Peter And The Palms Series

Peter & the Palms

Mark 11:1-11

April 9, 2017 Palm Sunday, LFC

We have been looking at Peter and Jesus the past several weeks. We have seen them get acquainted and Jesus calls Peter to follow him. The fisherman is being groomed into being a fisher of men. We have watched Peter get out of the boat during the storm and walk to Jesus. We witnessed his faith and his doubt and we all have similar experiences.

Last week Peter got a little too big for his britches. He momentarily forgot that he was the disciple and that Jesus was the teacher. When Jesus stated that he would suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law and that he would be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter jumped in to tell Jesus that this was not the way things were going to go down.

This was deviating from how Peter saw that things were supposed to happen. How could Jesus establish a kingdom is he was dead? Peter didn’t seem to hear the last part where Jesus said he would be raised back to life on the third day.

Jesus rebuked Peter; in fact it was a pretty strong rebuke but saying, “get behind me Satan”. Jesus had to put Peter back into his proper place. We talked about how hard it is to see God’s plan. We often want to tell God what to do in our lives.

Today we are going to place Peter with Jesus as Jesus prepares and then enters into Jerusalem. Let’s take a look at Jesus entry into Jerusalem that marks the beginning of Holy Week. This account is found in all four gospels but today we are going to look at the account in the gospel of Mark.

Let’s read Mark 11:1-11.

I will admit right off the top today that this one might be a little bit of a stretch with Peter and Jesus. Nowhere in today’s passage is Peter mentioned by name. I don’t know if Peter was one of the disciples that Jesus told to go get the colt or not but for the sake of it fitting into our series we will just say that it could have been.

Today is more to prepare us for all that is going to go down in this week. There is no way that Peter and the disciples could have prepared themselves for all that was going to happen. They had to be approaching Jerusalem with a certain amount of anxiety.

Things were beginning to come to a head for Peter and the rest of the disciples. They had seen Jesus do all kinds of amazing things. Some of them like Peter had witnessed the beginning with Jesus getting baptized. All of them had been called by Jesus follow him. They had seen Jesus bring sight to the blind. They had witnessed Jesus tell the lame to get up and to walk. Jesus had just recently raised his friend Lazarus from the dead. He had even told people that their sins were forgiven!

Jesus had turned water into wine. He had fed enormous crowds with just a few fish and loaves of bread. He had calmed the winds, the rains and the waves. He had cast out evil spirits and demons. Jesus had gone head to head with the chief priests and the Pharisees. He had displayed his incredible knowledge of the scriptures and he taught like one that they had never witnessed before.

Peter had called him the Christ, the Son of God. They had surely discussed that same thing amongst themselves. Jesus had an incredible following and he seemed destined to be the Messiah, the liberator, the chosen one from God.

They also had to be troubled because Jesus had talked about being betrayed, arrested, beaten, condemned and put to death.

How did it all fit together? Was the biggest threat to Jesus Rome or was it actually the very people he was coming to liberate?

With all of that on their minds they are approaching Jerusalem. What happens in the next couple of hours and days are lived and observed by the disciples.

Jesus tells two of his disciples to go and get colt, one that has never been ridden. In Matthew it is a donkey and her colt. Regardless he tells his disciples to go ahead and to get this colt, untie it and bring it to Jesus.

You will notice that the disciples didn’t question him. I guess they might have but it isn’t recorded that they did and so I tend to think that they just simply obeyed and did what Jesus said. They had been with him long enough now they were learning that when Jesus asks you to do something no matter how outrageous it may seem you just go ahead and do it.