The Coming of the Servant-King
Mark 11:1-11
Introduction: I’ve decided to begin a new series on the Gospel of Mark. It is likely the writer of this Gospel is the one that Peter calls my son Mark at the end of I Peter (5:13). Ancient tradition also suggests Mark’s primary source in writing this Gospel was Peter himself. Rather than a single complete biography of Jesus, God chose to give us four complimentary accounts. Each one emphasizes different aspects of the story. Today we’ll look at Mark 11 and the story of the Triumphal Entry. For Good Friday and Easter, we’ll look ahead in Mark 14-16. Then we’ll go back to Mark 1:1 and start a series on this, the shortest Gospel. Contrast the scene that we see here in Mark 11, and the story as it unfolds, with the vision in Revelation 19:11-16,
11 Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it
is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like a flame of
fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one
knows but himself. 13 He is
clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The
Word of God. 14 And the
armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on
white horses. 15 From his
mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will
rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the
wrath of God the Almighty. 16
On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of
lords.
Of course, Revelation is a vision seen by John and is full of symbolism. Even
so, this is a messianic picture that is strikingly different than what we see
in the Palm Sunday event: A white horse, a crown, white linen, a sharp sword,
the armies of heaven! That “triumphal entry” is still future! His coming in our
context in Mark reflects the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9, “…humble
and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” John, Matthew,
and Luke all quote Zechariah and draw attention to the fulfilling of the
prophecy. Mark simply tells the story, allowing his biblically literate readers
to catch the allusion. Both Revelation and the Gospel account are true.
Before the Kingdom is established the work He came to do needed to be
accomplished. That brings us to…
The BIG Idea:
The King has come and the King is coming. He came first as the
Servant-King, willingly laying down His life to make a way for fallen humans to
become kingdom citizens. Is Jesus your King?
We’ll let three questions
guide us through this passage, and through our study of Mark: 1) Who is Jesus? 2)
Why did He come? And 3) What does it mean to follow Him?
I. Who is Jesus? He is the Promised
King: He showed His
sovereignty as He guided the disciples to procure a donkey’s colt for His
entrance into the city, as prophesied (1-6).
Now when they drew near to Jerusalem,
to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his
disciples 2 and said to them,
"Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you
will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring
it. 3 If anyone says to you,
'Why are you doing this?' say, 'The Lord has need of it and will send it back
here immediately.'" 4
And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and
they untied it. 5 And some of
those standing there said to them, "What are you doing, untying the
colt?" 6 And they told
them what Jesus had said, and they let them go.
The villages of Bethphage
and Bethany, on opposite sides of the Mount of Olives, about a mile across the
Kidron Valley from the East Gate of Jerusalem were in an area Jesus knew well.
Mary, Martha, and Lazarus lived in Bethany, and it seems Jesus stayed with them
when He was passing through the area. John tells us the whole story of Jesus
raising Lazarus from the dead, apparently sometime just before this final entrance
into the city. Some scholars have described Mark as a “narrative of the passion
with an extended introduction.” The whole of the Gospel of Mark points ahead to
this final trip to Jerusalem, and this scene introduces the last third of the
Gospel, giving us some highlights and an eyewitness perspective of The Passion
week, from Palm Sunday to the Resurrection. This scene is one touched on by all
four gospels. Our focus is on Mark.
I can think of no account of
Jesus ever having ridden an animal before. He walked everywhere. Why now? It
was necessary for the Scriptures to be fulfilled. This would be one more detail
that would essentially proclaim publicly that Jesus is the Messiah. But I want
to focus on one other detail here. Notice how Jesus instructs his disciples,
tells them exactly what will happen, tells them what to say, and what to do.
Some suggest that Jesus may have made
prior arrangements to borrow someone’s donkey. Go to the village, you’ll see
the donkey, the people will ask why you are taking it, and tell them the
pre-arranged password, “the Lord has need of it.” Then they’ll let you take
it. Of course, it could have
happened that way, Jesus had been through the area and was no doubt known to a
lot of people. But nothing in Mark or the other gospels gives us any hint
that Jesus had made some kind of behind the scenes arrangements. Mark wants
us to see that Jesus is in control, that He is guiding the story, that He knows
things that no mere man could possibly know. Who is Jesus? This is one
more indication that He is the Sovereign King, the Lord of history, the Son of
God.
In the light of Jesus' works and words earlier in the Gospel, we should read these details
and recognize that Jesus is the Messiah. The King has come and the King is
coming. He came first as the Servant-King, to willingly lay down His life to
make a way for fallen humans to become kingdom citizens. The question for you
this morning: Is Jesus your King? So, 1) Jesus is the promised King. Secondly…
II. Why did He come? He
allowed the People to Proclaim His kingship. Did He come to set up His kingdom
on earth? The reactions of the people fulfilled Scripture and pointed to Jesus’
messianic identity, though they only saw in part (7-10). Ironically, their
actions this day would also announce His arrival to the leaders, and set in
motion the opposition that leads to the Cross. Until now, Jesus had repeatedly
told the disciples and those who He healed and set free from demons not
to talk about His messianic identity. But the time for silence was past. When
the leaders complained about what the people were implying Jesus said if they
were silenced the stones would cry out!
7 And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he
sat on it. 8 And many spread
their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut
from the fields. 9 And those
who went before and those who followed were shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is
he who comes in the name of the Lord! 10
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the
highest!"
The donkey’s colt would carry
Jesus into the city in fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9 and Genesis 49:10,11. You remember in Genesis that as
Jacob was near death and blessed His sons, he said of Judah,
10 The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from his
descendants, until the coming of the one to whom it belongs, the one whom all
nations will honor. 11 He
ties his foal to a grapevine, the colt of his donkey to a choice vine. He
washes his clothes in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes… (Genesis 49:10-11, NLT)
The coming of the promised King, a donkey’s colt, washing His clothes in
the blood of grapes, could it be a veiled reference to Palm Sunday, and to Good
Friday? He is the ideal descendant of Judah, the King who all nations will
honor! Zechariah’s prophecy is certainly literally fulfilled in the triumphal
entry…
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, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey… (Zechariah 9:9).
The shouts of the people were also drawn from the Scriptures, from Ps 118:25-26,
25 Save us, we pray, O LORD! O LORD, we pray, give us success! 26 Blessed is he who comes in the
name of the LORD! We bless you from the house of the LORD.
What they were saying was true as they quoted the psalm, but
ironically, they did not understand the full import of their words. The phrase,
“save us” is from the Hebrew, hoshiah nah, often transliterated “Hosanna.”
He came to save, but not in the sense of a military deliverance. The
salvation most needed was spiritual, and that is what Jesus came to provide. He came to be our substitute, as our
Passover. The great irony in the shouts of the people is that in the immediate
context of the Psalm the coming rejection and death of the Savior is alluded
to. Just a couple of verses before we read in Psalm 118:22, “The stone that the builders rejected has
become the cornerstone.” We’ll see throughout Mark the rejection of Jesus
by the leaders. He was rejected in His hometown. Even the gentiles in Decapolis
asked him to leave! As John said, “He
came unto his own, and his own received Him not” (John 1:11). He was the
Stone rejected by the builders. Immediately after the verses shouted by the crowd, the psalmist said in Psalm 118:27, “The LORD is God, and he has made his light to shine upon us. Bind the
festal sacrifice with cords, up to the horns of the altar!” The final
Sacrifice would be offered at this feast. Not a lamb, but the
Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world! This is why He came. Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us (I
Cor 5:7b).
The crowds did not yet
understand. His own disciples still didn’t get it. But Jesus, as the Passover-King,
guides this story into Jerusalem, through the upper-room, to Gethsemane, and right
to the Cross. God demonstrated His love
toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8). This is how God showed His love among us: He
sent His one and only Son into the world so that we might live through Him (I
John 4:9). Jesus came to undo the Fall,
to make a way for sinners to be reconciled to God—and through His resurrection
to give us Easter hope, the hope of the restoration of all things. He came that we might have life, and that
more abundantly. That is the way life should be, the true life for
which we were created!
After the resurrection Jesus
told His disciples, “These are my words
that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about
me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”
(Luke 24:44). In this passage in Mark, we see allusions to the three parts of
the Hebrew Bible: the fulfillment of passages from the Law (Gen 49:10,11), the
Prophets (Zech 9:9), and the Writings (Ps 118:25,26) as Jesus enters Jerusalem
to the cheers of the crowd. Of course,
we have the whole story, so we know more than the crowds or even the disciples
about what would soon happen.
The King has come and the King is coming. He came first as the
Servant-King, willingly laying down His life to make a way for fallen humans to
become kingdom citizens. Is He your King? 1) He is the King, 2) He allowed the
people to proclaim it. And…
III. What does it mean to follow
Him? Jesus came as the Passover-King: He came for Passover, and entered
the Temple, the building that signified the need for atonement and showed the
separation between fallen humans and Holy God (11).
11 And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had
looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany
with the twelve.
This verse seems almost
anticlimactic considering the excitement that led up to it. Jesus enters the
city with the fanfare and excited shouts of the crowd, and then goes into the
temple, looks around at everything, and since it was already late, went out
with the disciples back to Bethany. This
is a detail in Mark that I had simply skimmed over through the years. Matthew
goes right to the Temple cleansing the next day. Mark shows us that Jesus was
contemplative, deliberate. Why did Jesus go the temple? What was He thinking as
He looked around?
First of all, let’s remember
the context. It was Passover week. Jesus had been teaching the disciples during
this journey to Jerusalem that it was necessary for the Son of man to be
handed over to sinners and put to death, and that He would rise again the third
day. They couldn’t understand, they couldn’t grasp the plain meaning of His
words. Perhaps the triumphal entry itself stirred their messianic hopes. Would
Jesus at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Jesus goes straight to
the Temple, enters, and looks around. Preparations for the arrival of the
pilgrims for the feast were surely already happening. People would have been
coming either with their own sacrifices, or with some kind of currency that
they could use to buy an animal to sacrifice. The outer courts of the Temple
had become a place of commerce. The near context will show us Jesus returning
there and over-turning the tables of the money changers. The worship of Israel
had lost its focus!
Think about this: the Temple
represented the place of God’s presence in the midst of the people. When Solomon’s Temple was dedicated the Glory
of God descended on the building, until, because of Israel’s sin, Ichabod, the
glory departed. Now, God incarnate
stood there, looking at the place that also represented the separation between
sinful humans and Holy God. The sacrifices were offered there, underscoring
the sin problem, the necessity of a substitute, the need for the shedding of
blood for the remission of sins. Jesus is King, but He came as a Servant-King,
the Passover-King, the Shepherd of Israel who was also to be the Lamb of God
who would take away the sin of the world! The final sacrifice would soon be
offered, and the veil of the Temple would be torn in two, from top to bottom.
In Christ alone, our Hope is found!
What is God saying to me in this passage? The King has come and the King is
coming. He came first as the Servant-King, willingly laying down His life to
make a way for fallen humans to become kingdom citizens. Is Jesus your King?
What would God have me to do in response to this passage? Dates on the church calendar, like today,
Palm Sunday, can be useful reminders of important moments in the unfolding of
the Story of Redemption. But we need to guard against familiarity clouding our
understanding of what God is saying to us. Open the eyes of our hearts Lord! What did Jesus think as he entered the city,
went to the Temple and looked around? We know from Luke’s Gospel that He wept
over the city as He approached…
41 And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, 42 saying, "Would that you,
even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they
are hidden from your eyes. 43
For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade
around you and surround you and hem you in on every side 44 and tear you down to the
ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone
upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your
visitation…" (Luke 19:41-44).
The Prince of Peace, the One for whom then nation had waited for centuries had come, and the leaders did not recognize Him, He came unto His own, and they did not receive Him. Consequently, judgement would come on Jerusalem. In AD 70 the Romans would raze the city and the Temple. And a blindness in part would continue for Israel, until the fullness of the gentiles comes in. As Jesus, the Light of the World, looked around, did He see the blindness of the leaders? Did He anticipate God’s chastening on the nation? Did He contemplate the judgement that He would bear in His own body on the Cross? What did Jesus think as He looked around that day at the Temple? Before we are too hard on Israel, we should ask, what does He think as He looks around at our worship today?
Comments
Post a Comment