[This message is a reworking of the Palm Sunday message of 2022 that served as the start of this series in the Gospel of Mark. The subtle changes are in light of working through this context of the Gospel in recent months, SN].
The Coming of the Servant-King
Mark 11:1-11
Introduction: On
the journey to Jerusalem Jesus spoke of His coming death. This scene in Mark 11
is perhaps more in line with what the disciples expected, a reception worthy of the Davidic Messiah! Yet contrast what we
see here and the story as it unfolds, with the vision in Rev 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 full of symbolism,
even so this is a messianic picture that is strikingly different than what we
see in Mark 11: 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.”
It is interesting that all
three of the other Gospels, 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:
Jesus is the Servant-King who came to willingly lay down His life to make a way
for fallen humans to become kingdom citizens.
I. Jesus is the Promised King: Jesus guided the disciples to
procure a donkey’s colt for His entrance into the city in fulfillment of the
Scriptures (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 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. Remember that some describe Mark as a “narrative of the
passion with an extended introduction.” The whole of the Gospel of Mark has
been pointing ahead to the 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.
As far as we know, Jesus had
never ridden an animal before. He always walked. It was necessary for the
Scriptures to be fulfilled, another 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.
This more information answering the question, “Who is Jesus?” It is another witness
that He is the Sovereign King, the Lord of history.
Read these details and
recognize that Jesus is the Messiah! That’s the Big Idea: He came first as the
Servant-King, to willingly lay down His life to make a way for fallen humans to
become kingdom citizens.
II. He allowed the People to Proclaim
His kingship: The
reactions of the people spontaneously fulfilled Scripture and pointed to Jesus’
messianic identity, even 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 led to the Cross. Up until the scene with Bartimaeus,
and now here, 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 Gen 49:10,11. 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… (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 likewise 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, see Psalm
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, to be 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’ve seen 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. To borrow a motto: that is the way life should be!
After the resurrection Jesus
would say, “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 Mark refers 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. Yes, we have the whole story, so
we know more than the crowds or even the disciples about what would soon
happen. We know that *Jesus is the Servant-King who came to willingly lay down
His life to make a way for fallen humans to become kingdom citizens.
III. Jesus came as the Passover-King: He came at 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 in light of 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 did He see? 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 the
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 be 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 what the Temple
represented the unfolding story of God. It was 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. 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. It was for this that He
had come! Jesus is King, but He came as a Servant-King, the Passover-King, the
Shepherd of Israel 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, Hope is
found!
What is God saying to me in
this passage? Jesus
is the Servant-King who came to willingly lay down His life to make a way for
fallen humans to become kingdom citizens.
What would God have me to do in response to this passage? Palm Sunday in August? It is good to
look at passages like this more than once a year. 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, when He went into 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, they did not receive
Him. So, 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 fulness of the gentiles comes in. As Jesus 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 does He think as He looks around at our worship today?
I hope He sees a grateful
people, not perfect, but forgiven, clothed in His righteousness, repentant and
believing, worshipping Him together in Spirit and in Truth. I trust that He sees a people who want to follow
Him, who love Him more than they love the world, who desire to walk as He
walked, in holiness. Seeking to bring the message of His grace to the world. Is
that your heart today?
Looking at this scene in the
context of our reading of Mark, the contrast of the rich young ruler, and
Bartimaeus is fresh on our minds. Is Jesus your King? Live then as a Kingdom
citizen in this fallen world! Forgiving, extending grace, showing kindness,
choosing to love. People will notice, and God will be glorified. AMEN.
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