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I invite you to take out your Bible and turn with me to Zechariah chapter 9 and verse 9. As I have already mentioned, today marks the opening of a very serious and enjoyable time of year for Christians, the week that we call Holy Week.
We've been planning events, making arrangements, and preparing ourselves for this special season of worship within the church. We call it Holy Week because this is when we celebrate the events which began and then led up to the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
This is the most significant point in all of human history. A point which all history prior looked forward to and all history since has looked back upon. It literally split time in half. Think about when you talk about the date.
It is 2014. It is A .D. 2014. What is the word A .D.? It's Anno Domini. It is in the year of our Lord, 2014. And what do we call it prior to that? It is B .C., before Christ. It split time in half. And certainly the ministry of Christ lasted more than only one week.
But this one week of His life was so filled with significance, with every moment driving toward the culmination of His coming, which was His perpetuatory work on the cross. Holy Week begins with a very memorable scene from Scripture, which most of us are probably very familiar with.
In fact, it is one of the few stories which is found in all four of the Gospels. Jesus Christ riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. The donkey was in the ancient world a symbol of peace, as opposed to the horse.
The horse was a symbol of war. It was a symbol of battle. To come in on a horse was to come in for battle. But to be on a donkey was a symbol of peace. Jesus is called the Prince of Peace. And He is called the Prince of Peace by the prophet Isaiah.
He would be the one who would be the usher of peace. He would bring peace. Not peace from man to man, as that peace is temporary. That peace is, in the long run, often futile. But it was peace from man to God.
We who were at enmity with God, we who were at war with God because of our sins, would now have peace with Him. Romans 5 .1. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
As He enters into Jerusalem, He is surrounded by people who are holding palm branches and shouting Hosanna. As we did this morning, we sang Hosanna and had the children come in with the palms, simulating that glorious day.
Hosanna means save us. We pray. Their palm branches were symbols of victory because many of them believed Christ had come to usher in a time of victory over the Roman occupiers. They were aware that not many days before this, Jesus had risen a man from the grave, His friend Lazarus.
They knew that that event told them and that He was someone very special and miraculous. And it was only a culmination of His miracles. He had done many miracles in His three years of ministry, starting with turning water into wine at the wedding of Cana, which was His first miracle, to the time when He rose Lazarus from the grave.
There were many miracles in between. The people believed Him to have mighty powers, and He did. And they believed He could use those powers to lead them to victory. In fact, the people were now ready to declare Him King of Israel.
Much to the chagrin of the Jewish leaders because they were not yet ready to declare Him King of Israel. In fact, Luke's Gospel tells us that when the Pharisees heard Jesus coming and they saw these people standing there holding the palm branches and shouting and celebrating, that they told them to be quiet.
In fact, they told Jesus to tell them to be quiet. Luke 19 and verse 39 says, I tell you, if they were silent, the very stones themselves would cry out. Do you remember that passage? They said, prophets, silence your disciples.
They said if they were to be quiet, the very stones themselves would cry out. That's an interesting statement by the way when Jesus says that. He's reminding His hearers that the whole creation was made to worship God.
Psalm 19 says, the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims His handiwork. This was the moment for Christ. This was the moment of the coronation. This was the moment wherein He was receiving the accolades that He should have been receiving the whole time.
He was receiving the praise that He should have received from birth. He was receiving what should and appropriately was His praise. And He said if they didn't do it, if they wouldn't do it, the very ground that we walk on would shout because this is the moment that God has in His sovereignty declared will be the moment, the declaration of who I am.
And the thing is that moment in time was not just planned out that morning or a few days ahead of time. That moment in time had been planned out from the foundation of the world. God in His sovereignty had prepared this day for Christ to be the day of the celebration of His kingship.
In fact, we know this because we can go 400 years prior, 400 years B .C., and we can see written in the prophets a promise that there would come a King and He would be seated on a donkey. And that's the text we're going to look at today from Zechariah 9 .9.
I want to invite you to stand as we read the Word of God. This is a very special moment when we get to hear from God. And this is His infallible Word. We're in Zechariah 9 .9. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you. Righteous and having salvation is He. Be humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. Our Father and our God, we thank You for this opportunity that we have to study Your Word.
I pray that as I seek to give an exposition of this text, that You would keep me from error as I certainly am a fallible man capable of preaching error. I pray also that You would open the hearts of Your people to the truth, that they might hear it and understand it.
And I pray that if there are those here who do not know Christ and have never heard the Gospel, that the Gospel will be clearly articulated through this message and that You would use it to draw Your people to Yourself.
For we trust You in all that You have done and are going to do. We thank You for it in Christ's name, Amen. The prophet Zechariah lived in a time in Israel's history which is filled with significance.
The Jews had been in exile. I'm not sure how many of you are real familiar with Old Testament history. We did a study of it last year. I taught on Wednesday nights. And for those of you who were here, you remember that in 586, Nebuchadnezzar came and took Jerusalem.
And he took the people of Israel captive. And he held them in captive for many years. And after Babylonia fell to the Medes and the Persians, the king allowed them to go back and rebuild. And under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, they returned to Jerusalem to rebuild and restore their nation.
However, they saw many obstacles in their attempts to rebuild. There was at times apathy among the people. There was sometimes opposition from people who wanted to fight over the land. They had all these different issues that they had to face in the rebuilding.
Zechariah comes to the people of God as a prophet from God to provide them words of exhortation and encouragement. When I was teaching through Zechariah last year, I said it was sort of like a coach at halftime when your team's down.
You know, you imagine what a coach says at halftime when the team is down by a few points and he wants to encourage them to come back and get in the game? Well, that's sort of Zechariah's mission is to encourage the people to get out of their apathy and get back in the game.
Let's get going and get to work. Their confidence was waning, so he provides them words of encouragement to get them to move forward. Within these words of encouragement from Zechariah are found some of the most profound Messianic prophecies in all of the Old Testament.
There are eight specific Messianic prophecies in the short book, which is only 14 chapters, the book of Zechariah. He is giving people insight into the truth that all of history that they have been living out is leading up to something.
It's leading up to a major revelation with major historical significance. A king is coming. He will be a righteous king, a saving king, and he will be a blessing to his people. And notice the first word of Zechariah 9 -9 is rejoice.
It says that they are to have excitement and joy over this king. But why? Israel had many kings. And Israel had had many bad kings. After Saul, there was David, the man after God's own heart. David was a blessed man.
Though he sinned, we know his heart was to follow after his God. He was a righteous king, a blessed king. And then you have after David there is Solomon who was a wise man, had his godliness there, but at the same time was a major political figure and did many things politically that sort of changed the environment of Israel.
And after Solomon died, there was the divide of the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom because nobody knew who was supposed to sit on the throne. And there were warring factions between the tribes.
And throughout the ages, there was bad king after bad king after bad king. Israel only had bad kings after Solomon. There were no good kings. And Judah had only a couple of good kings and mainly bad kings.
So they are told to rejoice. Rejoice over a king. Rejoice for a king is coming. But why should they rejoice? Because this king is going to be different. This king is going to be above all of the kings who had preceded him.
He is going to be the king that God has appointed to do the job that no king prior to him could do. Zechariah tells us three things about this king that are different than any of the kings that had come before him.
Three things about this king that we need to understand are the reasons why we should rejoice this morning. Because the king that he's talking about is Jesus. He is our king. And when it says rejoice, it's not just talking to Israel who have rejected their king.
It's talking to the church. Jesus Christ is the head of the church. He is the king of the church. And when we're commanded to rejoice, we rejoice over our king. Because he's our king. What three things does Zechariah tell us about our king that are reasons for our rejoice?
The first is the righteousness of our king. He says, behold, your king is coming to you righteous. And we could stop there. Because that in and of itself is a very powerful idea. Remember, as I just said, the kings that preceded him, most of them were unrighteous.
The Hebrew word for righteous here means just. It means lawful. It's the opposite of the word wicked. And when we consider the word righteous, we must understand that biblically speaking, there are different contexts for the word righteous.
There are individuals in Scripture who are called righteous. Noah is called a righteous man. Genesis 6 and verse 9. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.
Noah walked with God. The context of that righteousness is obviously in comparison to the wickedness of his contemporaries. Noah was righteous in comparison to the men of his day. Because at the same time, we know that the Bible clearly says there is none righteous, no, not one.
Is the Bible a contradiction? Is the Bible contradicting itself? It said Noah was righteous, and yet, it says there is none righteous, no, not one. It's not a contradiction, beloved, because the context is different.
The righteousness which Paul speaks of in Romans 3 when he said there is none righteous, no, not one, he is talking about perfect righteousness. And beloved, perfect righteousness belongs only to God.
Jesus said when the rich young ruler came to Him, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus said, why do you call me good? Now, I want to make mention Jesus is not denying His own goodness.
He's not denying His righteousness. But He is saying to this man, you don't know Me, but you have an assumption. Your assumption is that someone could be good, because you called Me good. Your assumption is that men can be righteous, but I tell you, none is righteous save God alone.
Important truth there. When Zechariah said that this king is righteous, he's talking about this second type of righteousness. He's not talking about just comparatively righteous in comparison to the other kings.
Well, that's true. Jesus is much more righteous than the other kings. But Jesus' righteousness, because He is divine, because He is the second person of the Trinity, because He is God the Son, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, because He is divine, He is perfectly righteous.
The Word of God is clear. It says, for our sake, He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. It says He knew no sin. 1 Peter 2 .22, He committed no sin, neither was there deceit found in His mouth. Beloved, this quality of righteousness, this quality of perfection is found only in one human being in the history of man, and that's Jesus Christ.
Christ is the God-man. Christ is perfection incarnate. He is the only righteous King who has ever lived. Thus, when the prophet says, behold, your King is coming to you righteous, he's speaking of a special type of righteousness, the righteousness which belongs to God alone, and Christ shares with Him as the second person of the Trinity.
The true blessing for the believer is that our King, Jesus, gives us that righteousness as a gift. This is something I think many people don't understand about the Gospel. Many people understand the Gospel one way.
Jesus takes my sins. But beloved, even if He took all my sins, which He does, but even if He took all my sins, I would still not be righteous. I would just be neutral. If He took all my sins from me, I would go from having a ledger which was totally full of sin to having a ledger which was totally blank.
The blessing of the Gospel is that Christ's righteousness is given to us as a gift. 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 30, and because of Him you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
He became to us righteousness. Philippians 3 and verse 9, the Apostle Paul says he longs to be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.
Beloved, your righteousness does not come from you. It comes from God. This is what is so shameful about those who would try to confess their own righteousness. Why should you go to heaven? Because I'm a good person.
First of all, no you're not. And second of all, no amount of goodness that you have will meet God's standard. That's offensive to the natural man. I'm going to preach about this Friday night. 1 Corinthians 1 .18 says the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.
Why is it foolish? Because it tells the natural man about his natural condition. And the natural man doesn't believe that. The natural man believes himself to be righteous. The natural man believes himself to be good and wholesome.
The natural man does not see himself as a sinner worthy of God's judgment. Romans 3 and verse 21 says, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe it's for us.
The righteousness is for us. For there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And by the way, don't ever take that as a trite statement. That is a horrible statement.
The fact that we have fallen short of the glory of God is a shame upon us. Verse 24, though, is the blessed part, because it says, and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.
That word propitiation means Christ suffered in our place. He received as a propitiatory sacrifice, a substitutionary atonement. This was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance, He had passed over former sins.
It was to show His righteousness at the present time so that He might be the just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. You see, by Christ going to the cross and receiving in Himself our punishment and giving to us His righteousness, God gets to be just and the justifier at the same time.
He's just because He's punishing sin, but He's the justifier because He's punishing our sin through a substitute. And Christ was the willing sacrifice. He was the willing substitute. He says, no man takes My life, but I lay down My life for the sheep.
Very important. As the hymn writer penned, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. When He shall come with trumpet sound, oh, may I then in Him be found dressed in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.
Beloved, this is not some new doctrine. This doctrine has been understood by godly men throughout the ages as being the Gospel itself. That our righteousness does not come from within us. Our righteousness does not come from what we do.
Our righteousness comes from our King who has righteousness in and of Himself and He gives that righteousness to us. So when Zachariah says, rejoice! Your King is coming! Righteous is He! Beloved, that's something worth rejoicing about.
Number two, the salvation of our King. He says, behold, your King is coming to you, righteous, and having salvation is He. It's interesting that the righteousness and the salvation of our King are linked in this passage because the two things are linked in reality.
Christ saves us by taking the penalty of our sins. Christ saves us also by crediting to us His righteousness. His perfect righteousness is what causes us who are unable to go to God to be able to stand before the throne.
One of the most common phrases used among Christians is the term saved. Are you saved? When did you get saved? Is your friend saved? Oh, he died. Was he saved? That's pretty common, right? It's something we say a lot.
There was a film which came out a few years ago. It was a pop culture mocking of Christianity. It was called Saved. That was just the name of it. What does it mean to be saved? It sounds like an inane question.
I mean, if it's part of the vernacular, then we ought to know what it means. If it's part of the language we use, shouldn't we know what the word saved means? Well, I find sadly enough when I talk to folks, not really.
It's sad talking to people. And what happens is a phrase becomes so common among people that it becomes so ingrained in the vernacular that it's meaningless. When somebody asks the question, are you saved?
What is the natural response? Saved from what? What in the world are you talking about? Saved from what? I love asking that when somebody asks me, am I saved? Because I don't wear a pin that says pastor, and I do have people that evangelize me sometimes and they come up, are you saved?
Saved from what? Dr. R .C. Sproul wrote a book by that title, Saved from What? And he makes a good point. We talk about being saved. What are we being saved from? We're being saved from hell, which means we're being saved from judgment, which means we're being saved from the judge, which means we're being saved from God.
God is the one who punished the sin. I never thought of it like that. I see a few of you get a little uncomfortable, but think about it. The Bible says we are children of wrath like the rest of the world prior to coming to Christ, that we are children of wrath.
What does that mean? That we are objects of whose wrath? Satan's? Are we being saved from Satan? People make such a big deal about Satan. Satan's going to the same hell as everyone else. Satan is not a god.
Satan is a fallen angel. He is powerful. Yes, we fight against him. Our three enemies are the world, the flesh, and the devil. We know that. But he is not God. He is not the one who condemns your soul to hell.
He is not the one who is in control over hell. No matter what Dante's Inferno said, that there are different realms of hell and the demons whip and crack their whips as if they have some authority over hell.
The demons will suffer the same. Not as authorities in hell, but as ones who are being punished there the same. Beloved, we are spiritually dead and rebellious against the very Creator of this world, and we are deserving of punishment.
But instead of leaving us in this dead condition, instead of leaving us to rot in our dead earthly corpses and be cast into the lake of fire, Christ saves us. He saves us from the punishment we deserve.
He took our punishment and gave us His righteousness. And we need to be saved. That's true. I don't mind using the vernacular. I just want us to know what it means. I want my friends to be saved. I want my loved ones to be saved.
I know people in my life and in my family who it's like they have a spade in their hand and they're just willing to dig their own hole to hell. And I yearn for them to be saved. The problem is, the modern gospel tells people how to be saved emotionally, tells people how to be saved financially, tells people how to be saved politically, and we no longer tell people how to be saved spiritually.
The modern gospel has become a self-help tool, and that's not what it was intended to be. Our biggest need is not to be saved physically. Our biggest need is not to be saved financially. Our biggest need is not to be saved politically.
Our biggest need is to be saved from the penalty of our sins, and that salvation comes only in Christ. So we rejoice over that salvation. We rejoice in our King, because not only is He righteous, but He is also a saving King.
Finally and thirdly, we rejoice over the humility of our King. Notice it says, Behold, your King is coming to you, righteous and having salvation as He, humble and mounted on a donkey. We've already noted that just the very riding on a donkey was a show of humility.
It was a sign of peace. But what we must not forget is that the humility of Christ goes far deeper than simply riding on the back of a donkey or simply being born in a manger. People make a big deal about the fact that He was born in a manger and how humbling was that.
He grew up the son of a carpenter. How humbling is that? He didn't have a home. How humbling is that? He rode a donkey. How humbling is that? Beloved, you know what the greatest act of humiliation on the fact of Christ was?
That He became a man. That the One who created the world entered into His own creation so as to be its Savior. That's the greatest act of humility in history. Philippians 2, verse 5. This is called the Carmen Christi, the Song of Christ.
It's one of the most beautiful testimonies as to who Christ is. Philippians 2, verses 5 -11. Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.
And that word in the Greek means something to be held on to. Yes, He was in the form of God. He had the right to hold on to that authority. But He emptied Himself, verse 7, by taking the form of a servant.
Being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
You see, Christ's humility was not just riding that donkey. Christ's humility was not just being born in that manger. Christ's humility was being born at all. That He who created the world would wrap Himself in flesh and visit His people.
That is the greatest act of humility in the history of the world. The Incarnation. Our King stepped down from the heavenly throne. That's worth rejoicing. That's worth celebrating. The prophet says, rejoice!
Shout! Your King is coming to you! He is a righteous King! He is a saving King! He is a humble King! So how do you receive Him? How do you receive this King? The people of Israel received Him with palm branches and celebrations of Hosanna.
And yet, within five days, they called out, crucify Him. It's very similar how people come to church on Sunday and they get so excited and they're ready to worship and they're praising and they're singing and they're hallelujahing and they're amening.
And by Friday, their worldliness has enveloped them. The problem with the world today is that many people believe they can have Jesus as a Savior, but not as a King. But to receive Jesus means to receive Him as Lord and King as well as a Savior.
We give up our autonomy when we come to Christ. We didn't ever have any to begin with because we were slaves to sin, the Bible says. But whatever autonomy we might have imagined, we've shed when we come to Christ and we submit ourselves to this King.
Beloved, I want to share a final word of exhortation with you. I want you to turn with me to Revelation 7. And I want to show you something. When I read this, it so excited my heart and I said I have to finalize the sermon today with this passage.
Because we know Palm Sunday was celebrated with Jesus 2 ,000 years ago. And every year we celebrate this Palm Sunday in remembrance of that one event. But beloved, there is coming another Palm Sunday.
Revelation 7 and verse 9. And after this, I looked and behold a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the Lamb clothed in white robes.
By the way, that's Christ's righteousness that they're clothed in. That's what that white robes is talking about. They are clothed in His righteousness. That's right there in the text. With palm branches in their hands and crying with a loud voice, salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.
Beloved, my prayer. My prayer is that everyone under the sound of my voice will be among those who are described here. That every one of us would submit to our King. I'm calling you today to submission to the King of the universe.
And it is a joyful submission because He is the King of righteousness. The King of salvation who came down off His throne and went to a cross because He loved us. And I pray that you will receive Him with rejoicing accompanied by faith and repentance.
Let's pray. Father, I thank You for this opportunity to preach Your Word. I pray, Lord, that Your Word has been handled rightly this morning. And I pray that it has been used to minister to Your people.
I pray that this will start a time of rejoicing that will flood our hearts through the entire week as we think of who Christ is and what He has done. And Lord, if there are those here who do not know Christ, I pray that You would use this to remind them that there is no salvation outside of the cross.
That there is no righteousness outside of Christ. And we desperately need Him as both Lord and Savior. It's in His name we pray and for His sake. Amen.