King Forever (Palm Sunday)

The Shepherd's Church

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Every single time the word King is used in the Gospel of John, it refers exclusively to Jesus Christ.

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Every time the word King is used, it is pointing only to Jesus. And I think the reason is because John's Gospel is the story of how

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Jesus becomes King, from the very beginning to the very end. And John is the only

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Gospel that does this. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they call Jesus King, absolutely. But they also call

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David King. They call Herod King. They call Herod's son Herod Antipas King. They call Caesar King.

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They use King in parables. They use King as historical examples. In the synoptic

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Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, King is not exclusively referring to Jesus, which is not an error on the part of the disciples.

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They're being historically accurate. There is such a phenomenon as kings and governments and rulers and powers, presidents, mayors.

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Those things exist in the world, and the disciples who wrote Matthew, Mark, and Luke are being accurate.

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So they're not wrong. But John is doing something unique in his Gospel. That's why it's set apart from the other

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Gospels. It's not one of the synoptics. It's John because it's a theological

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Gospel. And he's doing something in making kingship exclusive to Jesus because in John's worldview and in John's mind, all these kings exist, but there is only one

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King of kings, and that is Jesus Christ. John is developing this theme, and it's bubbling under the surface of every word that he says.

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It might not be obvious, and it might not be explicit, but it's there. For instance, in John 1, he's the eternal king who reigns forever with God the

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Father and God the Holy Spirit in eternity. He's the king who speaks creation into existence, and all of it obeys him.

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The sun, the moon, and the stars instantly obey him. The grass rises when he calls it forth out of the earth.

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Everything in creation obeys God except these creatures called humans.

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John also alludes to the fact that humanity is in rebellion against God. He says that Jesus came to the world that he created, and it did not receive him because they love the darkness rather than the light.

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According to John in John 1, sin is an individual thing that happened to Adam and Eve when they rebelled against God, but it's also a global thing because sin not only affects you and I, it caused the entire earth to fall.

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That's why earthquakes and hurricanes and tornadoes and cancer and everything else happen in this world that we live in because this world has fallen.

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This world was once ruled by humans. God installed human beings to be kings and queens on earth, and yet because of sin, now

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Satan has ruled the earth and subjugated humans under his power. John is describing how an eternal king is coming back to a rebellious world to reclaim it for his own.

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That's the story of John, and it's one of his great underlying themes on how Jesus has come to be crowned king of kings, and we're going to see a little bit of that today.

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In John 1 also, he's announced by John the Baptist as king. He assembles his court, his apostles to be his citizens, his first citizens of his kingdom.

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In John 1, he goes around declaring that the kingdom of God has come. In John 1, his followers begin to understand it.

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One of them even cries out, Rabbi, in John 1 49, you are the son of God, and you are king of Israel.

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John's gospel begins with Jesus coming to be made king, and we've seen that theme recently in John 6.

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In John 6, the people try to take Jesus by force and make him king. We see in John 6 that Jesus led a crowd past the water to a mountain where he healed them, and he fed them with multiplied bread like Moses, who was kind of like a king in the

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Old Testament. And these people were supposed to see that Jesus was superior to Moses, that he's

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God's true king, that he'd come, but they missed it. They did what Israelites always do, and they tried to replace the rule and the reign of God with a human king, just like they did when they rejected

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God in the book of Samuel and said, give us Saul, the tall and the handsome man who will be our king so that we'll be like all the nations.

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They did the exact same thing to Jesus in John 6. Now, this is what we know.

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This is what John 6 says. Therefore, when the people saw the sign, the multiplied bread, which he had performed, they said, this truly is the prophet who is to come into the world.

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Jesus understood what they meant when it says, perceiving that they intended to come and take him by force and make him a king, he withdrew to the mountains by himself alone.

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Now, I want you to understand something here. Jesus is truly a king, and they wanted to make him king, but yet he rejects their offer.

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Why? That seems consistent with why he came. He came to be a king. They wanted to make him a king.

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Why did he reject it? Because their vision of the kingship was far too small. Their vision was too low for what

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Jesus had come to do. They wanted a national king who was going to make Israel great again, like we talked about a few weeks ago.

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Jesus is not a national king. He's a global, international, cosmic king, and he came to make all nations underneath his rule and reign.

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He didn't come just for Israel. He came so that every nation under heaven would come to know

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Jesus Christ. They wanted an ethnic king who would advance the interest of Israel through different policies and domestic diplomacy.

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Jesus wasn't an ethnic king. Praise God for that. Because now Jews and Gentiles can know the

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Lord. White, black, yellow, red, whatever the song is, they're all precious in his sight.

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Jesus loves all of the peoples of the world. He's not just an ethnic king. He came for all the nations.

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They wanted a temporal king who would have sons who would reign on the throne after him. They had no idea that he wasn't like David.

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He was the son of David, but he wasn't going to have a son who would reign on the throne. He would be king forever.

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He's not a temporary king. He's a forever kind of king. They wanted a secular king who would advance the government agenda, who would do diplomacy, and who would do different policies and advancement.

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Jesus doesn't advance his kingdom through policy. He advances it through preaching the gospel. Jesus doesn't advance his kingdom through diplomacy.

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He does it through making disciples of all the nations. Jesus doesn't advance his kingdom through rules and regulations and bureaucracy.

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He does it through righteousness, that he's gifted to the people of God. They wanted a powerful king who would overthrow

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Rome. They had no idea that he was an infinite king who was going to overthrow Satan himself. Their vision was far too low for who

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Jesus was. The king they were looking for wasn't great enough. He wasn't glorious enough. He wasn't righteous enough.

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And Jesus rejected their vision because idolatry is when you try to make an image out of the infinite

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God. They had made an image of who they wanted as king, and it was far too short for the glory and the holiness of God.

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So he rejected their idolatrous notion of his kingship. And he leaves them and abandons them to the mountainside.

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Now in the very next set of verses, what I love is they misunderstood who he was as a king. So Jesus is going to show his disciples who he is as a king.

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And we're going a little bit of a recap now in John 6. Jesus goes and walks out onto the water to show his people the kind of king that he really is.

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It says in verse 16 through 21. Now when the evening came, his disciples went down to the sea.

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And after getting into the boat, they started to cross the sea to Capernaum. And it had already become dark and Jesus had not yet come to them.

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And the sea began to be stirred up because of a strong wind was blowing. And then when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw

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Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to the boat, and they were frightened. But he said to them,

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It is I. Do not be afraid. So they were willing to receive him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at land to which they were going.

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Now Jesus is not just doing a miraculous thing. He is showing him who he is as king.

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And he's a sovereign king. That's the first thing that he's showing them. He knew that they were going to wait for him on the shore until the sun went down.

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He knew that they were going to be leaving at dark, going across the sea, which you just don't do.

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He knew when they were in the middle of the sea that a storm was going to come upon them, and they were surely going to die if he didn't come and rescue them.

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That's what sovereignty is. Sovereignty is when God knows all things, wills all things, and rescues his people from all things to show them that in all things he is king.

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That's the kind of king Jesus is. He's a sovereign king. He's also a pursuing king.

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Notice that the disciples don't jump out of the boat and try to swim back to shore in order to find

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Jesus. They were clinging to the boat that was sinking, and that's what we do.

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We cling to the idols that will sink us. We don't go finding Jesus. Jesus actually steps out onto the waters and comes and gets us.

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He's a pursuing king. There's no one in this room who went looking for Jesus and just found him.

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Jesus was looking for you and found you. The only reason these disciples are saved, the only reason you and I are saved, is because Jesus pursued us and found us.

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That's the kind of king Jesus is. He's a creation king. You think about in Genesis 1 where God is hovering over the waters.

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What is Jesus doing? He's walking out over the waters. In Genesis 1, the waters were chaotic.

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They were formless without void, and here you have a storm that has churned the sea into chaotic waters, and God is walking on top of them again, showing that he's bringing a new creation.

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The wind and the waves obey him because he owns them. Now because he's purchased us and made us new creatures, we obey him because he owns us.

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He bought us, paid for us. That's the kind of king that Jesus is. He's a ruling king.

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Psalm 29 says that God places his throne on top of the flood. God doesn't place his throne in the peaceful pasture where the birds are chirping and they're singing songs of spring.

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No, he puts his throne out on the chaotic waters. He puts his throne out on the flood, which means that for you and I, there's no place that we can go that Jesus cannot rule and reign over.

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There's no problem that's too big for him. He rules over the earthquakes. He rules over the flood.

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He rules over the tornadoes. He rules over the brokenness in our life. This Jesus can identify with our pain because he rules in the middle of the pain.

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He rules in the middle of the storm. That's the kind of Jesus that we serve. The one who sought after us and the one who rules over every single situation that you and I face.

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That's the kind of king that he is. He's a saving king. He doesn't leave his people to die.

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Now, he let them go through some stuff. He didn't rescue them before the storm got there. He let them go through the storm.

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But he doesn't abandon his people. If you are God's children, then he will not abandon you to the storm.

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You will not fall ultimately in the storm. If you are a child of God, then you will be won by Christ.

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And when you finally see his face for who he is, and when you finally let him into the boat, because he's been coming for you the whole time, when you finally let him in the boat, then you come safe to shore.

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The storm can't exist when you understand who Jesus is. It's there, but it can't exist because he's the one who looks out at the waters and says, peace, be still.

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And ultimately, he's the one who's going to take us safe to shore and heaven shore. That's the kind of king

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Jesus is. He's a teaching king. He doesn't leave his disciples with ignorance.

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Right after this, in the past couple weeks, what we've been talking about is that he's a teaching king. He went and he demonstrated, and then he told them, kind of like kindergarten, show and tell.

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He showed them that he was a king, and then right after the boat lands on shore, he goes to the synagogue to tell them what kind of a king he is and what kind of a kingdom he is bringing.

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And the kingdom he's bringing is one that none of us can come to on our own. He says, no one comes to the Father unless they're dragged by God to Jesus Christ.

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So no one comes to God unless Jesus Christ drags them. No one comes to Christ unless God brings them.

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And if he does, they cannot be lost. They can only be found, and they can only bear fruit, and they can only feast on Jesus because that is what

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Jesus has done for us. Our salvation, as we talked about last week, is entirely dependent on God, and the only thing we have to do is feast.

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That is the kind of king that Jesus is. And that's what John 6 is telling us. Every line of John 6 is about the kingship of Jesus Christ.

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Now what I find fascinating is no one understood it. The crowds didn't understand it. They wanted a human king.

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The disciples didn't understand it. They didn't have the Holy Spirit yet. They could not understand it. And this is what we learn in verses 59 through 63.

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We haven't covered these verses yet, but here they are. These things he said in the synagogue as he taught in Capernaum.

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He's a teaching king. Therefore many of his disciples, when he heard this, said, This is a difficult statement.

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Who can listen to it? But Jesus, conscious that his disciples grumbled at this, said to them,

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Does this cause you to stumble? What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?

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It is the Spirit who gives life. Notice that. They don't understand because they don't have the

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Spirit yet. It's the Spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I've spoken to you are

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Spirit and life. Now, I'm ambitious, but I'm not ambitious enough to where we're going to cover these verses in full this week.

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So bear with me. After Easter, we're going to come back to these verses, and we're going to cover them in a way that does them justice.

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All I'm trying to show right now is that all of John 6 is about the kingship of Jesus, and three events happen in John 6.

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He demonstrates his kingship when he walks out into the waters. The crowds reject his kingship after he feeds the 5 ,000, and his disciples are utterly confused about his kingship in the final verses of the chapter.

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Now, what I find so interesting about this is this is exactly what happened on Palm Sunday, every single bit of it.

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In John 12, what we're going to see is that Jesus rides into the city who is wanting to make him king, just like in John 6.

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The crowds reject him, just like in John 6. Jesus is showing them something about his kingship, just like in John 6, and the disciples end up confused about it, just like in John 6.

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There is an absolute parallel with the events of Palm Sunday and the events a year and a year and a half before in John 6.

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So what I want us to do in the time that we have remaining is I want us to examine how

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Jesus reveals himself to be king, and I want to examine how the crowds rejected him, and I want to examine how

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Christ, through his Holy Spirit, overcomes our confusion. So that's what we're going to do today.

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If you will, turn with me to John 12, we will pray, and then we will examine these texts together.

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Lord God, two things never change in this passage, but one thing does. Sinful people, no matter if they're religious or irreligious, cannot understand

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God. That never changes. And yet the way that you interact with human beings never changes either.

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John 6, John 12, you are still doing things to reveal who you are. And yet,

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Lord, the one thing that does change is that for all of us, whether we came from religious backgrounds, whether we came from irreligious backgrounds, whether we were lovers of flesh or lovers of rules, whatever our background and upbringing was, the only reason that we truly understand who

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Jesus is is because of the one thing that changed, and that was regeneration.

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Lord, you've made us alive so that we could see. We were born dead. We would have remained dead had it not been for your regeneration, awakening us, opening up our eyes, justifying us, adopting us, sanctifying us.

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All of these things you've done. Now, Lord, I pray that by the preaching of your word today, if there's someone here today who is not truly in Christ and they're deceiving themselves, that,

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Lord, that you would open their eyes and awaken them, and they would come to Christ truly and fully today.

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Lord, for the rest of us who are here, because there's only two groups of people, lost and found, for the rest of us here today, would you reignite our passions?

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Lord, would you not let the crowd who missed you be the only ones praising you? Lord, would you not let us remain in our confusion?

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Would you let us who have been found be excited and passionate and filled with praise for what you've done,

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Jesus? And we ask that in your Son's name. Amen. John 12 begins this way.

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This is Palm Sunday. On the next day, the large crowd who had come to the feast, that's the

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Passover feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, they took branches of palm trees and they went out to meet him and began to shout,

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Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel.

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John begins this passage in a typical Johannine way. That's just a fancy word for saying John's way.

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I give you these words so that you win trivia nights. They will come in helpful. Johannine. It's a typical

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Johannine way of starting a new narrative. And it's his way of differentiating what is happening in verse 12 through 15 and what happened previously in chapter 11 and the early parts of chapter 12.

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Now, we're not in chapter 12 yet. And I think, you know, if we're fortunate, we'll be there in five or six years.

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But right now, we need to provide a little bit of context so that we can understand what's going on in this passage, because we're back in John 6.

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So here's what's happening. About a week before verse 12, Jesus raised his friend

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Lazarus from the dead. After waiting and delaying, Jesus goes on the fourth day, after the body had already started to stink, after no sane person ever would have thought that this was, that he was somehow asleep and he just woke up,

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Jesus goes and performs the greatest miracle that he's performed at that point. And he raises

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Lazarus from the dead. Now, this was in a town called Bethany, which was kind of like Charlestown is to Boston.

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That's how close it would have been, maybe Somerville or Medford. It's a suburb of the city of Jerusalem. And it caused a huge uproar among the religious leaders.

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The religious leaders, it says in John 12, were actively looking to kill Jesus after he raised

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Lazarus from the dead. Before that, they were talking about it. They were dreaming about it. But they started making plans and putting pen to paper in John 12.

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And the reason was probably multivariant or multivalent.

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They had some religious reasons. They had some that he had offended them and called them whitewashed tombs and some things like that, you know, like they were, there's some reasons there.

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But I think the primary reason is political. I think the primary reason they killed Jesus was politics.

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Now, think about it this way. At this point in Jesus's ministry, thousands of people are following him and thronging to him and loving him and calling him names like Hosanna in the highest.

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And that's a threat to the Jewish leadership at the time. And not only that, Israel was known as a contentious sort of country and Rome had placed its own governor pilot in the city for that reason because at any moment, those pesky

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Jews would rebel and would cause a problem. So if this Jesus, who's already rejected the kingship once in John 6, he accepts it here in John 12, which the crowds were wanting him to do, then

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Herod would have found out about it. Herod had a standing army and there would have been a civil war in downtown

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Jerusalem. Rome would have found out about it. And Rome would have sent their garrisons and legions of armies and they would have obliterated

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Jerusalem. They would have burned it entirely to the ground. So think about it from a self -preservation standpoint.

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The Jews had a good thing going. They were the leaders. Everyone looked to them. Everyone revered them.

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They got all the money. They were rich. Jesus calls them lovers of money for good reason. They were at the pinnacle of the trash heap that they had in Jerusalem, and I say that spiritually.

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And if all of that fell apart, they'd lose every bit of status that they had accumulated for themselves.

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They'd lose it all. So they're killing Jesus so that Rome won't come kill them.

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I think that's what's happening. They were so dull in their spirit that they didn't even think about, is it possible that I might be killing the

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Son of God? I think they were clinging to their power, they were clinging to their status, and they murdered Jesus for political gain.

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Now, Jesus responded by fleeing Bethany. Bethany's where he raised

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Lazarus from the dead. He fled to a wilderness town called Ephraim. And the reason

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Jesus fled was not because he was trying to preserve his life. Jesus wasn't afraid to die.

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He joyfully gave it up. He preserved his life for a moment, because had he been arrested in Bethany, he wouldn't have died as the

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Passover lamb. He would have died a week prior to the Passover. So Jesus guards his life with tenacious sovereignty until the moment that he's supposed to give his life, which is right when the

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Passover lambs are being slain in Jerusalem. That, in and of itself, is a miracle and a beautiful testimony of the events of Holy Week.

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But it was all about timing. Now, Jesus, after a couple days when things had died down a little bit and things were a little bit more stable, he returns to Bethany.

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Two nights before Palm Sunday, he dines at the house of Mary and Martha. It's a familiar story, but we don't ever think about how close it is to the events of his death.

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Martha is angry because Mary is too busy doing her dishes, or too busy listening to Jesus.

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Martha's like, we've got dishes to do, we've got food to cook. Jesus rebuked her, and he says,

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Martha, Martha, she's chosen the better portion. In a couple days, Jesus is going to be dead.

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Sitting at his feet and listening to him is most certainly the better portion. After the meal that they had together, again, two nights before Palm Sunday, Jesus allows

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Mary to anoint his feet with oil. It's a beautiful act of service. Now, Judas, the betrayer, pipes up and says, can't we give that money to the poor?

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And by poor, he was talking about himself, because he was going to take the money later out of the money bag. Jesus calmly and graciously rebukes him and says that what she has done will be recorded for all generations, because she anointed him for his burial.

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But as we'll see in a moment, she also anointed him to be king. Pretty beautiful. They go to sleep that night, and the next day, on Sunday, they rested in Bethany.

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Most of the day, actually. There were crowds that were coming to Jesus who wanted to meet Jesus, who wanted to meet

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Lazarus, and because of that, the word got back to the Pharisees, and they wanted to not only kill Jesus, they wanted to kill Lazarus, because they knew

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Lazarus was raised from the dead. They had no doubt about that. They wanted to get rid of the body so that people would stop believing in Jesus.

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How crazy is that? They saw the power of resurrection, and they're still hell -bent on murdering both

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Jesus and Lazarus so they can get rid of their religious opponent? We think in our minds and in our hearts that if someone will just hear the

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Gospel, if someone will just understand what Jesus has done, then they'll be saved. They saw it!

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They not only saw Lazarus raised from the dead, they saw the empty tomb, and they tried to cover it up.

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It takes God working in our life for us to come to God. If not, the

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Gospel is offensive to us, and we make every excuse and every lie and every justification to avoid believing it.

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Now, I part with history a little bit on this. I don't think Palm Sunday actually happened on Sunday.

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I think that when Jesus in the early morning went to Jerusalem, and then right after that cleansed the temple, which has traditionally been known to happen on Monday, I think that those events actually happened together.

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He goes to the city. He's welcomed. He goes to the temple as God, as King, and they reject him.

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But I will do a shameless plug for a moment. I'm not going to get into all the reasons why I think that this is true.

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But if you want, you can sign up for our email. No, I'm just playing. We have a daily devotional that's going out right now on the life of Jesus every single day, what he was doing on Holy Week, on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday.

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Check it out. It's a good resource. If you're not getting the emails, then let me or Derek know. We'll help you figure out what the problem is.

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It's probably Google. Google hates us. Well, that's true also.

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All right, back to John. John doesn't provide the most detail about Jesus' entry into the city.

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Matthew does. Matthew is written as a story of Jesus' son of David, who's going to be crowned king as well.

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So Matthew gives a lot of detail. Let's read Matthew's version, and then let's come back to John, and let's see what we can learn about how the crowd receives

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Jesus. Matthew says, Now, what

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I want us to understand here is that Jesus has left the home of Mary and Martha early in the morning.

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I think it was on Monday, but that doesn't really matter. Your salvation doesn't lie in the balance of that point. He entered the city.

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That's what happened. I think it's possible that in the early morning hours, the

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Mount of Olives faced towards the west, which meant that the sun was rising to the back of Jesus. So I think that early in the morning as Jesus and his disciples are praying and as the sun is rising, the city that is going to murder him is being lit up so that he can look down at it and see it.

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And Jesus tells two of his disciples to go and fetch him a colt so that he can ride on it and ride into the city, intentionally fulfilling the

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Messianic expectations and prophecies for the king who would ride into the city.

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And when he approached the city, the streets were lined with massive crowds who were blanketing the streets with palm branches, which we have not done that.

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We don't line streets with palm branches, so we'll have to talk about that a little bit. It was a symbol of celebration.

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And it wasn't written in the Gospels, but I'll tell you a little bit of tradition that comes from the Maccabean era.

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Joseph Maccabee was a man who fought against foreign powers and rescued

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Israel and delivered it from its oppression. Hanukkah comes from this period.

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It's a celebration of the Eight Days' War that these country bumpkin

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Jewish men accomplished over Antiochus Epiphanes and these awful tyrant leaders.

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Palm branches came into play there, and it became a tradition that whenever a conquering king would enter into Jerusalem, palm branches would be laid on the streets.

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And it became a tradition that when extraordinarily joyful occasions would happen, then palm branches would be laid on the streets.

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It was a symbol of rejoicing. It was a symbol of God's rule winning and coming back to the city of Jerusalem.

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Now, palm branches are especially difficult to grow in Jerusalem. We have record that tells us that they were very hard to find in the city of Jerusalem.

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And after, you think about it, after thousands of years of war, that's kind of possible.

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I want you to imagine a field with beautiful trees and lush grass and soldiers coming through constantly stomping in the mud, ripping up the grass.

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Eventually, you have no grass, you just have dirt. To keep themselves warm at night, the soldiers would chop down the trees and they would set fires and they would build things like catapults like the

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Romans did in AD 70. Eventually, you have no trees. So over time, Jerusalem being a very, very war -torn city, the climate almost could have changed.

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There is some record to say that in the earlier days of Jerusalem, it had more trees, it had more grass, it had more vegetation, but now it doesn't.

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Palm trees were difficult to grow in this region because of all the war and because of all the other stuff that was going on.

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Now, you ask yourself the question, why would they scour the city and cut down something that was rare and blanket the street with them?

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Wouldn't that be a waste? It seems like it would be. But to the Jewish person, this was a symbol that God's ordained

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Messiah had come. There's a passage in the Old Testament that says, when the Messianic kingdom begins,

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I think it's metaphorical, the Jews took it literal, you'll be able to tie your goat to a vine, to a grapevine.

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If you grew up in the country, you know that goats eat anything. You don't tie a goat up to your best vine because they will eat it.

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The point is that there will be so many vines, it doesn't matter. Tie them up to the vine.

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Tie them up to something else. It doesn't matter. We have plenty. They thought when the Messiah came that there were going to be so many palm trees in Jerusalem because of the prosperity that Messiah was going to bring.

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It doesn't matter if you chop down a few of them right now to celebrate. They were anticipating an age of golden prosperity.

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They were treating Jesus like a hero who was going to make their nation thrive again.

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They use an Aramaic word when he comes into the city, Hosanna. Hosanna is Aramaic, which means save us right now.

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Hosanna in the highest, or in the highest degree. Save us immediately. Save us urgently.

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You can see their heart is yearning for Jesus to rescue them. But the problem is, like we've said before, they don't understand the kind of king

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Jesus is, and they don't understand the kind of salvation that Jesus is bringing.

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So when they cry out, save us urgently, they're saying that to an idle phantom king that they've created in their own mind and not who

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Jesus is. They're crying out because they want their ground to be so fertile that they're drinking wine every night.

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They're crying out because they want so many palm trees in the land that they can take a lunch break with shade. They're crying out because they want animals who are so fat that they have to slaughter them so they can eat steak every single meal.

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And who would not want that? Honestly, it's okay.

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All of their hopes and their dreams were aligned with this vision that they had of Jesus, a vision of a material salvation, a vision of an economic salvation, a vision of a salvation filled with blessings, but not a salvation that begins at a

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Roman cross. They had a vision of Jesus, just like the crowd in John 6, that was far too low, and as a result,

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Jesus rejected their vision. But he didn't reject the premise.

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He is king. And he shows us that in a couple different ways. It says in John 12, 14,

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Jesus finding a donkey, sat on it, and he rode into the city. Jesus is doing two things there to show them what kind of true king he is.

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The crowd's missed it, like we said in John 6, but Jesus is showing them the kind of king that he is, and he's doing that through two different means.

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He's saying that I am the greater Solomon who has come to bring a greater kingdom, and he's also saying that I am the hope of Zechariah, that my kingdom will be an everlasting and eternal kingdom that will never end.

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So let's look at both of these themes. Jesus could have walked into the city of Jerusalem like everyone else.

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He wasn't afraid of walking. He could have ridden into the city on the back of a horse like a king who's going to war.

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He wasn't afraid of that. He does it in Revelation. He mounts the war horse and he comes and he makes war. Jesus chose a donkey for specific reasons.

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The first is because he's the greater Solomon, and we have to understand why that's important.

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David was God's chosen king, the first great king of Israel, the king who led

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Israel into a united empire, the king who was a man after God's own heart, a king who collected all of the supplies that Solomon, his son, would need to build the temple.

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David was the high point of the Jewish empire. He wasn't perfect by no means, but he was at least considered the high point, and he's the measure by which all

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Jewish kings are measured after him. Now, David's not going to live forever.

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That's a problem. David's kingdom was great, but at some point, a transfer of power is going to happen.

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Now, thankfully, all these years later, we figured out how to do peaceful transitions of power, but back then it was really important that they got this right.

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Kingdoms can rise and fall based off of the leader who is in it. They can be healthy and prosperous and vigorous, and then you get a poisoned leader in there, and things immediately go south.

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So this is really important. It's critical that David put the right man on the throne and transfer the power.

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So this is what David does. He issues commandments to his servants, and I want you— It's almost like reading out of the

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New Testament. It's unbelievable. It's almost like I'm reading out of the Gospel of John. This compares so beautifully to Jesus.

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Just listen to it. I don't even probably have to explain it. That's how beautiful this is. The king said to them, that's his servants,

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Take with you the servants of your Lord, and have my son Solomon ride on my mule, and bring him down to Gihon, and let

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Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint him there as king over Israel, and blow the trumpet and say,

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Long live King Solomon! And then you shall come up after him, and he shall come and sit on my throne and be king in my place, for I have appointed him to rule over Israel and Judah.

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Benaniah the son of Jehoiada answered the king and said, Amen. Thus may the Lord, the

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God of my Lord the king, say, As the Lord has been with the Lord my king, so may he be with Solomon, and make his throne greater than the throne of my

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Lord King David. So Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, Benaniah the son of Jehoiada, the

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Cherethites and the Pelethites went down and had Solomon ride on David's mule. And they brought him to Gihon, and Zadok the priest took the horn of oil from the tent and anointed

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Solomon. And they blew the trumpet and all the people said, Long live King Solomon!

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And all the people went up after him, the people who were playing flutes and rejoicing with great joy, so that the earth was shook with the noise.

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David commands his servants to do a couple of things, and they line up perfectly with what happens with Jesus. He commands his servants to go get a donkey.

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He tells them to take his son and put him on the donkey. He tells them to anoint his son as king.

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He tells them to put him on the donkey and ride him into the city to the praise of the people.

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What is happening in Jesus' life? He's the son of David, the true son of David.

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Just before this, he's anointed by Mary as king, just like Solomon. Jesus tells his two servants,

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Go and get the donkey and prepare it for me. Jesus sits on the donkey, rides into the city to the praise of Israel.

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Jesus is reenacting that he is the greater Solomon here. He's doing everything

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Solomon did, and he's showing I am like Solomon in that I am going to bring a kingdom.

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If you remember, Solomon was the king where all the nations streamed to Jerusalem to see the greatness of God.

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Solomon was the richest king. He had a palace, and he built the temple, and it was one of the world's great wonders at the time.

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People still look back at the Solomonic temple and the instructions in the Bible and say, that was one of the greatest buildings that have ever been constructed.

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The world found out about the greatness of God through Solomon, and they streamed to him.

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Look at what Jesus is saying. I am coming to bring the wonder of God back to the city of Jerusalem, but you will not be streaming to a temple any longer.

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You will come to know God through me. Jesus rode into the city to be crowned king forever, and no longer would people have to go to a dusty old building or make their journey to Jerusalem.

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You would know God through Jesus Christ, the better Solomon. Solomon's life was incredible.

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He was rich. He had thousands of wives. That doesn't sound incredible to me. I love my wife, but I can only love one. Amen. But Solomon's life, as much wealth as he had, as much money as he had, as much riches and treasure that he had, he died in abject idolatry.

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He allowed his wives to lead him into sin. He allowed his wealth to lead him into sin. He allowed everything that he did to be corrupted by idolatry.

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So Solomon died in failure, but yet Jesus Christ died in victory.

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Look at the juxtaposition. Solomon died in a palace, probably with fine linen sheets.

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Jesus died wrapped with a sheet over his body, thrown on a cross. It looked like Jesus died in failure, but yet Jesus is the one who died in victory.

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Solomon's life collapsed, and his kingdom, right after him, broke and fractured into two. Jesus died and was broken, and yet his kingdom never ends.

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That kingdom is alive 2 ,000 years today because Jesus died in victory, not in defeat like Solomon.

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This is why I keep saying that Jesus rejected the vision of the crowd because the crowd's vision was far too small.

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They had no idea the kind of kingdom that he was going to bring. And this is why I say that it's also not just about identifying with Solomon, but it's also about identifying with the prophetic vision given to us in Zechariah.

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These are some beautiful passages, and I want you to savor and see what

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Jesus Christ is doing. John appeals to that in verses 14 and 15.

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He says, Jesus, finding a young donkey, sat on it, for as it is written, Fear not, daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming, seated on a donkey's colt.

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John said, as it is written. That means John is appealing to what was previously written 500 years before Jesus Christ came in the book of Zechariah.

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Zechariah 9 .9 says this. This is a prophecy about Jesus, our king.

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Rejoice greatly, daughter Zion. Shout and triumph, daughter of Jerusalem.

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Behold, your king is coming to you, and he is righteous, and he is endowed with salvation.

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Humble and mounted on a donkey. Even a colt, the foal of a donkey.

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And I will eliminate the chariot from Ephraim, and the war horse from Jerusalem, and the bow of war will be eliminated, and he will speak peace to the nations, and his dominion will be from sea to sea, and from the

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Euphrates River to the ends of the earth. Now, if you will, Judy, leave verse 9 up on the screen.

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I want you to see parallel with what Jesus has done. Jesus, fulfilling a 500 -year -old prophecy, rode into the city with the praise of Jerusalem and the shouts of triumph at his ears.

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He came as their king. He came mounted on a donkey. He didn't come riding a stallion, making war with the city of Jerusalem.

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He came to be crowned king who would bear his people into salvation because he's endowed with salvation.

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He's the humble king who came on a donkey. Is it any wonder that the crowds cried out,

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Hosanna, save us now, echoing Zechariah 9? They understood that he was bringing salvation, but the salvation they thought he was bringing was prosperity and health and wealth and Israel or Judah.

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They thought salvation was make us great, not let us know how great you are. They missed it like we said all along.

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And I believe that they were really a Zechariah 9 -9 kind of crowd, but they weren't a

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Zechariah 9 -10 kind of crowd because if they looked at 10, they would have seen the truth of who

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Jesus is. It says in verse 10, you can keep it up, Judy, that I will eliminate the chariot from Ephraim.

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That's a word that's used for Israel, the northern 10 tribes. I will remove your power. And I will remove the horse from Jerusalem.

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Horses is what you ride into war. I will remove the power from Jerusalem. And the bow of war will be eliminated.

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This king is coming into a city to eliminate the power of Israel and Judah.

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That's what he's saying. He's not coming to start an uprising. He's not coming to participate in a coup or an insurrection or whatever other word you want to give it.

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He is coming to bring peace to the nations.

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It doesn't say nation. It doesn't say that he's coming to make peace in Israel. He's coming to make peace in the nations.

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He's coming to set up God's kingdom on earth. See, every other kingdom in all of human history has been built on the back of military might and power.

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Jesus' kingdom is not built like that. Zechariah 9, 10 says that he will have universal dominion, but not because of military strength, not because of military might.

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It will not be through bloodshed, jihad, or crusades. It will be by the preaching of the gospel.

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Jesus isn't bringing a physical kingdom that you have to win with swords and guns. Jesus is bringing a spiritual kingdom that comes about by the preaching of Christ crucified in his gospel.

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And what he's promising is that eventually the nations will experience peace because of the preaching of the gospel.

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Do not miss that point. He is saying that eventually, from sea to shining sea, and that doesn't mean

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America the beautiful, that the world is going to have peace because of the gospel, because of the proclamation of his reign.

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Look at what it says, from Euphrates to the Garden of Eden. It says that in the last part of the verse, and from Euphrates River to the ends of the earth.

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You know what this means? That means that Eden, the garden paradise, is going to be restored on earth as Jesus Christ brings his kingdom here on earth.

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He is promising that he will live with his people. That happened in Eden. He is promising that it's going to begin near the river

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Euphrates. That river was in Eden. He is promising that his kingdom will be a garden -like kingdom that spreads to the ends of the earth.

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Genesis 1 .28 says that human beings will spread out to the ends of the earth because I think

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God intended that we would spread out to the ends of the earth. Not through human striving, but through the gospel.

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Genesis 1 .28 only makes sense in the gospel because Jesus said, now go into all the nations discipling them, and I will be with you always.

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What Jesus is saying is I've started a garden kingdom in Jerusalem. I went to a garden right before my death.

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I was buried in a garden tomb. I was misrecognized as a gardener when

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I came out of the tomb. His kingdom begins as an Eden -like kingdom that's ever expanding to the ends of the earth so that all people will be in the presence of God.

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That happens perfectly in heaven when the New Jerusalem drops down and the tree of life is there and the river of life is flowing out of the garden city.

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That happens temporally, limitedly on earth. What I'm saying to you is that Jesus did not ride into Jerusalem as king so that Christianity could lose.

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Hear that. Jesus did not ride into Jerusalem as king so that Christianity could lose.

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He didn't identify himself with Solomon and the grandeur of that kingdom so that Christianity could crash and burn and so that sinful nations could rise up and eliminate

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God off the face of the earth. That's not going to happen. Our nation is going to crumble.

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Don't look at it like every piece of bread that you leave out of the refrigerator.

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Eventually it'll turn green. Our country has a shelf life, but the kingdom of God never ends.

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He didn't come so that the world can continue on going from bad to worse.

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If you look back 2 ,000 years ago, the kingdom of God has advanced tremendously. Christians were being burned like candles in Nero's gardens.

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Now, in every one of the seven continents, there's a Christian witness. 500 years ago, it was mostly a

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European phenomenon. During the Reformation, now the gospel is going forth to every nation on earth, just like Jesus promised.

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Peace is coming to the nations. We're living in a weird time right now. We are. We're living in a sort of time that makes us think that the world is crashing and burning around us.

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Not so in China. 300 million Christians are thriving in that country, even though they're being persecuted, and they are blessing the name of Jesus Christ.

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I was at Gordon -Conwell a couple years ago when Chinese leaders from the underground church came to Gordon -Conwell to try to strategize how they could start sending missionaries to America and to the rest of the world.

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Imagine 300 million people, the size of our entire nation, that's how big their church is, sending missionaries to the world.

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America might not be in the front seat of the kingdom of God forever. We might fail.

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We might be conquered. China might take the lead. They might take the baton for the next century of church history.

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But no matter who does it, the gates of hell will not stand against the advancement of the kingdom of God.

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His kingdom will go until every tribe, tongue, and nation has heard the good news of the gospel of Jesus.

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It doesn't mean that there's going to be no more war. It doesn't mean that every single person on earth is going to be a

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Christian. What it does mean is that His kingdom will continue and it will be successful until He returns.

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Dear Christian, do not live in the paralyzing doubt and fear that I see so many Christians in this country living in that we're just waiting in a foxhole somewhere for Jesus to return and to take us home in His heavenly elevator.

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Don't live that way. Live every day of your life like you are living in the kingdom of God.

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Live every day of your life like every conversation matters. Live every day of your life like you're an ambassador in His kingdom and you sharing the gospel might welcome new citizens into His kingdom.

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We don't know when He's going to return, but we do know that His kingdom is going to be successful. And it's not going to be successful because He donned the crown of David.

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It's going to be successful because He donned the crown of Adam. In Jerusalem, just days after the events of Palm Sunday, He doesn't put on a golden metal crown.

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He puts on a crown of thorns. Adam, in his sin and the curse, thorns came up from the ground and Jesus takes upon Himself the actual picture of the curse, shoved down into His scalp because He is going to bear our curse.

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He was enthroned in Jerusalem, but He wasn't enthroned on David's stony chair.

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He was enthroned on a Roman wooden cross. And in that moment when He was lifted up,

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He began His kingdom where He would draw all men to Himself, all kinds of men, all people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.

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This Jesus rode into the city to be king. This Jesus was crowned king and this

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Jesus now reigns as king. Why do we think that Jesus ascended to heaven to sit on the throne of God at the right hand of the

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Father and yet we act like Jesus is weak or His church is weak or His kingdom is weak?

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To hell with that thought. His kingdom reigns. Jesus Christ is on His throne.

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Now, this may be confusing to all of us. Paul says in 1

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Corinthians 15 -25, He must reign until He has put all of His enemies under His feet.

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He put Satan under His feet when He died on the cross. He's putting every stronghold and every principality and every brokenness under His feet now as His kingdom reigns.

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But that might be confusing to us because it doesn't match our experience. We live in a world that still has a lot of pain and a lot of hurt and a lot of hate and a lot of brokenness and it doesn't feel like Jesus' kingdom is winning.

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Well, it didn't feel like that to His disciples either. The same disciples who were confused in John 6 were the same disciples who were confused in John 12.

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Look at what it says. After Jesus rides into the city, these things

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His disciples did not understand at first. But when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written of Him and that they had done these things to Him.

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They didn't understand when Jesus called them to be His disciples. They didn't understand when

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Jesus rode into the city. They didn't understand when Jesus overturned the temple tables.

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They didn't understand when He was arrested and put through a sham trial. They didn't understand when He was marched up the hill of death and nailed to a

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Roman cross. They didn't understand why His body lay dead in the tomb on Saturday. When they began to understand,

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John tells us, is when Jesus was glorified. When He rose from the dead. When the Holy Spirit came into their hearts and awakened their eyes and showed them that this

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Jesus is now living. And for us, at the end of this, we have to make a choice.

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Will we go on living like the crowds who confused Him? Will we go on living like the secular crowds that had no idea who

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He was and living in our idolatry? If you're not a Christian today, you cannot save yourself, no matter how good or how righteous you think that you are.

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Do not live like the crowd of Jerusalem because in one moment, they celebrated Jesus and in the next minute, they crucified

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Him. Do not live like that. If God is working in you right now, it's because He is pursuing you right now.

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Turn to Jesus Christ and your confusion will be lifted. If you're a Christian, don't live like the disciples in John 12.

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Live like the disciples in Acts 2. Live like the disciples who are lion -hearted and going out into the world proclaiming the kingdom of God.

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Luke 12, 32 says, Do not be afraid, little flock. Your Father has chosen to give you the kingdom.

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You walk out into a world that's yours. You walk out into a world that Jesus reigns.

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Jesus doesn't just reign here in this space. He reigns at your work. And He reigns in your family.

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And He reigns in every relationship that you're in. Walk victoriously in all of these relationships and all of these spaces.

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Not because you're great, but because He's great. Don't live like the crowds. Live like the disciples who've seen the glory of God and live every moment to the glory of God.

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Amen? Let's pray. 1 ,991 years ago,

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Christ, You rode into the city of Jerusalem. You began a kingdom that will never end.

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Jesus, I pray that You would help us, Your followers, not yawn at Your kingdom and not roll our eyes at Your kingdom and not be apathetic towards Your kingdom and not be apologetic towards Your kingdom.

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Lord, I pray by the Holy Spirit's power that this room would ignite for men and women who understand the reality that we serve a great

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King. We live in a world full of presidents, mayors, and governors, but we serve the

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King of kings. Lord, let us not be people who complain about our circumstances.

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Let us see everything as an opportunity. Everything is an opportunity to live for You, to share

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You, to showcase You, to proclaim Your great and glorious gospel. And Lord, I pray that as a people, let's just pray specifically for New England, as a people wake up to the gospel that like the city of Jerusalem was shaken by their music, this region would be shaken by Your gospel.

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Lord, we know that You involve us in that. Lord, I pray that we would be shaken by Your gospel.