys did? If you acknowledge him as king you are.
So, with the donkey in hand the preparations had been made to enter Jerusalem.
So we have the place, the process, and the preparations. Part of the preparations is the prophecies.
The Scripture leaves no doubt concerning the nature of this entrance. “All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet,
Matthew shows the prophecies being deliberately fulfilled by Jesus.
By His action He proclaimed in the very heart of Israel that He was the Messiah, but a Messiah without arms or an army, a Messiah who was riding ‘in lowly pomp’ that road into Jerusalem.
From the Mount of Olives Jesus sent two disciples, asking them to go to the nearby village and procure two animals for the procession. Mark and Luke add the significant detail that the animal upon which He was to ride was to be one upon which no one had yet sat.
This Messianic element is sometimes overlooked.
When a king is received, the objects devoted to his service are ones that have never been used.
The fact that the donkey had never been ridden before made it specially suitable for sacred purposes.
The red heifer which was used in the ceremonies of cleansing had to be a beast “upon which a yoke has never come” (Numbers 19:2; Deuteronomy 21:3);
the cart on which the ark of the Lord was carried had to be a vehicle which had never been used for any other purpose (1 Samuel 6:7).
The special sacredness of the occasion was underlined by the fact that the donkey had never been ridden by any man before.
The Jews believed that the Messiah would be able calm and ride an animal that had never been broken.
But Matthew also wanted to make it clear that the preparations for this day had started long before Jesus was born on this earth.
Look at the next few verses with me:
Matthew 21:4-5 (NASB95)
4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet: 5 “Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold your King is coming to you, Gentle, and mounted on a donkey, Even on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’ ”
This is quote comes from Zechariah 9.9. This was written more than 300 years before Christ was born.
Kings didn’t normally arrive riding on donkeys. They usually came as conquerors riding on horses. A colt was a symbol of peace.
Here we see Jesus is, not on a stately charger with embroidered and jeweled housings, he’s not even on a donkey trained for the saddle. He is riding on a common beast-of-burden, furnished with the every-day garments of his disciples.
Rather than an entry with all the trappings of power and the military overtones, Jesus enters Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey, thereby making a powerful statement concerning his nonpolitical purpose and character.
This is just one of the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled. During his lifetime he was the fulfillment of over 360 different prophecies.
So far, We have seen that the preparations were made. And now the prophecy was being fulfilled. Everything was working together to show that the preparation had taken much longer than just the previous two weeks. We see the preparations as far back as the garden of Eden and God’s redemptive plan. Everything in the Old Testament points the coming of Jesus.
Now we have the place, the process, and the preparations. And then comes the parade:
Matthew 21:6-8 (NASB95)
6 The disciples went and did just as Jesus had instructed them, 7 and brought the donkey and the colt, and laid their coats on them; and He sat on the coats. 8 Most of the crowd spread their coats in the road, and others were cutting branches from the trees and spreading them in the road.
Jesus received the red carpet treatment.
The crowds react by extending him honor and prestige due the extraordinary nature of his person. The garments and branches cover the ground “so that even the feet of the donkey do not even touch the soil or stones that ordinary people tread.” This sort of “red carpet” treatment is reserved for only one who is “marked off as apart from and superior to ordinary human affairs and conditions.
We see this done in the old testament , Joshua was treated this way.
When Jehu was anointed king the Bible tells us:
At once each took his garment, spread it under Jehu on the bare steps, blew the trumpet, and cried out, “Jehu is king!”
This is what the people were saying as Jesus rode through. Jesus is King!
Don’t you know that the disciples were thinking “It was about time!” They had been waiting for this day. They knew that he was the Messiah. It was about time that everybody else realized it. The crowd took the coats off their backs to lay in the street, to be walked on and trampled on, to let a donkey stomp all over them.
I doubt they got their coats back and if they did what do you think they looked like after the parade had passed through? Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to give even the clothes off your back to God? That is what He wants. Don’t get me wrong here, it is not necessarily the clothes that he wants; he wants you to be willing. Willing with your whole heart. Are you willing to be willing?
In addition to the red carpet treatment, the people were waving palm branches in his honor.
This tradition goes back 200 years with the celebration of the first Hanukkah, when the Jews had defeated Antiochus Epiphanes around 165 BC. Do you know the story? Desecration of the temple, pig on the altar, people revolted and overthrew him.
In celebration they carried rods entwined with leaves, green branches and palms, they sang hymns of grateful praise to the leader who had brought about the purification of the temple.
The crowd who had followed him into Jerusalem saw Jesus as the Messiah who would cleanse the temple and set things right. And we are told that he did cleanse the temple of the money changers, but there is more to the story.
Let’s keep going.
In vs 9 we find;
9 The crowds going ahead of Him, and those who followed, were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest!”
They shouted “Hosanna!” Hosanna means Save now! and it was the cry for help which a people in distress addressed to their king or their god.
It is really a taken from Psalm 118:25 and 26: “Please, Lord, save us; please, Lord, give us success.
26 God bless the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
It is essentially a people’s cry for deliverance and for help in the day of their trouble; it is an oppressed people’s cry to their savior and their king.
As the parade continues it draws attention. That’s how parades are today. You hear the commotion, the sirens, the honking and you have to go see what is going on. When our children were younger we would stop just to watch the parade. It didn’t matter what it was for, it was a parade.
Look at the next two verses.
10 When He had entered Jerusalem, all the city was stirred, saying, “Who is this?” 11 And the crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.”
It is worth noting the difference between the people of the city and the crowd of followers.
Jerusalem’s residents do not join the crowds’ welcome of Jesus to the Holy City. The people of the city were not as familiar with Jesus as much as the people who had come from the countryside. The city folks were coming out asking what all the commotion was about, and they were asking the question “Who is this?”. The crowds responded. “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.”
Verse 10 says all the city was stirred, KJV says the city was moved. The Greek word here is where we get our word seismic from. It has the meaning of being violently shaken. The whole city was “shaken”. This was creating an uproar. The time had come. There would be no more telling people to be quiet. There would be no more avoiding the conflict. It was about time.
Jesus has painted a picture for the people of Jerusalem. The first being that of Zechariah 9.9. He portrayed the fulfillment of that prophecy right in front of the people, challenging them to accept their King, their Messiah.
Jesus’s dramatic action is a deliberate Messianic claim. He was here offering himself to the people, at a time when Jerusalem was surging with Jews from all over the country and from all over the world, as the Anointed One of God.
The other picture that Jesus paints is that of the celebration of reclaiming the temple in 164BC. When the temple was cleansed and purified. On that day the people carried the palm branches and sung their psalms; it is an almost exact description of the actions of the crowd who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem.
Here was the anointed one of God who had come to cleanse the temple. That’s exactly what we see in the verses that follow this passage.
Jesus has set the stage for the week to come. In his entry into Jerusalem, he announced to the world that he was the King that they had been waiting for. Some of those in the crowd understood. But the religious leaders of the day couldn’t see it. But if you look right before the beginning of this chapter you will see that even the two blind men on the side of the road could see it. they shouted, “Have mercy on us, Lord, Son of David!” 31 The crowd scolded them to get them to be quiet. But they shouted even more loudly, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!”
The religious leaders had a picture in their mind of what the Messiah would be and what he would look like. The religious leaders missed him. A large part of the crowd missed him. That is evident later in the week when they turn on him and shout crucify him!
But, unlike the people of Christ’s day, we must be willing to set aside our preconceived notions about God and let our perspective be reshaped by God’s Word. The people in the crowd turned against Jesus later in the week. He wasn’t the kind of Messiah they were looking for. He wasn’t the conquering king. So they turned their backs on him.
How do we react when God doesn’t do what we think he should do? Do we get mad and turn our backs? We can’t do that. If we have accepted Jesus as our savior, we also have to accept that he is God and that he is sovereign and that we don’t think like God thinks and we won’t always understand why He does what He does. We have to trust Him. The problem is that there are times when we are not much different than the people in the crowd. We get angry at God when he is not what we expect. We have to learn to trust Him, no matter what happens.
We have to know that it he didn’t come to claim the kingship of a throne ; it was the kingship of the heart that he claimed. He wants our hearts. He wants us to love him with all our heart and soul and mind, with everything that we have. Not half way.
As we saw in today’s passage, Even the clothes on our backs are not too dear to part with for the service of Christ. It would be the least that we can do.
Jesus showed that he came, not to destroy, but to love;
not to condemn, but to help;
not in the might of arms, but in the strength of love.
He wants us to acknowledge him as our Lord, as our King. You may be here this morning and have never made the decision to follow him, to let him lead and to follow him unconditionally. You can make that decision today. And then you can really celebrate Easter and understand what it is really about.
You may be here this morning and know that you made the decision to follow Christ years ago. But maybe you have held something back. Ask yourself if you are willing to give it all to Christ even knowing that you may not get it back. It is all his anyway. He wants to know if you are willing.
If you have never made that decision we are willing to pray with you and help you get started. If you need prayer this morning we are willing to pray with you. This is your time. Come.