Ackowledge Your King Series

A king isn’t like other people. We can have a friendly chat with our window cleaner or our doctor or our estate agent. But when we know someone is the king or queen or some other member of the royal family then we have to show a whole lot more respect. You can’t simply ignore a king.

When Jesus got on the donkey, he declared that he was king. He also declared what kind of king he was. He wasn’t the lead-you-into-battle kind of king. At least, not at that moment. He was a king who sought peace.

Jesus’ declaration that he was king demanded a response. The people could acknowledge him as king. But to ignore him would be to reject him. You can’t ignore a king.

One Bible scholar wrote:

'In retrospect, two things are clear. One, Jesus intended to enter Jerusalem as its king and provoke its people either to affirm or deny allegiance to him and his message. Two, he was rejected.'

[B. Kinman, Jesus’ Royal Entry into Jerusalem, Bulletin for Biblical Research 15.2 (2005) p.260.]

What can we learn from this? I’d like to suggest two lessons.

The first lesson is that Jesus is king. You may think: that’s obvious. We know that. But I suspect that a lot of us think of Jesus in other ways than king. We think of Jesus as saviour or lord or perhaps friend. But not, first and foremost, as king.

But BEFORE Jesus went to the cross, he declared himself KING.

We might think that the Christian faith is all about salvation. ‘The wages of sin is death’, Paul tells us in Romans 6:23. The essence of the Christian faith is dealing with the problem of sin. That’s what we think. But the essence of sin is humankind’s refusal to recognize God as God. Paul tells us that in Romans chapter 1. He writes that God’s wrath is being revealed against people who suppress the truth: ‘For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.’ God requires that we acknowledge him as God. Jesus requires that we acknowledge him as king. Humankind needs salvation because it hasn’t done that. The message of salvation must be set in the context of how we relate to God and Jesus.

If we want to be accepted into the kingdom of God, we have to recognize Jesus as king. We can’t pay him lip service. Shouting hosanna doesn’t do it. The people of Jerusalem did that fine. We have to show Jesus the respect, and give him the obedience, that befits a king.

The second lesson I suggest we can learn from this passage is that we don’t get to choose what kind of king Jesus is. The people of Jerusalem wanted Jesus to be a specific kind of king. They wanted someone who would liberate them from the Romans.

Some people today are like the people in Jesus’ day. They want Jesus to be a particular kind of king. They want Jesus to be a king who will liberate them from oppressive political regimes. That has a name: ‘liberation theology.’ Other people want Jesus to be a king who will free them from poverty and make them rich and prosperous. That has a name too: ‘prosperity theology.’ Many people in churches in the west want a king who is gentle. That’s fine: Jesus is gentle. But they don’t want a king who can be firm, who deals with sin. That isn’t so fine. Jesus who will one day destroy the wicked. I don’t know what name to give that.