Note: This sermon was introduced with scene 49 from the play "Traveling Light."
As Americans, most of us don’t like kings very much. After all, that’s why we fought a revolutionary war in 1776, to be free of the tyranny of a king. Even though the king might be a benevolent king, he’s still a king nonetheless. And a king’s power is usually absolute. A person becomes usually becomes a king by claiming that he has a special right to that power. Either by coming from the right royal family or even by claiming a divine right, a person who aspires to kingship has to establish his right to the throne. And we as Americans don’t like that idea very much.
So when we as American Christians read in the Bible about Jesus Christ being our king, many of us don’t know how quite to respond to that idea. Having a king simply isn’t part of our everyday experience. We’re not even sure we want a king, as important as Jesus is to us.
About a year ago I read a biography of the ancient Greek King Alexander the Great (Peter Green, Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.). Alexander lived about 350 years before Jesus walked the earth, and Alexander was the king of Macedon in Greece. In many ways, Alexander was a typical king, and his life epitomizes many of the reasons we as Americans don’t like kings very much. Alexander became the king of Macedon in Greece for the one simple reason that his father before him had been king. From the cradle, Alexander’s mom Olympias and his father Philip told him that he was destined to rule over Greece. He was spoiled in every way conceivable, growing up in a royal palace with privilege and prosperity. So when his father Philip was murdered by one of his bodyguards, Alexander quickly ascended the throne. To bolster his claim to the throne, Alexander claimed that he was a direct descendant of the Greek god Hercules. So Alexander claimed a right to absolute power based on coming from the right family and from his claim to be a descendant from a Greek god. Eventually Alexander had he and his mother Olympias declared as gods themselves, and Alexander built temples so people could worship he and his mom. Alexander is called "the great" because he was probably the greatest military strategist from the ancient history. His conquest of Greece, Asia, Persia and India was a remarkable campaign. However by today’s standards, Alexander and his generals would’ve been be convicted for war crimes. You see, as Alexander marched in conquest, he butchered people, raped people, kidnapped people, stole people’s property, and destroyed entire cities. Anyone who ever insulted Alexander ended up regretting it as Alexander would carry grudges for years. Basically, Alexander was a violent and brutal person who lived in a time when nations were ruled by violent, brutal people. His tyranny and violence are just another example of why we as Americans prefer democracy to monarchy. And Alexander wasn’t the exception, but he was the rule of how ancient kings acted.
So for us to call Jesus Christ our King can be a little difficult for us, even as Christians. What we need to realize that Jesus is a different kind of king than any king we’ve ever read about or encountered. He’s not like Alexander, or Caesar Augustus, or even the kings of ancient Israel. Jesus in a class all by himself.
We’ve been in a series through the New Testament book of Mark called Following Jesus in the Real World. Today we’re going to look at the kingship of Jesus Christ. To do that we’re going to look at Jesus Christ’s triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem. We’re going to see four characteristics of Jesus that make him an entirely different kind of king than any royalty the human race has ever encountered before. And because of these characteristics, we’re going to see that to be a Christian is to pledge our loyalty to the kingship of Jesus in our lives.
1. The Triumphal Entry (Mark 11:1-11)
Let’s first look at the text, starting in vv. 1-2. Jesus has been journeying from Northern Israel in the region of Galilee South toward the capital city of Jerusalem. Three times on this journey Jesus has predicted that betrayal and suffering await him in Jerusalem. But it’s in Jerusalem that Jesus will meet his destiny; Jerusalem is the place where everything will change for the human race. Jesus is journeying toward Jerusalem the same time the Jewish people were preparing to celebrate the annual Passover holiday. The Passover commemorated Israel’s deliverance from their slavery in Egypt and their birth as a nation. The Passover is in some ways similar to our Independence Day celebration on the fourth of July. It was also a time they celebrated how God spared them from the plagues that he sent upon the Egyptians.
As Jesus journeys from Galilee toward Jerusalem, he’s gradually picked up a procession of people also going to celebrate the Passover. Last week Pastor Bruce shared about what Jesus did as he traveled through the city of Jericho. While passing through Jericho he healed a blind man named Bartimaeus. After being healed, Bartimaeus joined Jesus’ procession toward Jerusalem.
Here we see Jesus arrive at Bethany. Now Bethany is actually south of Jerusalem, but that’s where the road went, so that’s where Jesus went. From Bethany Jesus will turn North to Jerusalem.
It’s from just outside Bethany that Jesus sends two of his disciples ahead to get a colt. Now at this point in the story, Jesus begins doing things that are highly symbolic in nature. Virtually every action Jesus engages in as he’s entering Jerusalem carries deep symbolic significance to the Jewish mind. We don’t catch some of the symbolism as quickly as first century readers, so for us I’ll need to point out some of the symbolism as we go.
Remember that up to this point Jesus has kept his identity as the Jewish Messiah hidden and secret as best as he could, but now he seems to go out of his way to come out into the open. All of Jesus’ symbolic actions here point to his kingship, as we’ll see in a minute.
Now part of the symbolic significance of the colt comes from an ancient Hebrew prophecy about the coming Messiah. Almost 2,000 years before Jesus lived-almost 4,000 years ago for us-the Jewish leader Jacob had given this prophecy.
"The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his. He will tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch" (Genesis 49:10-11 NIV).
The Jewish people understood this to be a prediction about the coming Messiah, the Messiah who would be rule as the rightful king over the nation of Israel. And by taking a colt that’s tethered, Jesus is symbolically applying this ancient prediction to himself.
Now look at the circumstances at how he gets this colt in vv. 3-6. Now it’s possible that Jesus had made preparations ahead of time in this village to have a colt waiting. But it’s also possible that what we have here is an example of what’s called "the royal right to transport" in the ancient world. You see, a king or other high ranking ruler had an inherent right to seize a horse or other animal for official transportation if he needed it. This right is similar to what we see in the movies when a police officer flashes his badge to commandeer someone’s car to chase a bad guy. In the ancient world, as long as the animal was eventually returned to the rightful owner, a member of royalty had the legal right to seize an animal for transportation. That’s likely what’s happening here, which is why Jesus tells his followers to say, "The Lord needs it." Obviously the Lord here is Jesus, and although the word "Lord" can simply be a polite way of saying "sir," it can also mean "king" or "ruler." As the royal Lord, the rightful king of Israel, Jesus exercises his royal right to transport by borrowing this colt. Now whether this is a miracle Jesus performs or he’s made arrangements I’m not sure. But the point seems to be Jesus as the rightful king exercising his royal right of transport.
Look at what happens next in vv. 7-10. Because this colt wasn’t accustomed to human transport, they use their jackets and clothing as a saddle. Then Jesus sits on the colt to ride the final leg of his journey into Jerusalem. The people spread out their clothing on the road, the ancient equivalent of spreading out a red carpet for the arrival of an important person into the city.
Now Jesus riding into the city of Jerusalem on a colt also had incredible symbolic significance to the people of Israel. One of the ancient prophecies about the coming of the Messiah looked forward to just this. About 500 years before the birth of Jesus, the Hebrew prophet Zechariah had predicted this very thing.
"Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey…He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth" (Zechariah 9:9-10 NIV).
Jesus is purposefully acting out this prediction, and by doing so he’s claiming that he’s the true king, he’s the one who’s righteous and who brings deliverance to Israel. He’s the one who will bring God’s peace to all nations and rule as king not just in Israel, but over the ends of the earth. Jesus is symbolically acting out this prediction.
But what a lot of people don’t realize is that this prediction of Zechariah actually recalls an earlier event from 200 years prior to the prophet Zechariah. You see Zechariah is actually predicting that what happened at King Solomon’s coronation as king back in 790 BC would one day happen again when the Messiah comes to rule as king. The book of 1 Kings describes Solomon’s coronation this way:
Zadok the priest, [and] Nathan the prophet…put Solomon on King David’s mule and escorted him to Gihon. Zadok the priest took the horn of oil…and anointed Solomon. Then they sounded the trumpet and all the people shouted, "Long live King Solomon." And all the people went up after him, playing flutes and rejoicing greatly (1 Kings 1:38-40 NIV).
Can you see the similarities between Solomon’s coronation in 790 BC, Zechariah’s prophecy two hundred years later in 520 BC, and Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem in about 33 AD? You might remember who Solomon was: He was the Hebrew King David’s rightful heir to the throne. So Zechariah was looking forward to another rightful heir from David’s dynasty to one day rule in Israel, and Jesus is symbolically applying that claim to himself.
Now as Jesus rides into Jerusalem, the people shout out Hosanna. Their shout of phrase actually goes back to another text from the Old Testament, Psalm 118. Psalm 118 is what’s called a "hallel" psalm, which is one of the psalms that Jewish pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem would sing as they walked into the city for a special festival like the Passover holiday. There are about half a dozen of these hallel psalms that they’d sing. The word "Hosanna" means "Save us" and it was often used as a word of praise, much like we might use the words "Hallelujah" or "Amen." The whole section from Psalm 118 goes like this:
O LORD save us [Hebrew "Hosanna"], O LORD grant us success, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD, From the house of the LORD we bless you, The LORD is God, and he has made his light shine upon us, With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession (Psalm 118:25-27 NIV).
Now the irony is that these pilgrims going to Jerusalem would’ve been singing this song even had Jesus not been present. It was simply one of the psalms they sang as they walked. But by singing this song as Jesus rides in on the colt, these words have special significance.
Notice also that the song sung by the pilgrims here is slightly different than what we read in the Psalm. The pilgrims ask God to bless them with the coming kingdom of King David. Now those words would’ve been viewed as an act of treason by the Roman government. The Roman government had their own king over Israel, king Herod, and King Herod wasn’t from the dynasty of King David. So for these pilgrims to sing about the dynasty of king David would’ve been viewed as a rejection of the dynasty of Herod. That alone was enough to get you crucified by the Romans. It’s no wonder that the Jewish festivals like the Passover festival were viewed as times of political turmoil by the Romans. It would be like us celebrating the Fourth of July if we were under the dominion of another government.
Now the symbolism keeps building and building in this procession, as Jesus goes out of his way to do things that lift him up as the rightful king of Israel. In many ways, Jesus is establishing the claim that the Romans will later crucify him for, namely being the "king of the Jews." That’s certainly what he’s claiming in the way he comes into Jerusalem and the response of the people.
But in v. 11 the entire procession ends in a kind of anti-climax. Instead of his royal procession ending in Christ’s coronation as king, he stops and looks around. No delegation to meet him, no recognition of his status, no cheers, "Long live the king." Instead, it’s late, so Jesus just observes, and then goes back to Bethany.
What builds up like a shout ends in a whisper.
2. Jesus is Our King
Now all of this points to Jesus as our King, but as a different kind of king. First, we learn that Jesus is the promised king.
Jesus is linking his claim to kingship here with the ancient hopes of the people of Israel. He’s not suddenly appearing as if he’s something new, but he’s laying claim to a status that goes back for centuries. This is important for us, because if Jesus is going to be our king as people, it’s important that he meet the qualifications of kingship.
The Bible’s book of Genesis tells us that God’s true King would come from the nation of Israel, and of course Jesus was born from the Jewish people. Genesis also claims that God’s true king would come from the Jewish tribe of Judah, and of course Jesus was born from this tribe. In 2 Samuel chapter 7 in the Bible, God said that his true king would be a descendant of ancient King David, and of course Jesus is a descendant of David. Jesus meets all the criteria.
Now this might seem to merely be an empty exercise in ancient genealogy, but it’s an important issue. It’s important because if Jesus is the promised God, it means God keeps his promises to us. The fact that Jesus came to this world as God promised to send him for centuries before, is evidence that God is a promise keeping God. So we can have full confidence that God is trustworthy and reliable to keep his promises to us. When we’re feeling discouraged and hopeless, like things will never change in our lives, we’re reminded of God’s promise that he’s not finished with us yet. When we face a temptation and we can’t see a way out, we’re reminded of God’s promise that he always provides a way of escape. When we fall into sin and feel like God could never take us back, we’re reminded of God’s promise that through Christ he forgives all of our sins. God is a promise keeping God, and when you’re tempted to doubt that, look again at Jesus as the promised king.
Jesus is also the sovereign king.
We don’t use the word "sovereign" very much in our culture today. The word "sovereign" means "in control" or "under the dominion of." A nation is said to be sovereign within its own borders. A sovereign nation is an independent nation, a nation that’s not being dominated by another group.
The whole way Jesus gets the colt is meant to show us Jesus as the sovereign king. Regardless of whether the colt is there as part of some preplanning or whether it’s a miracle, it’s an act of sovereignty. Jesus is the Lord, who can take the colt as an exercise of his own royal dominion.
If Jesus is the sovereign king and we as Christians are subjects of his kingship, then that means all that we have is under Jesus Christ’s sovereignty. If you’re a Christian, there’s nothing in your life that’s hands off from Jesus. Your education is under his sovereignty, your house, your car, your income, your bank account, your skills, your experiences, your goals, your family. And as the King, Jesus can come to you and say, "I want to use that for my kingdom."
When we were going through our Investing In Life giving campaign back in 1996, we encouraged members of our church to sell things they weren’t using for our building fund. As I prayed about that challenge in my own life, I sensed Jesus leading me to sell my guitars. Now I had two guitars back then, a six string Washburn acoustic guitar and a 12 string Takamine. I didn’t play them very much, but they were very important to me, and so I struggled with what Jesus was asking me to do. He was asking me to sell them, and to give the money to our church’s building fund as part of my commitment to build this building we’re in right now. I didn’t want to give up those guitars, but it was his prerogative as the sovereign king to ask me for them. And eventually I gave them to him.
Jesus is the sovereign king, and he’s sovereign over the lives of his subjects.
We also learn from this section that Jesus is the humble king.
By riding in on a colt instead of a white warhorse, Jesus is making an important statement to us about the character of his kingship. Jesus’ isn’t the conquering general like Alexander the great who rides in on a warhorse and burns the village. He’s not a king who rises to the throne by exterminating the competition. He’s not a king who rules by violence and coercion.
Jesus is the king who came down from his throne to suffer and die for his subjects. One of the songs we sing has a line in it that goes, "Amazing love, how can it be, that you my king would die for me." We sang earlier about Jesus being our humble king, the God of the broken, the friend of the weak.
Usually when a person becomes a king, it’s so that person can leave their humble beginnings behind. Alexander the Great surrounded himself with wealth and luxury after he sacked Persia and drove out the Persian king Darius. He clothed himself in the best of imported Persian silk, he moved into the king’s royal palace, with all the greatest amenities the ancient world could offer. To be a king is to be arrogant, to be proud and egotistical. It’s hardly possible to imagine a person becoming a king without being arrogant and haughty.
Yet Jesus truly is the humble king. And because he’s the humble king, he calls us as his subjects to be humble people as well. A humble person is a person who sees themselves accurately, not too high and not too low. To be humble is to be willing to associate with people who don’t have status and the rest of society views as unimportant. Humility is refusing to push ourselves to the front, kicking and clawing our way ahead in life. Humility is admitting where we’re wrong and asking for forgiveness. Humility is being brutally honest about our weaknesses, avoiding the temptation to minimize them or deny that they exist.
Christ is the humble king, and his subjects choose the path of humility.
Finally, we learn here that Jesus is the unexpected king.
The anti-climax of this triumphal entry into Jerusalem tells us that the people of the city weren’t expecting their king to arrive. For the people in Jerusalem, it was business as usual. Just another Passover celebration, another annual festival with Jewish pilgrims from throughout the ancient world making their trek to the temple. Just another crowd singing praises and offering sacrifices in the temple. They weren’t expecting the fulfillment of all God’s promises to actually arrive. They sang about those promises each year, they yearned for the prophecies to come true, they spoke excitedly with each other about them. But they didn’t really expect them to come to pass, at least not the way Jesus did it. Yet when the fulfillment of all their hopes and dreams arrived, there was no one there to meet him.
If the people who were looking forward to the king’s arrival didn’t expect it in the way it came, we should also be cautious about how God meets our expectations. Sometimes God fulfills his promises in our lives in the most unexpected ways we can imagine. Imagine a Christian who feels God leading him to start a new business. He’s assured of God’s blessing on the business, so he steps out in faith and the business ends up bombing. But in the midst of the trial, God shapes and molds the person’s character in ways that cause him to mature. Did God bless the man? Absolutely, just not in the way the man thought God would bless him.
The Christian author C. S. Lewis once described God as the great iconoclast. What Lewis meant is that God has a way of breaking out of the box we put him in. An iconoclast is a person who destroys false images of God, and all of us tend to create scaled down images of God that make him a little bit more manageable. We tend to paint God into a corner, trying to get a handle on God so we can manage him. But God breaks out of those boxes, continually reminding us that he’s God and we’re not. God is reliable, but he’s also unexpected in how he works.
Conclusion
For us as Christians, Jesus Christ is our King. He’s the promised king, the sovereign king, the humble king, and the unexpected king. And although we as Americans might have our reservations about kings, there’s no way to follow Jesus Christ without being a subject of his kingship. A person might admire Jesus Christ’s virtue or be inspired by his teachings or be captivated by his sacrifice, but that person’s not a Christian until they subject themselves to Christ’s kingship.
In some ways Jesus of Nazareth and Alexander the Great are an interesting contrast. Both Jesus and Alexander died in the early 30s.But Alexander achieved his greatness with a bloody sword and an arrogant ambition. Jesus achieved his greatness with sacrifice and suffering. Alexander was born into a wealthy family who taught him from the cradle that he was destined for kingship. Jesus was born into a peasant family, and grew up in the poverty of rural Galilee. Yet when all is said and done, Alexander’s kingdom crumbled when he died. Yet Jesus’ kingdom lived on after his death, in the lives of men and women who confess his Lordship and trust his vision. Jesus was a different kind of King entirely.
