Newsworthy events interrupt our daily lives. They take over the airwaves. If there was a news broadcast in AD 33, when Jesus entered into Jerusalem, I wonder if it would have sounded something like this…
“Good evening, and welcome to the Judean News Network. I’m Bartholomew, and we’re interrupting your previously scheduled broadcast for a special report.
“Small town rabbi causes big city turmoil. Jesus of Nazareth, in a bold move, rode a donkey into Jerusalem during Passover. Crowds followed the itinerant teacher from Galilee, parading like a king’s victory march.
“Demonstrators threw their coats on the ground in front of Jesus. Local residents say crowds cut down palm branches from roadside trees and placed them on the donkey’s path. The Jerusalem Department of Parks and Recreation will be investigating.
“Residents near the eastern gate report the Galilean crowds chanted, ‘Save us, son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Save us in the highest!’
“Word spread quickly of this apparent ‘triumphal entry,’ prompting citywide walkouts at businesses and schools. Thousands wanted to learn what was going on.
“As the twin crowds collided, Jerusalem residents asked for the identity of the donkey-riding rabbi. The Galileans responded, ‘This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee.’
“Religious authorities are fuming. With recent reports of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, authorities fear religious zealots will see an opportunity for a coup. This reporter assumes Rome is less than thrilled with this display and will certainly see political implications. Tensions high. Jerusalem agitated. Violence seems imminent.
“This has been a special report. I’m Bartholomew for WJNN News 3:16. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress.”
Jesus would have made the news. This isn’t a light moment. We call this story the Triumphal Entry, where crowds are covering the street with their clothes and palm branches, praising Jesus. We even name the Sunday before Easter (today) Palm Sunday, in remembrance of this moment.
For our scripture reading, I actually considered ordering plastic palm branches and putting them on the seats all across the auditorium so that, when we read scripture, we could all circle the auditorium and wave our palm branches. But—I even saw faces right now—I didn’t think everybody would appreciate the theatricality, so I edited that idea. You’re welcome.
That’s the tone I think we most often associate with the triumphal entry, with Palm Sunday. But as I read the passage, I kept coming back to a difficult conclusion: Jesus’s triumphal entry lands him on a cross. That’s the net result of what Jesus chose to do. He ended up on a cross.
While the tone of the story is exciting and legitimately filled with praise, remember: Jesus is actually only one week away from dying. This is his last week.
Soon, the tone of shouting praise is going to become mocking and jeering. The palm branches and cloaks are going to be replaced with swords and clubs. Jesus, instead of riding a donkey through the streets of Jerusalem, is going to be carrying a wooden beam. But why?
How does this event, in particular, help Jesus move towards a cross? What’s the point? I think this is it: At the triumphal entry, Jesus boldly and humbly claims kingship. Jesus boldly and humbly claims kingship.
If you haven’t been around here for two and a quarter years, we’ve been working our way through the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew’s story about the life of Jesus. The main theme that we’ve been considering the entire time is “behold the King.” Matthew writes so we see Jesus as king, and he does this in a lot of ways:
He refers to Jesus’s genealogy. He calls Jesus the son of David. He tells the story of how the wise men search for the king of the Jews. Jesus defeats the devil in the desert. Jesus declares the kingdom of heaven is near because he is here. Jesus teaches people, “This is what it looks like to be a citizen of my kingdom,” when he preaches the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus rules over sickness, death, and natural elements. He speaks with unbelievable spiritual authority. Jesus actually claims to be the Lord of the Sabbath, the Lord of God’s holy day. And we see Jesus transfigured on the mountain to re-experience his divine, kingly glory.
For Matthew, we have to keep remembering that Jesus is the Son of Abraham, the Son of David, the Son of God, the promised Messiah and rescuing King, who is talked about all the way back to the fall, prophesied throughout the Old Testament, and now is here in the middle of Jerusalem.
The triumphal entry is Jesus’s public version of saying, “I am the King. I’m claiming my throne.”
In this story, I think that the crowds, and Jesus, and the disciples give us evidence that Jesus is claiming kingship when he does this. Because after the instructions are given, Jesus doesn’t talk in the story. All he does is ride a donkey. But between the crowds and Jesus and the disciples, we see that Jesus is claiming kingship.
Let’s start with the crowds. The crowds respond in two ways, with actions and with speech.
They respond with a unique action. They do this thing where they throw their coats on the ground in front of Jesus’s donkey. For us, it’s a little odd, but for the Israelites, for the Jews, they actually have another moment where this happens in their history.
In 2 Kings 9, in the story of Israel’s kings, there’s a guy named Jehu, and he’s anointed king by God’s command. When all of his buddies find out that God said, “Jehu, you’re king,” their first reaction to the news is that they take off their cloaks, throw them on the ground in front of Jehu, and stand on them.
We have this cultural echo coming forward in this moment. When Jesus comes into Jerusalem, the crowd’s response is to treat him like he needs a king’s entrance. In modern language, it’s rolling out the red carpet. You can’t just walk on the sidewalk. You have to walk on something special because of who you are. It’s a recognition of Jesus’s kingship.
The crowd’s speech also reveals what they think about Jesus. This is especially true in the recordings of Mark and Luke, who give us quotes of what the crowd said.
They say this in Mark 11:
“Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” (Mark 11:10)
In Luke 19,
“Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Luke 19:38)
Sounds a little bit like the beginning of Matthew and Luke with the angels crying out, “Glory to God in the highest,” on the birth of Jesus. In this moment, language is being used—as we enter into Jerusalem—of kingship.
From the crowd’s perspective, they knew that what Jesus was doing wasn’t just taking a casual ride into Jerusalem. He was doing something. They thought he was their new king. Now, we’re going to learn that they thought he was a different kind of king than he was showing them, but nonetheless, they saw Jesus as king. As R.T. France writes,
“[For Jesus] to ride the last mile to the city among a wholly pedestrian crowd could only be a deliberate gesture, designed to present his claim as the messianic king.”
The crowds respond to Jesus as if he’s making that claim.
We can also look at Jesus for evidence that he’s making a claim of kingship, and he does this, again, in two ways: It’s bold and humble at the same time, a very Jesus-like manner. Jesus boldly claims kingship. There are a couple of ways that I think he does that.
The first is this: Jesus changes his operating procedure.
This action is new. It’s unique. Earlier in the book, Matthew 16:20, he says this:
“Then Jesus strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ” (Matthew 16:20).
Sometimes this is referred to as the messianic secret. Like, “Don’t tell them who I really am.” At the triumphal entry, Jesus breaks his silence. Jesus goes public. He says who he is by his demonstration of riding into Jerusalem during a season when it was packed with people getting ready for Passover.
The forever and ever King, the promised one, comes to his capital city to claim kingship.
The second way Jesus is bold: Jesus goes public in a volatile culture where a viral moment produces varied responses.
I know that’s a lot of words. The reason I’m giving you all of those words is to try to give you hooks to remember what happens right before the triumphal entry. There’s some stuff going on in the culture, and some stuff that Jesus does, that reveals to us what a bold move it was for Jesus to do the triumphal entry.
Jesus goes public in a volatile culture. So Jesus is a Galilean, and he brings a crowd of Galileans into Judea and Jerusalem. Galilee and Judea have history. I didn’t know this ’till I read for this.
I read an article that was really cool by Justin Taylor called “7 Differences Between Galilee and Judea in the Time of Jesus,” and I learned about the tensions that existed just because of who these people are. So I’ll share some of this guy’s thoughts.
First, there are differences politically. Galilee had a native prince. Judea was under the direct rule of Rome.
Economically, Galilee had access to natural resources that Judea envied.
Culturally, they were different. The Judeans looked down on the Galileans because they spoke like Aramaic hicks. They lacked some sophistication.
Think of it this way: Think of how culture portrays people from the South on TV and in movies. Typically, it’s kind of redneck, uneducated, and rural, as opposed to people from the North who are a little bit different than that.
It’s kind of the same in this culture. The Galileans are the southerners to our northerners. They’re West Virginia to Virginia. They’re Dacusville to Greenville. Culturally, that’s what’s going on.
There are also religious differences in that the Judeans thought the Galileans were a little bit too loose in their adherence of religious observances.
So, they were volatile neighbors, and in between them was a country they both hated called Samaria. That’s where we land ourselves when Jesus goes public.
In the middle of that, Jesus did something that went viral. He did something that made him famous. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead in Bethany in Judea.
So, Jesus, again from Galilee, the vast majority of his ministry and miracles happened in Galilee. He did about 20+ miracles in Galilee. He had about seven to eight that happened in Judea. Of those seven to eight that happened in Judea, five of them were during the last week of his life.
So everything that happened in Galilee—from the perspective of Judea—they could look at them and go, “Oh, that’s just ignorant. That’s just stories. We know what those people are like,” and ignore Jesus…right up until he comes into the middle of Judea and starts doing his miracles.
The viral moment is when Lazarus is raised from the dead. That miracle probably took place within weeks of Jesus’s ride into Jerusalem. Jesus comes into enemy territory, so to speak.
Raising Lazarus from the dead was this famous event. Matthew actually doesn’t recount it, which is interesting, but John does. I want to read from John at length so that we can understand what it was like for Jesus to go public. So here’s John’s story:
“Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what [Jesus] did, believed in [Jesus], but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, ‘What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place [our status, our positions, our power] and our nation.
“So from that day on they made plans to put [Jesus] to death…Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews…Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where [Jesus] was, he should let them know, so that they might arrest him” (John 11:45-57).
“Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead” (John 12:1).
“When the large crowd of the Jews learned that Jesus was there, they came, not only on account of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus” (John 12:9-10).
So with crowds from Galilee already in tow, Jesus’s raising of Lazarus from the dead increases the number of crowds. It’s a mixed group of people (now Galileans and Judeans) who are all believing in him, and that causes varied responses among everybody.
There are large crowds who believe. Judeans, who see what Jesus does and go, “I don’t care if he’s from Galilee. This has got to be the forever King who has that kind of power.”
Then there are the crowds who tattletale on Jesus. They actually see what happens, but their response is to run to the leaders and go, “Hey, do you see what this Jesus is doing over here?”
The religious leaders choose violence as their response. From their viewpoint, they had to respond. They were scared to death of loss— their power, their status, their position, and even their nation. “If we don’t shut Jesus up, we’re going to lose everything. It’s worth it to kill him.”
Jesus, interestingly, goes secret. “He no longer walked openly among the Jews.” In this moment, right after Lazarus, rather than doing a public demonstration of some kind, Jesus steps back and hangs out only with his disciples.
To wrap all this up, in a setting of cultural tensions between Judea, Galilee, and occupying Rome, amidst rumors and now proof of divine miracles, Jesus, under threat of death and arrest, jumps on a donkey at the busiest time of year in Jerusalem and rides in there while people scream, “Save us, son of David,” “Save us, King in the highest.”
That’s a bold move. You can think whatever you want about Jesus, but when you read this story, and you see what he does, I don’t care who you are, you have to look at that and go, “That guy is bold. That is a crazy big move on his part.”
Third, how is Jesus bold? He plans the details ahead of time. Jesus knew what he was doing. Matthew 21:1-3, I’m going to read it again.
“Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, ‘Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, “The Lord needs them,” and he will send them at once’” (Matthew 21:1-3).
For me, up until I studied for this, I always thought this was kind of a divine miracle. Like, they’re coming into this town, and Jesus says, “Hey, you’re going to go in there, turn right, and there’s going to be a couple of donkeys. Go and take them. If anybody says anything to you about it, look at them and say, ‘The Lord has need of them,’ and they will in turn respond and say, ‘Take the donkeys.’”
That might be it, but the more I studied, most commentators agree that Jesus had this all set up, that “the Lord has need of them” was like a password. They knew he was going to take the donkey, and they were all set up so Jesus could have it.
I think that matters because Jesus is being so intentional here. He’s not caught off guard. This is not an off-the-cuff choice on his part. He set it up. The public display is intentional.
One little thing that I have to say, because I just think it’s so cool. This is just a little moment about what type of man Jesus is: In the middle of an intentional choice, in the middle of this cultural moment, to ride into Jerusalem, he makes sure the owners of the donkey know that he’s going to return the donkey.
That’s that phrase, “and he shall send them at once.” That’s a king paying attention to details. That’s a king caring about a subject down to, “I’m going to die in a week, but I’ll get you your donkey back.” I just thought it was unbelievable. Take that for what you will. I just thought it was amazing.
Finally, how was Jesus bold? Jesus rode when others walked. He rode a donkey. Riding a donkey was making a statement. It was doing something.
There’s this document called the Mishnah. It’s a collection of all of these teachings from Jewish religious leaders telling people, “This is how you obey the law,” and it is quite detailed. There’s a section that has to do with Passover, describing when a child has to walk on their own when they’re coming to Passover.
When do they have to switch from being on their father’s shoulder, going to Passover, to walking on the ground? It seems to be when they can reach up and grab their father’s hand, then the child is responsible to walk to Passover.
Why is that important? Because it would appear that when it comes to Passover and the pilgrimage there, it was on foot. Jesus stood out like a sore thumb.
Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem would be like me getting on a unicycle in Haywood Mall on Black Friday. People would be like, “What is he doing? What is he doing?” It’s a moment where Jesus’s choice is even a bold choice. As France writes,
“Among the Passover crowds coming into the city it would have been possible for Jesus and his disciples to arrive without drawing attention to themselves [they could have just strolled in], but Jesus has not come to slip quietly into Jerusalem.”
His operating procedure has changed. And after this, it only ramps up. Jesus boldly claims his kingship. But it’s also humble. Jesus’s mount matters. The fact that he rides a donkey matters. As L. Morris writes,
“In antiquity a king would not normally enter his capital riding on a donkey. He would ride in proudly, on a war-horse, or perhaps he would march in at the head of his troops.”
In modern terms, when King Charles III was crowned in 2023, they didn’t put him in a 1997 Toyota Corolla to get to Westminster Abbey. In fact, it cost the taxpayers of England—in American dollars—$90 million. Kings don’t go to coronations in budget rental cars. The manner in which a king enters reveals what type of king he is and what it will be like to live in his kingdom. A king’s mount matters.
Just like the throwing of the cloaks on the ground, God’s people, Israel, have already experienced another moment where they would recognize the type of king by what he rides. We go back to the time of King David.
King David’s old. The old shepherd-poet-warrior-king who led Israel. The most famous king of them all. He’s come to the end of his life, and he’s already promised Bathsheba that his son Solomon would be king. But another of David’s sons, whose name is Adonijah, decides he’s going to make a public claim of kingship. It says this in 1 Kings:
“Now Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself, saying, ‘I will be king.’ And he prepared for himself chariots and horsemen, and fifty men to run before him” (1 Kings 1:5, 33).
Adonijah’s claim of kingship came with parades and power and pomp. It’s the ancient equivalent of a king coming in with tanks and battalions and 50 people on megaphones saying, “Hail King Adonijah!”
Well, Nathan the prophet finds out about this, and he goes and talks to Bathsheba and says, “We have to get King David to declare Solomon king now. We need to make this happen.” And this is what David does in response:
“King David said, ‘Call to me Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada.’ So they came before the king. And the king said to them, ‘Take with you the servants of your lord and have Solomon my son ride on my own mule [ride on my donkey], and bring him down to Gihon. And let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet there anoint him king over Israel” (1 Kings 1:32-34a).
So David chooses a very humble mount compared to Adonijah for the declaration of the real king, Solomon. Jesus, the son of David, the great-great-great-plus-grandson of Solomon, mimics Solomon and rides into his kingship on a donkey. War horses and displays of power are not the methodology of King Jesus. It’s as if Jesus remembers Psalm 33,
“The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue” (Psalm 33:17).
Jesus—unlike the Roman leaders of his day, unlike Adonijah—makes his claim of kingship in a completely humble way. His claim is going to be won not through the sword, but through sacrifice.
The bummer is, it seems the crowd missed the message about humility. They didn’t quite get the donkey. Even the disciples—we’re going to see here in a little bit—they missed the message. They’re chanting for Jesus to be their military Messiah who’s going to rescue them from Rome. Morris helps us here when he says,
“[Jesus] sent for the donkey…in order to show by his symbolic action that he was not the potential overthrower of the Romans that the crowds would dearly have loved to see. No, he was the Prince of peace…An ass was the animal of a man of peace.”
Jesus is a humble king and claims his kingdom in a humble way.
Finally, as we look for evidence about Jesus’s claim of kingship, we come to the disciples, and they reveal to us that Jesus is, in this moment, claiming kingship. But they do it in an odd way, because they’re looking back on it.
I think everybody’s had one of these moments. Have you ever had something click? “Oh, oh, now I get it.” I want us to all kind of experience what that would be like, so we’re going to look at a 20-second clip of a guy reacting to a movie that was made in 1999 called The Sixth Sense.
As someone told me after the first service: spoiler alert. This is one of the greatest plot twists in film history. I want us to feel what it’s like to realize a truth. So let’s just watch this for a couple of seconds.
The entire time you watch that film, you believe that Bruce Willis’s character is alive and mourning the loss of his wife. Then at the end, at the drop of a wedding ring, it all slams into truth and reality, and you get it.
The disciples have a similar moment, a similar feeling, where they look back on Jesus riding into Jerusalem, and they’re like, “OOOOHHHHH! That’s what he was doing.” Matthew writes it this way:
This took place—the entrance, riding a donkey—that
“took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, ‘Say to the daughter of Zion, “Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden”‘” (Matthew 21:4-5).
John is even more blunt when he says,
“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” (John 12:16).
In this last moment, the disciples really don’t get what Jesus is doing. They’re participating, but they don’t get the full extent of what’s happening. But after the crucifixion, after the resurrection, after the ascension, it hits them, and they’re like, “Isaiah, Zechariah— That’s what he was doing! He was our king on a donkey, and we missed it. We were so close, we were right there.” It took them some time, but they got it.
King Jesus, on a donkey, fulfilled prophecy while boldly and humbly claiming kingship.
As we read this part of the narrative, the text doesn’t tell us to do anything. There are no commands for us. In preaching, I’m just going to be honest with you, it is a big challenge not to try to force things on top of a text to tell people an application to do. So I really tried to figure out, what do we do when we read this and respond? I want to try to give you two things.
First, I think when we read this, we need to cultivate awe for Jesus. This story is fertilizer for our hearts to cultivate a jaw-dropping awe for who Jesus is. Let me give you some reasons that we can be in awe of Jesus.
First, what courage! Jesus had a warrant out for his arrest under penalty of death, yet still rode into Jerusalem, knowing that that act would only make it worse, that he would only end up on a cross.
What understanding we see in Jesus! Jesus claims his kingship while knowing that the people who are chanting for him in the crowd are missing the point. The very people who are crying out for him will be part of a crowd telling him that he should die in less than a week. And he’s still there.
What patience! Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey, knowing that even his disciples didn’t really get what he was doing. After three years, after over and over saying, “The Son of Man has to go to Jerusalem and be delivered up and be killed by the chief priests and scribes, and on the third day will rise again.” The disciples were like, “Yeah, huh?” And Jesus lets them go get the donkey, lets them put their cloaks on it. What patience!
What love! The only thing I can figure out that could drive Jesus to keep doing that is love of his Father and love of his people, because he knows the end of the destination. For him to bring about his kingdom and to offer all of us the opportunity to be citizens of the kingdom of Jesus, he rode in and is going to die.
We can read this story and at the end just have our jaws hit the floor, going, “It’s so understated, I just can’t get better words: Jesus is unbelievable. He is a king like no one else!” Cultivate awe.
The second thing I think we can do—I think it’s just God’s kindness to us to let us be in this passage on this day in this week of passion—immerse yourself in the story this week. What can you do with this text? Keep reading. Live out the story of Jesus this week. Here’s how I think we could do that:
If you choose to immerse yourself in the story of Jesus, that last week, you’re going to come to Matthew 26:26-29. It says this,
“Now as [the disciples and Jesus] were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’ And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom’” (Matthew 26:26-29).
Jesus provided his followers a way to remember and experience the reality of his rescue. The fact that we proclaim his death when we take these things, we are remembering and, by ingesting, experiencing our rescue.
This is after the triumphal entry. They’re sitting in a room. He’s allowing people to understand and remember, “This is what’s going to happen. You’re not going to get this right away, but I want you to take this with you.”
We know because Paul talks about this later. This became a practice of God’s people, the church, to remember and experience the reality of Jesus’s death and proclaim it until he comes back to get us, when we fully go into the kingdom.
So we’re going to pass these out here in a moment. If you follow Jesus, you are welcome to participate. We would encourage anyone who participates to consider well your relationships with others in the body of Christ. This is a serious moment as we partake of the blood and body of Jesus.
We’re going to pass this out. I’ll come back up here in a few minutes, and we will take it together.
