Sermon
A Welcome For King Jesus
March 24, 2002
Pastor Donald Sheley

I'm going to ask you now to take your Bibles, or if you want to use the pew Bible, that's fine, because you can turn in your pew Bible to page 725, or if you're going to use your Bible we're at John chapter 12. What we want to do is we want to read the scriptural record which gives us the background, the backdrop, for Palm Sunday.

John chapter 12 verse 12: "The next day a great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him, and cried out: "Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! The King of Israel!" Then Jesus, when He had found a young donkey, sat on it; 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 were written about Him and that they had done these things to Him."

Now we have notes today but I'm not going to stick very close to the notes, and you can have them to your side and I'll reference them at times, but let's just take our lesson today as much as we can just from the Scriptures. It says that the next day a great multitude had come to the feast. Now we've learned in our lessons in the past that Jesus has gone to the feast. Remember last Sunday we talked about the fact that He delayed His going after His brothers had urged Him to go for a wrong purpose. Jesus waited until four days after the feast had begun down at Jerusalem and then He went to the feast. But He said they hate Me. They don't hate you. He said this to His brothers. And we learned why they hated Jesus.

First of all, in His public ministry He only had three years and plus public ministry. So there were only three occasions, three annual feasts, that He had to attend; that He attended. The first time that He went to the feast, you remember, He walked into the temple and His heart was deeply disturbed. He saw merchandising. He saw them selling things, changing money, and it disturbed Him deeply so He picked up a whip and He chased the money changers and those merchants out of the temple, and He said My house is a house of prayer. You've made it a den of thieves. Well this messed up all the business of the temple, and so the religious leaders who were getting a kickback on all of the transactions hated Jesus. They wanted Him.

The second year that He goes to a feast in Jerusalem He goes down to pool where a man has been ill for 38 years and He heals him. He tells the man to take his bed and go home, and the Jewish people hated Him because He had told that man to violate their regulations of Sabbath. They didn't care if it was a miracle or not. They hated Jesus because He had violated what they thought was a regulation; that is you don't work, you don't carry anything on the Sabbath day.

So His first feast -- He's upset the businesses at the temple. The second feast -- He's violated their Sabbath regulations. And now they're after His blood. They want Him. Jesus knows that, so He delays His going to the feast, but He goes after the fourth day. So what you have in that first statement -- remember, we learned that on feast days it was compulsory because anybody that lived within a 20-mile radius of Jerusalem had, by law, to be in attendance there at the feast. So that little city was jam packed to capacity with people.

Jesus has been staying just around the south portion of the Hill of Olivet at a little village called Bethany. And while He's there, you remember, He's done a great miracle. Lazarus, His friend, was in the grave and Jesus walked up to that tomb and said, Lazarus, come forth. The result was, all the people in that little village are with Jesus, and Jesus now is going to walk around the south side of the mountain, and He's going to go to Jerusalem which is just about two or three miles away. So He's got all this mob of people with Him here and already word from Bethany has reached Jerusalem and they want to see this man who brings the dead man back to life. So you have this mass of people now coming out from Jerusalem to meet this mass of people coming in from Bethany. And when they meet they begin to say, Hosanna. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. The King of Israel. Now in our lesson today I want just to divide it into three major thoughts. First of all, the Psalm that they sang; secondly, the beast that He rode; and thirdly, the prophets who spoke.

That's take the first one. If you have your notes, I'm at the top of page 4. It says: and Jesus came riding on an ass's colt. Zechariah, the ancient prophet had described this moment in history. Rejoice greatly, 0 daughter of Zion! Shout, 0 daughters of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.

It's an ancient prophecy given 489 years before Palm Sunday. It spoke exactly what Jesus did -- He rode on the colt. Many among these crowds were greeting Jesus as a conqueror. That, in fact, is the predominant atmosphere of the whole scene. They greeted him with words: "Hosanna! Blessed is He who is coming in the name of the Lord!" The word HOSANNA is the Hebrew for "SAVE NOW!" So the shout of the people was almost precisely: "GOD SAVE THE KING!"

The words, "Blessed is He who comes," were widely understood as a reference to the coming One, the Messiah. This Messianic meaning is explicit in the following words, "BLESSED IS THE KING OF ISRAEL," which were not a part of the Psalm from which they were taken, but they show how the crowds were understanding it. The crowds were proclaiming Jesus as the promised Messiah. It was from Psalm 118 that these words come from.

But Psalm 113 through 118 was known as the great HALLEL. They were the psalms which were memorized by every Jewish boy. They were the psalms that were intricately connected with the celebration of the Passover. If we would have joined a Hebrew family, even to this day, and go to a Passover festivity, much of the Scripture that you'll hear on that occasion will be verses from Psalm 113 through 118. It's known as the great Hallel. And part of the words that were being expressed when Jesus entered Jerusalem come from the great Hallel.

Also, this particular psalm was intimately connected with the ritual of the Feast of Tabernacles. Remember we talked about it last Sunday. The people, on this great occasion of the Passover, would take their bundles of palm, myrtle, and willow branches and they would wave them, and they would follow the priest as he went down to the Pool of Siloam, took his pitcher, dipped in the water, they all marched back to the big altar, and the priest then would pour out the water on the altar. And, of course, they would quote portions from this Psalm and also portions from Isaiah.

Further, it was characteristically a conqueror's psalm. To take one instance, these were the very verses were sung and shouted by the Jerusalem crowd when they welcomed back Simon Maccabaeus after he had conquered Acra and wrested it from Syrian dominion more than four hundred years before. So it was a Psalm sung at the major festivals, but it was also a song that when you come down through history, when Israel thought that they had a king marching in to town these are the same words they used: Hosanna. Blessed is the king that cometh in the name of the Lord.

So it's a Psalm, ancient in its origin, it's a Psalm powerful in its application. Here comes the King! And it meant he's here to conquer. Now they lived that. These Jewish people lived under Roman dominion and they wanted to be set free, and they thought that here comes the king that will set us free. That's why they sang this so boldly. Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is the King that comes in the name of the Lord! Because they thought the very next thing that would happen the trumpets would blast and God would come on the scene, and Rome would be defeated and they would be set free. It's a Psalm of the conqueror.

What about the donkey? I'm at the bottom of page 4. The mode of transportation which Jesus selected to make His entrance into Jerusalem has been noted -- a donkey. But the question: why a donkey? Why does John make sure that we know that the donkey was young? I'm at the top of page 5. Luke tells us that it was one "whereon yet never man sat." This is not with out deep significance. Under the mosaic economy only those beasts which had never been worked were to be used for sacrificial purposes .

Remember, Jesus is going to give His life in sacrifice so He rides upon a beast unridden before. Like His birth, like His burial, so here, on the only occasion when He assumed anything like majesty, He selected a colt which had never previously been ridden. Fear not, daughters of Zion: behold thy King cometh, sitting on an ass's colt." This was a momentous hour. Israel's true king, David's Son and Lord, now officially presents Himself to the nation.

What then was Christ's purpose in presenting himself to Israel as their king? Well the immediate answer is, to meet the requirements of God's prophetic Word. But this only takes the inquiry back another step. What was God's purpose in requiring Israel's Messiah to so act on this occasion?

In seeking an answer to this, we must give careful attention to the setting. To answer the question I just asked -- Why a donkey? Let me make the following observation. To us a donkey is a lowly and despised animal; but not so in the East. It was a noble animal. Jair, the Judge, had thirty sons that rode on asses. Ahithopel rode upon an ass. Mephibosheth, the royal prince, the son of Saul, came to David riding upon an ass.

The point is that a king came riding on an ass when he was coming in peace. If he were bent on war, he'd come riding on a horse. Thus, this action of Jesus is a sign that He was not the warrior figure men dreamed of, but the PRINCE OF PEACE. They thought He would conquer the Romans. He rides in on a donkey. And I note here in our notes; this in no way disturbed the Roman centurions. Here is just an old donkey and a visitor coming into Jerusalem. Why worry about Him? He's on a beast of peace. You see the donkey speaks of peace.

John sees accordingly not only a fulfillment of prophecy, but such a fulfillment of prophecy as indicates a special kind of king. Let's stop there. Christ's first entry into the holy city was on a donkey, a beast of peace. I noted for us the horse, when you wanted to come in war you rode on a horse. When Jesus comes again He will ride on a horse. You say, where does it say that? Clear back in Revelation. Will you go there with me? Almost the last page in your Bible. The Revelation 19:11. Way back in the back of your Bible.

Look at what it says, verse 11 Revelation 19: Now I saw heaven open, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, and with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

He came once on a beast of peace, when He comes to make war and end Satan's rule and reign and sin forever, He comes on a beast of war, a horse. Now that's the beast that He rode on. We know the Psalm that was being sung was the Psalm of the conquer. The beast was the beast of burden.

What about those prophets? Down at the bottom of page 5 -- why then did Jesus enter Jerusalem as He did on Palm Sunday? There are several answers to that question, the first of which is that He came to die. Mark gives us this account: Now they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was going before them; and they were amazed. And as they followed they were afraid. Then He took the twelve aside and He began to tell them the things that would happen to Him: "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priest and to the scribes; and they will condemn Him to death and deliver Him to the Gentiles; and they will mock Him, and scourge Him, and spit on Him, and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again."

Now against this background it is certain that Jesus entered Jerusalem as He did, not to win over the people, for that time for that had long passed, but rather to goad the Pharisees and chief priests into action and thus precipitate the events that He knew awaited Him there. His reason for coming, first of all, was to die for you and for me.

Secondly, the second reason why Jesus entered Jerusalem as He did was that He might fulfill Scripture. To us this may seem like an inverted way of doing things. We think that Jesus, as God, should be bound by nothing. But Jesus did consider Himself bound by Scripture as an infallible expression of the will of the Father, as many other Scriptureled actions throughout His ministry also indicate. And ah, What intricacies of prophetic Scripture foretold the scene we are considering today; that the Scripture might be fulfilled.

You say, Pastor, what are the Scriptures that tell of Palm Sunday in the Old Testament? Well, first of all, the answer to this question takes us way back to the prophecy which dying Jacob made to His sons. Let's lay our notes aside and get our Bible. Ladies and gentlemen, this is fascinating to me. Genesis, go clear back now we're in the front of our Bible, Genesis 49, and here's the scene. Old dad Jacob is getting ready to go off to heaven and he's got all these boys, and as was the custom in the ancient East you gather your family together and you bless them. Each one of them is granted a blessing, and oft times as the old father was praying over his son or blessing them; many, many times what he said became prophetic as well as a prayer.

So here's Jacob, he's got his boys out in front of him and here comes Judah -- verse 8. Judah stands there in front of his dad for his blessing and listen what his dad says: "Judah, you are He whom your brothers shall praise; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father's children shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion's whelp; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He lies down as a lion; and as a lion, who shall rouse Him? The scepter 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.

Now I'm sure, you're standing there with the boys, you say, dad, what are you talking about? Let's go back to our notes. I'm down on page 6 at about the middle. You see, the scepter here signifies the TRIBAL ROD. Judah was to preserve the separate independency of his tribe until the Messiah came. The fulfillment of this was seen in the Gospels. Though the ten tribes had long been carried away into captivity, from which they never returned, Judah (the Jews), were still in Palestine when the Son of God became incarnate and tabernacled among men.

Now remember, this is 1689 years before Palm Sunday. And in God's timetable all the rest of the tribes have been disbursed and lost, but Judah is still in Palestine when the King comes. Read on with me. Continuing his prophecy, Jacob announced, And unto Him [Shiloh-the PEACE-MAKER], so Christ is referred to as the Prince of peace, the Shiloh, the peacemaker -- shall the gathering of the people be. This received its first fulfillment at Christ's official entry into Jerusalem. But mark the next words, "Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine" was Christ Himself. Here, then, was the fact itself prophetically announced.

You say, now just a minute Pastor. What about this vine, and what about this colt to the choice vine? Well here's what happens, as God works with His nation of Israel, He references them throughout the Old Testament as His vineyard. You say, where does it say that?. Well go with me to Isaiah chapter 5, and in your pew Bible that should be at about page 462. It's really interesting when you study the Scriptures how intricately they tie together. Look at, here is Israel referenced as a vine or a vineyard. I read from Isaiah 5: Now let me sing to my Well-beloved a song of my Beloved regarding His vineyard: My Well-beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. He dug it up and cleared out its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst, and also made a winepress in it; so He expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes.

Now here's a reference, a prophetic reference, God chose the nation of Israel to bless the world. He wanted them to be the great evangelists of Jehovah to all mankind. They didn't follow Him. They went off into idolatry. He chose them to be a great and a prosperous vineyard, but they turned out to be a bunch of sour grapes. Look at what happens. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, Judge, please, between Me and My vineyard. What more could have been done to My vineyard that I have not done to it? In other words, God is saying, look at, I've tried to bless you with everything as a nation, and it hasn't been profitable. What more could I have done?

Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes? And now, please let Me tell you what I will do with My vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it shall be burned; and break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. Now He's talking about the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. I will lay it waste; it shall not be pruned or dug, but there shall come up briars and thorns. I will command the clouds that they rain no rain on it.

Here's the key, verse 7, For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah His pleasant plant. Isn't that interesting? Jacob, 1600 years ago, referenced the nation as a vineyard, as a vine. And he said something else: he said, binding the donkey to the vine, that's Christ's public identification with the nation of Israel; and His donkey's colt to the choice vine. Well who's the choice vine?

Go with me to John 15, and look at what it says: "I am the vine, and My Father is the vinedresser." 1689 years before Palm Sunday Jacob, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, said the day would come when the choice vine would be attached to Israel, and He would come riding on a colt. Doesn't that amaze you? If anybody questions the authenticity, the divine authority, of the Scriptures, that one argument ought to shake them to their very roots; but I'm going to give you another one. This one really fascinates me.

Back to our notes. I'm down at the bottom of page 6. There is another remarkable prophecy given through Daniel respecting the seventy weeks. This prophecy is found in Daniel 9, so let's go there, page 604 in our Bibles. Now what's going to happen here is Daniel, 520 years before Palm Sunday, gives the exact day when Jesus would ride in on the colt.

Now look at what Daniel, under the inspiration, look at what he says. I'm at verse 24: Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city. So He gives the history of seventy weeks. Then he says, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for the iniquity; that's the total summation of salvation being wrought by Christ. It ends the problem of sins. It finishes the transgression. It makes reconciliation available for every person to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most High. That will take seventy weeks to accomplish.

Now here he's going to figure it out. Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times. And after sixty-two weeks, Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end of it shall be with a flood, and till the end of the war desolations are determined. Then he shall confirm a covenant with many people for one week, but in the middle of the week, He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.

When He died on Calvary that ended, the veil was rend and ended all sacrifice. And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, even until the consummation, which is determined is poured out on the desolate. Now you say, Pastor, that's a hard prophecy to understand. But let's quickly go back to our notes, shall we?

I'm at the top of page 7. We cannot now attempt an exposition of the entire text that was quoted, but we might have to make reference to it. This prophecy was given while Israel were captives in Babylon. In it God made known the length of time which was to elapse from then till the day when Israel's transgressions should be finished, and everlasting righteousness be brought in. That's the coming of Christ and His fulfillment of salvation at Calvary.

"Seventy weeks" were to span this interval. The Hebrew word for WEEKS is HEBDOMADS, and simply means SEPTENARIES; "Seventy sevens" gives the true meaning. Each of the HEBDOMADS equals seven years. So the seventy sevens, therefore, stood for four hundred and ninety years. Now if we were thinking as Jewish people and we had a calendar out before us, we'd know exactly what that meant.

Dropping on down. After Jerusalem had been restored, sixty-two more SEVENS were to run their course "unto the Messiah the Prince". And then we are told, "After threescore and two sevens (added to the previous seven 'sevens', making sixty-nine in all), shall Messiah be cut off." Here, then, is a definite computation, a remarkable and most important Messianic prophecy. "Messiah, the Prince", such as in Revelation 1:5, was to present Himself to Jerusalem, that's the holy city in Daniel, after the expiration of the sixty-ninth "seven" or more specifically, precisely, four hundred and eighty years after God gave this prophecy to His beloved servant -- Daniel.

Now remember, the Jewish calendar is different than ours. If we were Jewish people who understood the timetables, we could go back from Palm Sunday and count every day. It would add up to 480 years on the precise day that Daniel said Jesus' righteousness would reign. Isn't that amazing? So, what the prophet said, precisely, 1689 years; Zechariah, 489 years, and Daniel, 520 years, precisely happened on the exact day -- and Christ rode into Jerusalem.

Now there's one other. I'm on the back page now. He came for one another reason, to be our Passover. Paul writes in the Corinthian passage: For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. The next paragraph will frustrate you a little bit and you'll have to read it at lunchtime. But I'm going to say something: If the crucifixion, which we know to have been on the fourteenth of Nisan, that's a Jewish month, occurred on Thursday. Ah, now I'm aware that the traditional view is that the crucifixion took place on Friday, but if we went back with a Jewish calendar we would learn that the crucifixion actually happened on Thursday.

Don't let that disturb you though. Then dating backwards, we find that Palm Sunday was the tenth of Nisan, which is important because it was on that day that the thousands of Passover lambs that were to be sacrificed were taken up to Jerusalem and kept for three days in the homes of those who were to eat them. Consequently, whenever Jesus entered the city He must have done so surrounded by lambs, himself being the greatest of Lambs. Four days later, at the time the lambs were killed, Jesus Himself was killed, thereby becoming the ultimate Passover Lamb. Isn't that amazing. That's why Paul says Christ is our Passover, sacrificed for us. In that vast array of worshipers who came on Passover there are thousands and tens of thousands of lambs, but there's only one lamb that taketh away the sins of the world -- our Passover Lamb who is none other than the Christ who rode in on the donkey, our Passover. Aren't you glad now for this day? Amen.

Father in heaven, Your word is precious and we have such a joy on this day realizing that You, the precise God of eternity and time, regulate every movement of history. You came once, Lord Jesus, You'll come again and we'll behold You in all of Your glory, all of Your majesty, and all of Your wonder, and so we say: even so, Lord Jesus, come. Amen? (Amen) God bless you folks. God bless you.