If you would turn in your copy of the scriptures as well to Mark chapter 11, the moment has finally come, Jesus concludes his long journey south, going up to Jerusalem, and he's going to enter it. Now I did mention to the kids earlier that his disciples, and I mentioned it in Sunday school as well, his disciples thought this was it. Jesus is in town, He's riding in on a donkey just like the prophet Zechariah says, if they were thinking of that. The time has come, the kingdom is here, we are going to be free from all of our enemies. And so they cried out, we're going to see Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Now they're not wrong, they just misidentified who their enemies were, what their biggest problem was. Jesus came at Christmas time, long promised to us to be born in human weakness so that we might not die the death of sin, that we might live to God. And these people here, they thought this is the end. But Jesus was doing something far bigger than they could know. Before we dig into our text, let's pray. Heavenly Father, open our eyes for we are blind in and of ourselves. Open our ears for we are deaf. Open our lips, for we are mute. Give us grace to see Christ glorified, but also crucified. In our texts, speak to us as you would speak. We do ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Mark chapter 11, verses 1 through 11. Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, 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. If anyone says to you, Why are you doing this? Say, The Lord has need of it, and will send it back here immediately. And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it. And some of those standing there said to them, What are you doing untying the colt? And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go. And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and He sat on it. And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest! 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. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever." There's an old African-American spiritual called Ride On King Jesus. And the lyrics go just like that. It's quite catchy. I'm not going to sing it for you, although I probably could. But it goes, Ride on King Jesus, no man's going to hinder me. Ride on, King Jesus. There's a great waking up day. I will walk along strings or streets of gold. Ride on, King Jesus. This is the attitude of those who saw Jesus ride into Jerusalem. This is the day the Lord has made. They were going to rejoice and be glad in it. And indeed, Jesus does ride on. Jesus rides on but for three things in this case. Jesus rides on for the truth. Secondly, Jesus rides on but with humility. And thirdly, Jesus rides on not to the throne, not yet. Jesus rides on to the cross, but all along the way riding on to victory. Jesus rides on to victory and He arranges everything perfectly for His entrance into Jerusalem This broadly so we see a fulfillment of so many scriptures as he doesn't we see that You don't think these details are necessarily important, but actually from your perspective when he's drawing near to Jerusalem To Bethphage and Bethany that's on the east side of Jerusalem and at the Mount of Olives Now there's a prophecy in Ezekiel about the glory of the Lord returning to Jerusalem and to the temple from the east I have Ezekiel sees it in a vision form and of the glory of God re-entering through the east gate and into the temple. And we see that Jesus, He too, is approaching from the same side. Jesus, the glory of the God in Himself, the exact imprint of the nature of God, is going to come into Jerusalem for salvation. He's not going to do it just any which way. He's going to arrange it perfectly. He arranges by divine providence and his command. Versus Sibelson, go grab a colt of a donkey that has never been ridden. He's gonna take that donkey, the disciples are able to get it, no problem. He's gonna ride that donkey into Jerusalem. Makes us, actually it's a direct connection to Zechariah 9, 9. Zechariah tells Israel, behold your king riding on a donkey. Behold him coming. humble, and having salvation is He." Other Gospels make that connection explicitly, Mark makes it implicitly, and so we make it ourselves. This is the one who has come to bring salvation. This is the king, as Pilate wrote on top of his cross, this is the king of the Jews. This is the heir of David, the long-awaited one, the root of Jesse, the branch of David, the one who will command obedience from the nations. He indeed has come. And as they come into Jerusalem, they're quoting Psalm 118, the last of the pilgrimage Psalms. As you enter Jerusalem for the Passover, it was tradition that they would sing Psalms 113 through 118, and this is the end of 118. Save us now, Lord, we pray. And it says, blessed is he, and that's Hosanna, save us now. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our Father David Hosanna in the highest. Waving palm branches, spreading their cloaks like a red carpet along the road, they knew something big was coming. And they were right. They were right. They just didn't know quite what this big someone coming would do. They thought they knew, but they didn't actually know. But first we see that Jesus rides on in for the truth. Jesus rides in for the truth, to prove God's word true as fulfillment to all of God's promises. I just highlighted three scriptures, but how many more does Jesus fulfill by riding in for salvation? Dozens and dozens and dozens, perhaps hundreds. The Messiah would come and save His people. He would come in Jerusalem and He would purify Jacob, make Israel pure once again to redeem them from the curse of the law and the curse of all this fallen world. He has come. It comes for the truth. And at this point, if you've heard me preach at least even three times, I love talking about Jesus as fulfillment. It's probably one of my favorite things in the Bible. But it's not just because it's in the abstract a kind of a fun thing. You know, we can flip all over the Old Testament and find ways that Jesus fulfills those things, or even go across the New Testament and see how the New Testament points to Jesus' fulfillment. It's so much more than that. We live in a world full of half-truths. I mean, what is a half-truth other than a lie, a really clever lie? But the world is full of lies, some truths, but dressed next to half-truths, a truth that helps sell the lie. Think about the world we live in. We read a newspaper. We want to find the most reputable newspaper we can or news source online. Newspapers are going all online these days anyway. But we want to know that what is being reported is true. And every now and then you'll even see big time newspapers like the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, they'll have to post retractions saying, we got that wrong. Remind us to be careful what we read. Things have gotten even harder. If you've been online, really at all in the last two years, you know that AI videos and images are becoming the big thing. Now, some of those things are very funny, but as well, they could be made for far more nefarious purposes. Maybe someone can make a video of some famous or known personage doing something very bad, and just spreading it, knowing that it will eventually get caught, but trying to cause as much chaos as they can. But it's gotten even more crazy. I saw that someone was selling fake fingers to put on top of your normal fingers, because for the purpose of, if you are being caught on a security cam footage doing something you're not supposed to do, the video can be thrown out in court if it looks like, you can make it look like, if you have six fingers, that there's an argument it was AI generated. People are growing more and more clever, and their lies have truths. And we don't know what's real, we don't know what's up and down. Sometimes in our own memories we don't even remember the own lies and half-truths we've told ourselves. We live in a world, a murky world of confusion, and that is the world that Jesus rides into. Jerusalem was a place of many half-truths. Jesus rides in to bring a full truth. We're going to see next week, Jesus is going to cleanse this temple. The temple was full of half-truths that to worship God, you need to offer sacrifices. That's true, but we're going to fix the pricing so we make a little money along the way. And they were taking advantage of people. have truths for their personal gain. Jesus rise into Jerusalem, into our world, into our lives, to tell us that God is true. Not a single word God has spoken will fall to the ground without His making it so, and in this case, executing it through the work of His Son. God is true, and a world of lies, His light shines bright through it to teach the world what it's truly like, how filthy and sinful it truly is, and how badly it needs Him. Church, in your swimming through the swamp of lies and half-truths, remember to look up and see that God is true. He proves it time and time again. He came into this world to save us, just as He promised. He promises to come again and finish the job, and in the meantime, He has left us a spirit of truth to remind us and point us to His own truth. Trust not what your eyes see. Trust not what your ears hear. Trust only the word which you do read and you do hear spoken to you. Trust in the Lord. He rides on for your victory and your salvation and he brings truth in his wake. And as well, As Jesus rode in on a donkey, as Kent Hughes tells us, he not only was showing the world who he was, but what he is like. Jesus rides into Jerusalem with humility. Think about the, if you've ever seen any kind of movies based off of ancient Rome or Greece, do you know how the victors like to ride into cities, like to ride in on a golden or a brass chariot with a laurel wreath around their head, signifying victory, holding a sword with which they slew their enemies in the air and cheering the battle cry? loud, pompous, full of all those things that we would expect from a mighty conqueror. And the mightiest conqueror in the world was, in fact, coming into Jerusalem, but he was, in one sense, lowering the bar, coming in on that donkey. Have you considered that Jesus was showing us what true greatness looks like? is lowering the bar not of excellence, not of salvation, but of human pride and ambition. Jesus has already taught his disciples leading up to this, the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. True greatness in the kingdom, the king riding on with great victory looks like a king dressed in his normal clothes. riding in on a smaller-than-usual donkey. Humble and having salvation is He. Jesus rode into a world that is proud beyond belief, the root of atheism in our world. It's not a divorced intellectualism that sees great scientific truths that religious people are too dumb to see. That's not it. The root of atheism is pride. The fool says in his heart there is no God because the fool does not want to be restrained by the bridles of God's law and His rule. Pride is what made Adam fall. When Adam took the fruit, what he was saying is, I think God's word is wrong. I think my way is better. God is holding something out on me, and I'm going to take it. Jesus rides into a world of the sons of Adam who have taken the forbidden fruit, as it were, and said, God is holding out on me. I'm going to take what's mine. That is a mindset of our flesh. We all have it. We'll even do a little bit of negotiation. We'll all follow God in these ways, but in these ways, these sins are not to be touched. In fact, I will give up all these other things as long as God will let me have this little piece of the pie. Only pride prevents God from taking it all. The area of our lives that we leave untouched by the reign, and really by the blood of Jesus. Though the blood of Jesus forgives us all of our sins, including that very sin, and the pride that seeks to hide it, as God is purifying us by the Spirit, we want those things to be left untouched. We will protect them, and out in the world that is full, bloom destruction and pride altogether. I do not need God. I will serve my own gods, as it were. A proud world. Jesus rides into that world, and by riding into that world on a donkey in his regular clothes, and yes, there's palm branches and people crying out, Hosanna, and rightly so. And in fact, if Jesus had tried to stop them, you know, remember in John's gospel, the Pharisees say, you know, Rabbi, please restrain your disciples. What does Jesus say? He said, basically, if these stop crying out, the very rocks themselves will cry out. They were crying out rightly for Jesus. But notice Jesus does not bask in the glow of his own greatness. But Jesus, riding with humility, knows what he has come to do. He's come to show us a different way. He's come to show us a better way, a way that he will pay for with his own blood. As we recall, the way up is down. True greatness in God's kingdom is found in the humbleness of Jesus Christ, who though being in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, Paul tells us, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant and humbling himself even to death on a cross. This humility comes first. This is the humility that marks those in the kingdom of God. It's a humility of salvation. It is a humility that strikes dead the pride of human sin. It cuts us to the quick to have a God be so humble as to take on our flesh, to look like us, to go through the same trials and temptations and struggles and yet do it perfectly. Humbly and perfectly, if it were even possible to approximate Jesus in obedience, we would ruin it all by patting ourselves on the back. Oh, man, look at all the temptation I defeated today. Woo, I am awesome. Boom, you fall into the temptation of pride, you're back to square one. Jesus doesn't do that. Jesus humbly, perfectly accomplishes full salvation and righteousness for us. So when we are in our pride and we look to the cross, we see what our sins deserve, but we look to the empty tomb and to the sky, we see what Christ has earned for us. But it does not start, it does not start for us anywhere but down. We cannot get glory without a cross. So Jesus rides on in victory. He rides on for the truth, for the truth of God. He rides on with humility, but he rides on with those things, for those things, to the cross. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, there was no turning back. When Jesus took on human flesh at Christmas time, being formed as a little fetus in Mary's womb. There was no turning back. God's love had propelled him into a world of sin, darkness, and death to accomplish salvation from the moment he was conceived and born, as he's growing up, as he's entering the temple as a 12-year-old, throughout his ministry, when he's baptized, when he's healing, he's teaching, he's doing all those things, he enters into Jerusalem, and if you can imagine, And put yourself, if you can, in Jesus' shoes, and you know exactly what's about to happen to you by Friday, it's Palm Sunday, you're entering into Jerusalem with great fanfare, and you know that you're at the high, really, you're at the high point of your ministry as far as everyone else concerned, and you know what's coming in five days. Think about Jesus' sweating drops of blood in Gethsemane, because He knows what's about to happen, really, in 12 hours to Him. When he enters in Jerusalem, you can imagine, it's like when you step up to the plate, and your heart's pounding, because it's the last inning, two outs, two men on. If you can just poke the ball through somewhere, your team will win the game, and your heart's pounding. Your heart's pounding, except your life is on the line, and everyone thinks you're about to do something great, but you're about to do something far greater that no one will realize. but it involves you being shamed, the shame of human history unto death. As they're calling out, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David, Hosanna in the highest. You put yourself in Jesus' shoes and go, yes, and dear children, I will answer your Hosannas with the cross. Save us now, Hosanna means. children I can only save you by the blood of a cross." And that's where I'm going. Very solemn, sober Jesus marching into Jerusalem with great power and fanfare, but knowing that the great power of salvation must mean He lays down His life for His people. He doesn't do it privately. J.C. Ryle tells us that The Lord wanted his death to be a public spectacle so that the whole world would know that what he had done, that's why he rode in on a donkey, so they'd be paying attention to him all week and the whole world would see him crucified on Calvary's brow for us. The reason he came in the first place, to take the sinful world that he entered, take our sins on his self. to have them counted against Him and not us, for Him to lay down His life instead of having us lay down our lives. God so loved the world, He gave us His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life. God did not send His Son to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him by the death of the cross. The greatest Christmas image you could possibly think of, I think, comes to us in Genesis 22. And with this I'll close. Abraham is commanded by God, go offer your son Isaac on an altar on Mount Moriah, which is the temple mount, by the way. Abraham goes, he doesn't understand, Isaac's beginning to get asked questions, he gets suspicious, where's the sacrifice? Here's the wood and the fire, where's the sacrifice? The Lord will provide the sacrifice. Isaac, you can imagine, getting a little confused, and as he gets to the top and seeing Abraham build an altar, and sees Abraham coming at him with the rope, maybe gets a little nervous, and very scared, I'm sure. And at the last moment, with the knife up, God says, I see that you obey me in all things. I'll confer my covenant with you because of it. You have done well." And then Abraham looks and sees a ram caught in a thicket. A ram caught by the horns in his own, the sign of power in a thicket. is the ram caught in the thickets. By his own power lays down his life on a cross of wood for us. so that we do not have to give our own firstborn sons for our sins, because the Father gave Christ as His firstborn, only begotten Son for us. Add a great love and kindness to we sinners whose lives can be turned into a living hell by our own devices. What great love God has for us. What great love rides on to victory for God's truth with humility to such a cross. I've told this before. When I took life-saving as a Boy Scout, life-saving merit badge, they told us when you go out and rescue someone, don't try to grab them from the front. Swim around, approach them from the back as they're struggling in the water, and then put your arms around them in a full Nelson and lift them up. They're freaking out because they're not getting enough oxygen. It's putting them into fight or flight. When you put them in a full Nelson, one, you have control of them, and two, they look up and breathe in the air. Jesus came into this world to flip us, not upside down, but right side up. His enemies thought he was turning the world upside down, but he was really flipping the world right side up, reconciling us to himself, causing us to look up to the glories of Christ so that we would not die, but rather live. That's what Christmas is all about. That's what Christ's salvation does for us. Let's think on that. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, You have done far more for us than all that we can ask or think by the power at work within us. I want to pray that You would glorify the Savior before us as we come before You at this table. That we would see that He offers Himself freely to us, so we may offer ourselves freely to Him on the day of His power and in the righteous garments He provides. Lord, we ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.