Messiah the Prince
Text: Luke 19: 28-44
Proposition: At the perfect moment Messiah the Prince, Jesus Christ, fulfilled prophecy and was received with an unrestrained joy.
Introduction: It’s Palm Sunday, the day that we call the Triumphal Entry of Christ. The people were pealing off palm branches and waving them in the air, they were laying down the only coat they owned, a tribute to a king. We know that in just a few days the people would rise up against Jesus, Pilate would have Him crucified. What was it that Jesus saw that Sunday morning five days before Passover? What did He think of all this wild celebration? Let’s look at the account of this first Palm Sunday in Luke 19:28-44.
I. Jesus Saw a People Who Had Long Ago Forgotten His Promise.
Already a large crowd had gathered in Bethany to see Jesus and Lazarus and there was a great sense of expectation in the air, something was about to happen. As Jesus and the disciples begin the ascent to the mount of Olives an even greater crowd poured over the top of it coming towards them. It’s at Bethphage that they converge, there is less than a mile to go to the Eastern Gate of Jerusalem. At Bethphage was the second seat of the Sanhedrin, it was the place where the Sanhedrin pronounced their death sentences. It was exactly a mile, 2000 cubits from Jerusalem, a Sabbath days journey and was considered by the Sanhedrin to be the city’s gate. Jesus halts the group and sends two disciples on an errand to bring a donkey and her colt to Him. It must have seemed peculiar to those close to Him, He could easily have walked the rest of the distance, what was the colt for? All they really knew is what Jesus had just told them, if anybody asks what you are doing untying the colt, say to them the Lord has need of it. What Jesus needs the colt for is not so much for their understanding as it is for yours sitting here this morning. In the midst of a miracle we rarely see it happening. When Matthew gives his account of this same event he adds, “All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, ‘Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold your King is coming to you, lowly and sitting on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.’” In other words when Zechariah the prophet said this he meant that the King, the Messiah would be unmistakeable because He won’t come like others, He’ll come on the least of the least, the foal of a donkey. He’ll come that way to signify what He is about to do. The donkey is a creature of servitude, a burden bearer. The promise that Jesus said to the people of Israel through the lips of Zechariah 750 years before was that He would come as One who would bear their burdens, their sin and the pain it brings. But the people gathered around Him that Palm Sunday had long ago forgotten His promise.
Let’s consider one other promise that must have been on Jesus mind that day. It was one made through the angel Gabriel to a man named Daniel, a captive in the land of Babylon about 600 years before the birth of Jesus. What the angel told Daniel is that from the time that a decree was issued which let the captive Jews return to Israel to rebuild the wall and Temple to the time when Messiah the Prince was revealed would be 483 years. History tells us that Artaxerxses made that decree on March 14, 445 BC. So 483 years, or 173,880 days later, to the day, on April 6th 32AD, it was this Palm Sunday we’re reading about right now. Jesus sitting on the back of a donkeys colt, about to enter Jerusalem, is that Messiah the Prince. Jesus keeps His promises, He’s specific, down to last detail of timing and method. He keeps His promises even when we have long ago forgotten them, He keeps His promises as that which cannot be altered, they are fixed in the mind of God as that which will happen. How He will come, when He will come, where He will come, why He will come… all were clearly spelled out in regard to His first coming and they are just as clearly spelled out in regards to His Second coming. He promises it. Are you ready for the Second coming of Jesus Christ?
II. Jesus Saw a People Hungry For Hope.
As they crest the Mount of Olives and prepare to descend to the Kidron Valley the people begin to cry out, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Mark and Matthew and John all say that the crowd began to chant, “Hosanna, Hosanna!” It was a word that simply meant, ‘Save now’. As the crowd entered Jerusalem chanting Hosanna, Hosanna, they came through what is called the East gate or the Golden Gate. For years when the people came for Passover celebrations they would come through this East gate or Golden Gate. The words of Psalm 118 would often be on their lips, words which sound very similar to the ones they cried out on this first Palm Sunday. We remember the 1500’s for the date of the Reformation but it was in 1541 that the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman rebuilt the city and the walls of Jerusalem and then he ordered that the East Gate be completely bricked in. In addition Sulleiman had a cemetery created in front of the gate that was meant to be a barrier to any future Elijahs that would come as a forerunner to the Jewish Messiah. (show picture of Eastern Gate)
Listen to what Psalm 118 says, “Open to me the gates of righteousness, I will go through them and I will praise the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord through which righteousness shall enter. I will praise You for You have answered me and have become my salvation. The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing, it is marvellous in our eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it. Save now I pray O Lord…”. Hosanna is a word that is all about hope. It has the inference of not just being saved from something but also saved to something. We are saved in Christ from sin to His glory. It is a promise that cannot be blocked. That’s the hope of Hosanna, Hosanna!
III. Jesus Saw Praise As An Irrepressible Response to God.
When the Pharisees saw the way the people were pouring out praise to Jesus they were envious of it. They call out to Jesus from the crowd telling Him to rebuke the disciples for saying such things. That’s when Jesus answered them, yelling above the cries of the people, “I tell you that if these should be silent the stones would immediately cry out.” Something great was happening right in front of their eyes and they could not see it because it was too unrestrained. Jesus said that if the lips of men would be silent then God would open the mouth of creation itself and use it’s voice to speak the glory of Who Messiah the Prince is, the Son of God entered into humanity that His perfect life would be spent for the price of the sin of the world. The rocks would immediately cry out this praise, worthy praise, glorious praise. In fact five days later, this very thing would happen. At the pinnacle moment when the Son of Man was laying down His life for the sin of the world, as He hung on the cross, the people’s praise went mute, they didn’t comprehend it, they went silent at the sight of the Son crucified. That’s when it happened, that’s when the ground shook, Matthew says the rocks were split open, the stones themselves cried out!
Praise is not just us saying nice things about God, it’s God using the instruments that He’s created, man being the highest of His instruments, to proclaim the truth of Who He is. The angels praise God, they who see Him most clearly, praise Him passionately. Praise is creations irrepressible response to God, irrepressible in that all creation will be used like an instrument to proclaim all of Who God is and all He ever intends to do. Every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord! That irrepressible praise is what Jesus saw.
IV. Jesus Saw the Ruin That Comes From Unbelief’s Lost Opportunities. Jesus looks at the city, He weeps and says, “If you had known, even you, especially in this ‘your day’, the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” He sees Jerusalem as it will look like in 70AD, some 40 years in the future. It’s a ruin, smoke belches up, bodies lay on the ground, famine and fear have decimated the people. The Temple was destroyed. What were the ‘things that make for peace’ that the people missed seeing, missed believing? Was it that they didn’t see that the peace of God only comes from Peace with God? There is no inner peace until sin has been taken out of the way and peace with God is made the charter that rules my life, a charter written in the blood of Jesus Christ. There is a great ruin that comes from unbelief and the greatest losses are the opportunities that God would have extended through faith. For the next 2000 years the Jewish people would suffer lost opportunities. Palm Sunday is a day when Jesus came as our King, He came as Lord, He came as Messiah the Prince, He comes to bring an end to the ruin that comes from unbelief. He comes as King of kings, Messiah the Prince.