The Triumphant Christ (Various Scriptures)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word and may the Lord be with you.

Palm Sunday is the reality that when faced with the greatest darkness, you can march into the middle of the storm and Christ by his power has already went there first.

He's already went there before you. Jesus on Palm Sunday went right into the belly of the beast of Jerusalem where darkness would envelop him and overtake him and kill him and yet in the darkest moment in human history

God raised Christ from the dead. The tomb was empty. Light burst forth upon the earth and the kingdom of light still exists today by the power of Christ.

In the midst of the heaviest week that you could walk through, in the midst of the heaviest season of your life that you could go through,

Christ is King. Remember that because there's going to be weeks where the world is afflicting you, harming you, hurting you, breaking you.

Your heart is going to be almost to the point of exasperation. You're going to have weeks that challenge you.

Look to these passages that Christ gained his greatest victory in the moment of greatest darkness.

That is true for Christ and that is true for all of his people that we who are in Christ we can see

God do the most amazing things even in moments of really deep and awful darkness.

Remember that. Now let's begin the sermon. Today is 1 ,992 years or 95 years depending on how you date the crucifixion and resurrection.

There are two dates the 8030 and 8033. We're not here to settle that debate. But on that day there was all kinds of fanfare, regalia.

There was all kinds of celebration for this King. But we have a little bit of a problem when it comes to Shepherd's Church and how we're going to tell the story because we're in John 11.

Palm Sunday is John 12. So should we just skip John 11 and just move forward and really dive into John 12?

I can't do that. So we're not going to do that. So today what we're going to do is we're going to use

John 11 as a little bit of a launching pad. There's there's elements in John 11 1 through 16 that hint on what's going to happen.

So we're going to use that as a launching pad to talk about the triumphal entry. We're going to use it on Good Friday.

By the way, we're having a Good Friday service. You have to ask Derek the time it's escaping me right now.

I'll tell you in a minute when it comes to me. Anyway, we're going to use this as a launching pad into Good Friday.

We're going to use this as a launching pad in the Easter. There's elements in the passage that we looked at last week, which point us forward to what

Christ has come to do. So this week that's going to be our focus. Now the focus is how does

Jesus get from Bethany, where he raises Lazarus from the dead to Jerusalem?

Because there's some time that exists in between that. There's some days that happen. So what I want us to do today is

I want us to start from where we were in John 11. And I want us to build to how Jesus got to the city.

I want us to look at what that means theologically. And then I want us to rest in the fact that Jesus is proclaiming something amazing in this passage about his kingship and about his kingdom and about his reign and his rule and his dominion.

That is going to ease our hearts and that is going to prepare us to live as Christians until our

Lord King Christ returns. Amen. So what does it want us to do today is

I want us to pray and I want us to dive right in to looking at how Jesus gets from Bethany to Jerusalem.

So let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for this passage and thank you for the victory that it is signaling.

For your kingship, for your rule, for your reign, for all those things that we come under as Christians.

And Lord, today I pray that as we as we conclude our time. That we would also see how we come underneath your reign, how we obey you, how we love you, how we praise you as citizens would praise their king.

And Lord, I pray that that knowing these things would make a difference in our life and the way that we walk in the way that we interact with the world around us.

It's in Christ's name. Amen. So what I want us to do right now is just go through a little bit of a timeline.

What was Jesus doing? Now, Friday, with about seven days left in Jesus's life, he's going to be heading towards Bethany again.

But before that, Jesus has raised Lazarus from the dead. The city is sort of stirred up.

Bethany is going crazy because of what Jesus has done. The Pharisees are angry because of what

Jesus has done. This is Jesus's greatest recorded miracle up to this point. And until his resurrection from the dead, it is the greatest miracle that Jesus did.

We're going to learn a little bit about this in the weeks ahead. But he waited until Lazarus had been in the tomb four days.

They didn't want to break the seal of the tomb because they said the body would stink. The custom of the time said that after two days or three days, that the soul of the person completely left.

So there was no possibility of a miracle worker or a healer or a physician bringing them back from the dead because, you know, there are times in the

Old Testament, there are times in the ancient world, there are times even 200 years ago where people were buried in a coma, but they thought that they were dead.

So the Jews had a custom. If you were buried for more than three days, you were really dead. You weren't just mostly dead.

I know who's watched the movie. You were all dead. Now, this event caused many people in Bethany to believe, many of the

Jews to believe. It caused a stir of people to long for Jesus to be their king.

They saw messianic implications for this and they wanted to crown Jesus king. This is the same group of people who in John 6, after he multiplied bread and gave it to thousands of people, wanted to put a crown on his head and Jesus refused them.

So this sort of intensity to make Jesus king of Israel has been reinvigorated and the

Jews, the leadership community was terrified about it. Because if a king of a crown gets put on Jesus's head,

Rome's going to find out about it. And if Rome finds out about it, Rome's going to come marching in with their armies. They're going to kill the rebels.

They're going to take away the nation and they're going to make Israel a slavery state.

Israel at this time was one of the few nations that had certain privileges. They had their own king, although he was a puppet king named

Herod. They did have their own king. They had their own ability to kind of come and go as they pleased. They were taxed unbelievably unfairly.

But they did have certain privileges that other places did not. And they were scared to death that they were going to lose those privileges.

If Jesus was embraced by the people and he was crowned king.

Now, you would think that the religious leaders who knew their Bible, who knew the prophecies would praise

God that a man had been risen from the dead. No one but God can do something like that.

But they were so focused on their political holdings. They were so focused on their power.

You see, the Pharisees had become rich at this time. They had become fat and wealthy at this time.

In Jerusalem, the only overweight people were the Pharisees. Because they had means, they had money, and no one else did.

They had carved out for themselves a pretty respectable set of power. And if we've learned anything from the pandemic, that people in power don't want to give it up very easily.

Again, they were more concerned with the political fallout than they were with God and the flesh being in their midst. Again, the

Romans found out they would have crushed Israel. And at this time period, they were walking on thin ice.

There's record that there had been a Messiah figure about 40, 50 years before Jesus came who led a rebellion out in the wilderness and Rome came and crushed it.

And the sort of understanding that Rome had with Israel is don't do this again. Because if you do this again, we are going to intervene.

Israel was known as a rebellious group of people. They were known as cantankerous. They were known as rabble -rousers.

So they were on thin ice and they knew it. And they could not afford this sort of rebellion to happen.

So they wanted to stop it as soon as they possibly could. We know this is their motivation because John 11, 48 says it like this.

This is the Pharisees talking. If we let him go on like this, all men will believe in him.

And the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. They say it directly.

Imagine if they would have seen that this was truly God in the flesh. They wouldn't have had such a motivation, but they do.

Verse 53 tells us about their godless plan. It says, so from that day on, they planned together to kill him.

This is a little different than what's gone on so far. John 5, they want to kill him. John 8, they pick up stones to kill him.

John 10, they pick up stones to kill him. There's an intent there to kill him, but now they put together a commission.

Now they're actually putting resources, time and energy and effort towards it. And now many scholars will tell you that the raising of Lazarus is the event that sealed

Jesus's fate. It is the thing that caused them to turn on him completely. They would stop at nothing to murder him at this point.

Now, as you can imagine, Jesus and his disciples retreat from the city of Bethany because that would be like walking down the street where your own wanted poster is posted on all the flagpoles and all the telephone poles.

It would have been dangerous. This was two miles outside the city of Jerusalem. So the pressure was intense.

So Jesus and his disciples retreat from Bethany to a town called Ephraim, which is about four to six miles outside of Bethany.

So about six to ten miles outside of Jerusalem. It's interesting that the town is named

Ephraim because Covenantally, Ephraim was the ten northern tribes and he had just been rejected by Judah.

So he's being Covenantally rejected by all of Israel. It's an interesting feature. Now, after his time in Ephraim, he's going to return to Bethany.

But what I want us to see here is that in John 11, when Jesus leaves Galilee and he goes to Bethany to heal

Lazarus from the dead, he is leaving Galilee for the rest of his life.

When Jesus is crucified and resurrected from the dead, he'll go back to Galilee, but he is leaving his home.

And that happens probably on Wednesday evening where he flees to Ephraim. That's Wednesday with about nine days left in his life.

He flees to a town named Ephraim. He's going to stay there for a couple of days. He's kind of stirred up a hornet's nest in Bethany, so he's going to stay there and lay low for a couple of days so that he's not killed before his time.

His time is to be murdered at the Passover. So he waits. John 12 begins this way.

After a couple of days of Jesus staying in Ephraim, Jesus, therefore, six days before the

Passover, came again to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.

So he stays in Ephraim for a couple of days. He comes back to Bethany now. When this happens in John 12,

Jesus has six days left in his life. That's it. He comes back to Bethany to participate in a feast, in a meal.

You can imagine Mary and Martha and Lazarus, who was dead, but now he's alive, would probably want to thank

Jesus for all that he's done. They would probably want to have a meal for Jesus to celebrate what he had done.

Jesus was very familiar with Bethany, and Bethany was very familiar with Jesus because he came there to visit this family often.

This was a ministry outpost for him in the final six days of his life. He goes back and forth from Jerusalem and Bethany constantly.

This is where Jesus is going to spend the majority of time before he dies. So it's natural for him to go back, and it's natural for this family to welcome him with a feast to celebrate all that he has done.

He's going to arrive there Saturday for this celebration, mid -morning, as Martha is busy in the kitchen preparing the meal, as Martha is prone to do.

Mary and Martha were eager to show Jesus how they cared for him and loved him, so Martha was busy preparing the meal.

Mary was sitting at Jesus' feet. And that's an interesting thing if you think about the fact that Lazarus has been raised from the dead just three days before.

Martha is using her gifts to serve Jesus and show him that, I love you, by cooking him the best meal of his life.

Mary is using her gifts of quality time to sit at Jesus' feet, listen to Jesus' teaching, and the two women get angry at each other.

And a little tiff actually happens right in the middle of the feast that Jesus has to intervene and intercede on before the night can move on.

That night at dinner, they sat together. They ate food together.

Jesus was reclining with Lazarus. And the way that I imagine this is, Lazarus being a disciple of Jesus, Jesus being the teacher, them talking about all kinds of theological topics with good food and just rest, and this being like a moment of sweet joy for Jesus as the darkness is sort of encroaching upon him.

John 12 too tells us that it was a supper. Said they made him a supper there and Martha was serving, but Lazarus was one of those reclining at the table with him.

This is a sweet moment for Jesus, as even controversy is getting ready to broil up again.

You think about it, Martha was the one who was serving originally, now she's serving again. Martha's a servant. Mary's the one who got into the controversy before by sitting at Jesus' feet.

Now she's gonna get in more controversy by not just sitting at Jesus' feet, she's going to anoint Jesus' feet on this night, six days before he dies.

She grabs the most expensive bottle of perfume that she owns, that the family owns, and she anoints

Jesus' feet. And if you think about the irony of this, her brother was just dead but now he's alive, now her

Lord is alive but getting ready to be dead. She is anointing him just like she would have anointed Lazarus for burial.

This was an act of love and kindness that has been recorded for us today, 2 ,000 years later.

I find it such a beautiful thing that it was Mary who got the privilege and the honor to anoint her

Lord's feet. And yet, it wasn't without controversy, because you have Judas, of course, the son of perdition, the man who

Satan himself would enter to betray his Lord, who objects and he says, this money could have been given to the poor.

And by poor, he means himself, because the Bible tells us that he was a thief and a robber.

Jesus doesn't rebuke Mary, he speaks tenderly to Mary, he speaks tenderly to the disciples, and he says, this thing must be accomplished for the glory of God.

That's Saturday night, sweet night in Jesus' life, a night that only

Jesus would have had the sense of foreboding, foreshadowing type of gloom that would come.

Imagine how Jesus would have felt that night spending the night with his friend Lazarus, but also in the same house as the man who would betray him,

Judas. This was a beautiful time for Jesus, but it also was a heavy time for Jesus.

The next day, Sunday, five days before he died, John tells us that all kinds of people were coming to Bethany to see

Jesus and to see Lazarus. They had heard reports that Lazarus was dead and now

Lazarus is alive, so they wanted to see him. They wanted to talk to him, they wanted to make sure that nothing crazy had happened and this wasn't some body double.

They wanted to see Lazarus and inspect it, and they also wanted to see Jesus. So this is now five days before Jesus dies.

They would have been swarmed by the crowds, and tradition tells us that the triumphal entry actually happens on this day, on Sunday, but there's a debate on this topic.

Some say that these crowds coming to Bethany to meet Jesus, to meet Lazarus, would have taken up the entire day and that the triumphal entry actually happened on Monday.

A lot of people believe that. There's a book on this topic called The Last Week of Jesus by Eckhard Schnabel.

It's actually a really good book. It's about 700 pages, but you can't put it down.

It's amazing. If you like, it's a great book. Zeroes in on Jesus' last seven days. He argues that it was on Monday.

I think he makes a good case. We'll go with that because the text itself says, then the next day.

So if Jesus is eating a meal on Saturday, the next day he's entertaining guests, and then the next day he enters the city of Jerusalem, that would be

Monday. But again, there is a debate, and I'm not gonna take a definitive stance on that, and your salvation is not dependent upon that, but we're gonna go with that.

John 12, nine through 11 reports that there was joy in the air and that people were believing in him.

This is what it says. The large crowd of Jews then learned that he was there, and they came

Sunday morning, not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom he raised from the dead.

But the chief priest planned to put Lazarus to death also, because on accounts of him, many of the

Jews were going away and believing in Jesus. You see, the

Pharisees were so wicked in their disposition. And almost like a mafia group of people trying to crush their opposition and bury the evidence, they're not only content to kill

Jesus, they wanna kill Nazareth as well. How do you get that far gone other than the fact that God himself had removed his presence from these people and they were blind?

The same thing can happen to us if we're not in Christ. Jesus goes to sleep that night after a long day of entertaining crowds of people who wanna hear him speak.

They wanna see Lazarus raised from the dead. And he wakes up Monday morning according to this timeline. Again, salvation's not dependent upon that, but that's what we're going with.

Matthew 21, one tells us that Jesus woke up early in the morning on Monday and that he went towards Jerusalem.

Now, there's an interesting thing that I wanna share with you. Almost every time someone is traveling in the

Bible, the direction matters. If they're traveling towards the east or if they're traveling towards the west, it actually really matters.

In the Old Testament, Cain, no, I'm sorry, Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden and they were to travel to the east.

The Israelites, when they were cast out of the promised land, they traveled to the east. Almost, I can't verify a single time where it's not true, but every time the people of God are traveling east, they're traveling towards cursing.

And every time they're traveling towards the west, they're heading towards blessing. For instance, the tabernacle was faced in a certain way that the priest had to walk westward in order to get into it.

He had to walk past curtains that had the cherubim painted on the curtains or woven into the curtains.

It's almost like even though Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden to the east, they're walking back to the west, back towards the garden.

The Holy of Holies was decorated like the Garden of Eden. There's this directional thing that's happening in the

Bible and it happens all over the place and we can't spend a lot of time on it, but to say that Jesus is walking westward.

He's walking towards the Mount of Olives, which is the garden area where he prays.

He's walking back towards the garden, towards the city of Jerusalem to accomplish redemption for God's people.

It says that when they got to the Mount of Olives, this is also another beautiful feature. You think if he left early in the morning in Bethany, he got to the

Mount of Olives, the sun would have been rising. Well, if he's facing to the west, the sun would have risen to his back.

So the son who's getting ready to rise from the dead has the rising sun on his back as he faces

Jerusalem. A very interesting foreboding, foreshadowing of what is getting ready to happen that the true son is going to rise from the dead in just a few days.

Mark 11 too tells us the next thing that they did while they're on the Mount of Olives is Jesus gathered his disciples together and he sent a couple of them to a nearby town called

Bethpage. And when he sent them to Bethpage, he sent them to grab a donkey that had never been ridden before.

They go and they find everything exactly as Jesus tells them and they bring the donkey back to the top of the

Mount of Olives where Jesus is placed on the donkey. They put their coats on top of the donkey.

They put Jesus on top of the donkey. And then Luke 19 .37 tells us that Jesus and his disciples began descending down the

Mount of Olives heading towards Jerusalem. And Luke tells us that his disciples were singing, which is a really important point.

It says they brought it to Jesus as a donkey and they threw their coats on the colt and put Jesus on it.

And he was going and they were spreading their coats on the road. And as soon as he was approaching near the descent of the

Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all of the miracles that they had seen.

John tells us that the disciples were the first group to break out in praise. And that's not just the 12, that's the discipleship community of 70, maybe even more.

They break out in praise first. Jesus, as he enters into the city, John tells us that a larger group of Jews joins in the praising.

This is Jews that came from Bethany that saw Lazarus raised from the dead or heard about Lazarus being raised from the dead.

And they gather in the streets as Jesus comes into the city. So now you've got two episodes of people breaking out in praise for Jesus.

John 12, 12 through 13 says, on the next day, again, that's Monday, the large crowd, who was the same crowd that visited him, the previous day, who had come to the feast.

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

Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Now, all of this is going to tie together beautifully in a moment,

I hope. Maybe I should just say it's going to tie together. Maybe I should allow the listener to determine if it was beautiful or not.

But all of this is going to tie together in a moment. But I want to share a couple points real quick before we go into the theology of this passage, of these passages.

They laid palm trees out. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all four gospels give us this detail that they laid palm branches out.

Now, why did they do that? Why did they lay out these branches on the road, especially in a region like Jerusalem where palm branches were difficult to find, if not impossible to find?

In the history of Jerusalem, Jerusalem was a beautiful city with lots of vegetation when it began.

But after war and after more wars and after more wars and invading armies coming in in the cold of winter, burning down all of their trees to stay warm, cutting down their trees as a sign of God's judgment upon Jerusalem, Jerusalem actually morphed into an entirely different climate.

A thousand years before, Jerusalem would have been filled with trees and palm trees and an oasis. It would have looked almost like a little mini

Garden of Eden. But after conquest and invasion and after all of these things, Jerusalem looked like a desert wasteland.

So there was no palm trees at this time, or at least not very easily gathered.

So why would they do this? Why would they take a resource that is so scarce and lay it out on the ground?

Why would they waste them? This seems like a tremendous amount of waste. Well, when you understand the expectation of the

Jews, they believed that their Messiah was coming to not only set them politically free, but to heal all of the curses that had afflicted them.

They thought that Messiah was going to bring flowing wine. They thought that the Messiah was going to bring vegetation and life.

They thought that the Messiah holistically was going to heal their land. So they're going to invest the scarce remaining palm branches that they have to their name in hopes that this

Messiah would bring prosperity. That he would bring new life, new growth, new vegetation, even to the region.

This sort of expectation is in Isaiah and in Jeremiah and in the prophets. And as Jesus entered into the city, they thought they were making an investment in his kingdom.

A kingdom that they didn't fully understand because it was a kingdom they thought only applied to national

Israel. Mark tells us that they cry out, which means save us now.

Matthew tells us that Jesus is bringing the kingdom of David. Luke tells us that the

Pharisees rebuke his disciples, and Jesus responds that if you tell them to be silent, even the stones will cry out.

John tells us that the disciples were confused. If you read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you get an interesting picture of what's going on at the coming of our

Lord into the city of Jerusalem. The people thought he was bringing a national kingdom.

Jesus himself was bringing a spiritual, everlasting kingdom. And that's where I want us to now transition for the remaining of our time to two particular theological emphases on this passage that show us what

Jesus was intending to do. I don't want to study, at least exhaustively, what the crowds thought

Jesus was going to do or what the Jews thought Jesus was going to do or what the Romans thought Jesus was going to do. I want to understand what

Jesus intended to accomplish in his coming into the city. Why did

Jesus choose to ride into the city on a donkey? Why didn't he walk? Why didn't he ride on a horse?

Why didn't he get into a chariot because he's the king of heaven and adopt the greatest technology of their time period?

Why did he ride on a donkey into the city of Jerusalem? To understand that, we have to go back to the

Old Testament and we have to look at a scene in the life of Solomon. Matthew tells us that Jesus is bringing the kingdom of his father,

David. That's a clue. That's a clue that we ought to look back in David's life and see if there's a scene that teaches us what

Jesus himself thought that he was doing. David, if you remember, was the greatest king of Israel.

He was anointed to be king after the death of Saul and he united the nation under his one unified monarchy.

The nation was at its height under the king, David. And like all people do,

David got old and was getting ready to die. So he had to appoint a successor. This is the most turbulent time in a nation's history is when its first great king surrenders power to his successor.

Many nations fall apart in this era. So he had to get this right.

He had to pick the right son in order to rule over the kingdom of Israel and Judah. And he chose

Solomon. It says in 1 Kings 1, 33 through 40.

And I want you to listen to this passage. Remembering what we just saw about Jesus in the triumphal entry, because this will tie everything together.

The King David said to them, Take with you the servants of your Lord and have my son

Solomon ride on my own mule and bring him down to Gihon.

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

Long live King Solomon. 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 be ruler over Israel and Judah. But Naya, the son of Jehoiada, answered the king and said,

Amen. Thus may the Lord, the God of my Lord, the king say, as the

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

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

Cherethites, the Pelethites went down and had Solomon ride on King David's mule and brought him to Gihon.

And Zadok the priest then took the horn of oil from the tent and anointed Solomon. And then they blew the trumpet and all of the people said,

Long live King Solomon. And all of the people went up after him and the people were playing on flutes and rejoicing with great joy so that the earth shook at their noise.

Do you see what's happening in the Old Testament here? David is commanding that Solomon will be king.

The father is commanding the son will be king. He's commanding that his servants would go prepare a donkey.

He's saying for them to take his son Solomon and put him on the donkey. He's saying to anoint his son with oil as king, to have him ride down before he rides up, which is exactly the path.

He commanded his servants to celebrate his kingship. He told them to ride into the city to the praise of the people.

Then he told them to crown him as king and to put him on the throne to reign as king in an eternal kingdom.

That is exactly what happened in Jesus when he came to the city of Jerusalem. He was called by his father to be king over this people.

He was he appointed his servants to go get him his donkey. He was anointed with oil by Mary.

He was put on the donkey. He rode down the Mount of Olives before he rode up into the city of Jerusalem. He was surrounded by servants who were praising and worshiping him.

The whole town breaks out in joyful praise over Jesus, and soon Jesus would have a crown put on his head, except not the crown they were thinking.

Instead of a crown of gold, he would get a crown of thorns instead of a throne, he would get a cross. But make no mistake, that was the enthronement of Jesus Christ.

When Jesus had the crown of thorns placed on his head and when he was put onto the cross, lifted up to the glory of God, that was the enthronement of the king forever.

Jesus is showing that he, like Solomon, is going to die in the city of Jerusalem. But unlike Solomon, he's going to rise from the dead.

He's showing that like Solomon, he's going to sit on a throne. But unlike Solomon, it's going to be a throne forever.

It's going to be a better throne. Solomon sat on a physical throne. Jesus sits on a throne forever at the right hand of the

Father, reigning over his people. The Davidic covenant in 1 Samuel 7, or 2

Samuel 7, says that David will always have a man on the throne and that that man will reign forever.

That would not be true if Jesus Christ didn't ride into the city of Jerusalem and be enthroned on the cross in the way that he did because it's been 2 ,500 years since a

Davidic king sat on the throne in Israel. Israel now has a secular government.

There is no Davidic king. So if Jesus doesn't do this, then that promise of God fails.

But the Bible says that no promise of God returns void. Nothing God says is going to happen doesn't happen.

So Jesus, the true son of David, marches into the city, or rides into the city of Jerusalem. He is crowned king, anointed king, crucified king, reigning on the right hand of the

Father forever. He is the fulfillment of David's covenant. It's unbelievable.

Everything that Solomon was told to do was not for Solomon. It was so that he could point to the

Messiah who would be the true and better king of his people. Not of national Israel, of the

Israel of God. Galatians 3 says that all who believe in Christ are children of Abraham and called the children of God.

The kingdom now is not just Jews and males. It's Jews and Gentiles, male and female, slave and free.

This kingdom is greater under Jesus. When he rode into the city, he's showcasing that his rule had come to the world.

That he was going to reign on the throne of his father David. And that you and I, 1 ,995 years later, we are a part of his kingdom.

Even though we don't live in Israel. We are made temples of the living God even though we've never been to the

Jerusalem temple. This king has brought his kingdom in such a magnificent and glorious way that he trumps what

Solomon did in the Old Testament. But what Solomon did by the command of David points to Jesus.

Everything in the Old Testament points to Jesus. And we learn about Jesus's kingdom through this event with a man named

Solomon. This is the first sort of theological theme underneath the passage that I want you to see is

Jesus is purposefully identifying with Solomon to show that he brings a better kingdom.

The second thing that I want you to see is that he's also identifying with a 500 year old prophecy that was given by Zechariah.

Zechariah is near the end of the Old Testament. He's one of the 12 minor prophets. And what he tells us about Jesus is some of the most beautiful and encouraging words that you and I could ever grab hold of.

And I pray that we grab hold of them today because Jesus is not a long haired sissy who's just waiting on us to come to him and make him feel better because we chose him.

Jesus is a king who reigns and who has dominion and rule and authority from from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.

He is a mighty king. That's who we serve. John 12 14 through 15 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. John doesn't tell us about the disciples going to get the donkey.

He alludes to the fact that Jesus found the donkey, which is not untrue. The disciples brought it and Jesus found it.

John's focus is the prophecy of Zechariah. John's focus is this glorious thing.

Now, what does Zechariah say? Zechariah chapter nine verses nine through ten. Again, some of the most beautiful prophecy in the

Old Testament. This is what it says. Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion. Shout and triumph, daughter of Jerusalem.

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

Humble and mounted on a donkey. Even a colt, the foal of a donkey. And I will eliminate from Ephraim or the chariot from Ephraim and the 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 Euphrates River to the ends of the earth.

What I want you to notice here is that the crowd in John who was cheering

Hosanna in the highest had a wonderful understanding of verse nine, but they had absolutely nothing as far as understanding of verse 10.

And we have to understand both if we want to understand who Jesus is. They saw rejoice greatly and they did that.

They rejoiced. They saw that their king was coming to the mountain on a donkey. He was going to bring salvation.

But the salvation that they were looking for was national. The salvation that they were looking for was Israel, the nation of Israel, not what

Christ was coming to do. They didn't see what verse 10 was trying to tell them. They thought that they were going to get another

Davidic king who was going to run the Roman tyrants out of their nation and that they were going to be a kingdom again like back in the days of David.

They had no idea what Jesus was doing was going to shake the foundations of the cosmos instead of just a small patch of geography in Palestine.

He rode on a mule. That is an important point. Kings do not ride into cities that belong to them on horses.

When you ride in on a horse, you're saying that I'm coming to conquer the city. You're saying that I'm coming to make war with this city.

Jesus, like Solomon, rode into a city that belonged to him. He rode on a donkey.

He rode as the king of peace. Did you know Jerusalem, the name of Jerusalem, Jerusalem means the city of peace.

So Jesus, the king of peace, rides into the city of peace that had been plagued by war for its entire existence.

And Zechariah 10 tells us that he's going to eliminate war. Isn't that a beautiful thing?

Zechariah 10 also tells us some other things that we need to understand about this passage if we want to understand what

Jesus's kingdom is. Zechariah 10 says that he's going to remove Ephraim.

Remember we talked about earlier, Jesus goes to the city of Ephraim. Ephraim in the Old Testament is the word that is used to represent the 10 northern tribes of Israel.

Jesus, or this prophecy in Zechariah saying that the coming of the Messiah will end

Ephraim. And we know that that happened by the

Assyrian empire in the Old Testament who came in and totally destroyed the 10 northern tribes of Israel.

They gathered the Israelites, they deported them from their land, they caused them to intermarry with other people, and they biologically removed them from history so that there is no more 10 tribes of Israel.

They're not there anymore. The tribe of Manasseh and Dan and Naphtali are gone.

There's a story in North Carolina about the lost Indian tribe that came and no one knows where they went.

Sort of what happened to Israel in the Old Testament. They were intermarried, biologically broken, and there is no more 10 tribes.

So when Jesus comes and he begins his kingdom on earth, the first thing that he does is he chooses 12 disciples because he plans to remake the 12 tribes of Israel in his image.

And that includes us today. We're a part of the nation of Israel, spiritually through the blood of Christ.

This passage also tells us that he's going to eliminate Judah. It says in, still in that first verse, that he will come and eliminate the war horse from Jerusalem.

That would have been a shocking thing for the people of Judah because the people of Judah were waiting for a Messiah to bring back the war horse.

They were waiting for a Messiah to make them militarily valiant again, viable again, to throw off the tyranny of Rome.

Jesus is saying, I have come to take away the horse from Jerusalem by riding in on a donkey.

This is an incredible point that is often missed because it's so subtle.

Jesus has come to remove Judah as his special covenanted people and open it up to the entire church so that his church will now be his people.

And he does this by pouring out the covenantal curse upon Judah that happened to Israel.

Just like Israel was destroyed in 726 BC by the

Assyrians, so Judah will be destroyed, but this time by the Romans. And we know this happened as a matter of history.

If you want to read about it, you can read in Josephus' book called The Wars of Judah or The Israelite Wars.

It is sad. It's heartbreaking. It is graphic.

But here's what happened. When Jesus came as their king, they rejected him. They crucified him.

Matthew 23 says that all of the guilt from Abel to Zechariah, son of Berechiah, would be poured out on that generation and that that generation would be destroyed.

The Romans would come in and break apart their temple brick by brick. Not one stone would be left upon another. And that is exactly what happened in the year

AD 70. God himself removed the war horse from Jerusalem so that now for 2 ,000 years,

Israel has no temple. Israel has no Mosaic law. Israel has no biblical

Judaism. They have been removed by God because of their idolatry, because of their sin, and because they had the wickedness to crucify

God's one and only son. Zechariah 10 was the reason that they should have been weeping, not cheering.

They were cheering because he was coming into the city and they thought that he was going to bring them peace and he was going to bring them freedom.

Zechariah 9 10 says he's going to destroy that nation because they were wicked and they had rebelled constantly against God.

The Pharisees' fear came true that Rome would come and take away their place and their nation.

But that's not the end of Zechariah 10. Zechariah 9 10 tells us about what

Christ intends to do. It says that the bow of war will be eliminated, which means

Jesus intends on bringing peace to the nations and peace to his people. What I want you to see about that is that Jesus' people are not commanded like jihadists or other religions to go and win the world over through war.

We extend the kingdom of God now that has been given to us, not by war, not by arrows and bows and nuclear weapons or any of that.

We see the kingdom of God advance through the preaching of the gospel. The bow of war is eliminated.

Christ is going to bring a kingdom not built on war and the machinations of that kind of stuff, bloodshed and all of that.

He's going to bring peace to the nations through his church. He's going to have dominion from sea to shining sea.

That's this verse. In an idolatrous sense is the verse that America claimed for itself in its manifest destiny that we would have sea to shining sea.

That verse applies to Jesus, that Jesus would own the nations from the

Euphrates River where the Garden of Eden is to the ends of the earth. Now let's tie all of this stuff together.

Jesus rides into the city of Jerusalem to proclaim his kingship. His kingship is not national.

It's spiritual. The only way to be a member of his kingdom is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, to know that you're a sinner, to know that your sin separates you from God and to know that Christ has paid the ultimate penalty for your sin, dying on a cross, resurrecting in victory, ascending to the right hand of God so that you and I can be in his kingdom.

And it has nothing to do with blood right. It has nothing to do with birth right. It has everything to do with the

Holy Spirit awakening us to cry out, Hosanna, save us now.

His kingdom is for the church. His church will possess the nations through the preaching of the gospel.

Jesus signals it right here. 2000 years ago. Now, as we close,

I just want to remind you of something. As we said in the beginning, when

Jesus rides into the city of Jerusalem, he's showcasing that even the greatest darkness cannot stop him. That he will have victory.

The church who has been blood bought to be his bride and citizens of his kingdom should remember that we're on Jesus's side.

So Jesus cannot be stopped. The church cannot be stopped. The gates of hell will not stand against the advancing church.

You have been made a citizen of the winning kingdom. You have been made a victor in Christ.

You have been made a citizen of heaven in Christ. The same Jesus that marched into Jerusalem is the same

Jesus we follow. And his march has continued for 2000 years across the globe.

You think about the disciples who took the gospel to Samaria and Judea. And you think about the next group with Paul and some of his friends who took the gospel to the

Roman Empire. And you think about the missionaries who've taken the gospel now to the remotest parts of the earth. And you think about the

Bible translators now who are translating the Bible into languages that have never had the scriptures. And you think about every generation that we have lived in.

The church has advanced through the power of Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. We live in a victorious kingdom.

Zechariah 10 guarantees that Jesus will have dominion over the earth. Do not get stuck in the lie that Satan wants you to believe that Fox News and CNN and everybody else is propagating that we are defeated.

The church in America might be small and might be waning, but the church of Jesus Christ will not fail.

The church of Jesus Christ will not be defeated because Christ could not be defeated. 2 ,000 years ago, they put everything that they had to try to kill our

Lord and Savior. And three days later, he exploded forth from the grave in victory. That is our King.

That is our Lord. That is the King that we live in. Amen? Amen. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you that we do not have to feel defeated.

Lord, the world and even other Christians will look at us if we have a positive view of the kingdom of God, and they will say, look at all of the evil in the world.

Look at all of the this and all of the that and the pandemic and the vaccines and abortion and murder.

Yes, those things exist, but they don't thwart Jesus. Lord, give us confidence in our faith.

Give us, give us a sense of victory in our faith. Lord, give us a sense that we are marching after the risen

Lord on his army, soldiers for him, citizens in his kingdom, and that Lord, that empowers us to take the gospel to the nations.

Lord, I pray that all of us would gain a confidence that we are in your kingdom, that you are our

King, that the gates of hell cannot stand against the advancing church.

And Lord, I pray that we would catch that vision, that we would understand that is who you are.

And Lord, I pray that just like you marched into the city, that we will march to the nations, declaring the good news of Christ.