Well, good morning and welcome to everybody. Those of you here in the auditorium and other rooms in the building, even those students down in the dungeon, and those of you at home or wherever you are watching this service. I'm very glad you're with us and looking forward to hearing God's Word speaking to us. Thank you, too, for the wonderful A.V. team we have. I now have a screen up here. I can actually see what's behind me, which is wonderful. And also, Beverly and I were away last week, and we were able to watch the service from our hotel room, which was also a wonderful thing. So thank you to the A.V. team for all they do. We really appreciate your work. So today marks the beginning of what is known as Holy Week. This is the week in which begins with Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, leading to His arrest, trial, and crucifixion on Good Friday, and the seeming collapse of His ministry. but only to be followed gloriously by his resurrection on Easter Sunday, the high point of our Christian year. It was an entry that was celebrated wildly by his followers, but it lacked the pomp and circumstance of the entry of a king into his capital city. So the title of my message this morning is The Humble Triumphal Entry. Jesus is the savior of the world, and his triumphal entry is part of that, and that's what we'll be looking at today. So let me read from Luke chapter 19, beginning at verse 28. After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany, at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you'll find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, why are you untying it? tell them, the Lord needs it. Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, why are you untying the colt? And they replied, the Lord needs it. They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on it and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen. Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. "'I tell you,' he replied, "'if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.'" As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, "'If you, even you, had only known on this day "'what would bring you peace, "'but now it is hidden from your eyes. "'The days will come when your enemies "'will build an embankment against you "'and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you. Then he entered the temple area, began driving out those who are selling. It is written, he said to them, my house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers. Every day he was teaching at the temple, but the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. Yet they could not find any way to do it because all the people hung on his words. Let's pray for God's blessing on his word. Father, we thank you this morning that we can study your word together. We thank you for our Lord Jesus Christ, for this story of his triumphal entry, but such a strange one, such a humble one. Lord, we pray we would learn what you have to teach us from this scripture. Lord, I pray you would open my lips to speak your truth and open our ears and our hearts to receive it. In Jesus' name, amen. So let's look at this wonderful and also challenging passage. I have what I have here the, I need to go back a moment, that slide comes later. So I want to share a number of thoughts about this passion. The first one is the preparation of the triumphal entry. The preparation of the triumphal entry. Jesus was finally approaching Jerusalem after traveling south from Galilee. He was traveling with thousands of other Jews, all aiming to enter Jerusalem for the big annual festival of the Passover. This feast, as many of you know, celebrated and gave thanks for God's protection of the Israelites when they were slaves in Egypt over a thousand years before this time. God had commanded them then to kill a perfect lamb without any blemishes and to sprinkle its blood on the doorposts and the lintels of their houses, so the angel of death would pass over their homes and not kill their firstborn son. The Egyptians did not have this protection, and their firstborn sons were killed, and that led Pharaoh to say to the Israelites, get out of here. So this was a crucial event in Israel's history. And the death of the Lamb was a substitute for the death of their firstborn son. And so God commanded them to remember this release from captivity by celebrating the Passover every year. And all faithful Jews in Jesus' day sought to be in Jerusalem for that annual celebration. So it was a huge festival. People were streaming in from all over the country into Jerusalem where the Passover was celebrated. And to do so, they'd have to come in and buy a lamb or buy an animal that they could offer and sacrifice themselves and so on and so forth. So it was a big, big deal. So now we come to the picture of this. Jesus was traveling from Galilee in the north. He traveled south over several days, first of all to Jericho. If you remember from the previous sermons, he was in Jericho. He met Zacchaeus and blessed this rich traitor, in a way, to Israel. He also met blind Bartimaeus and healed Bartimaeus. So he blessed two individuals in Jericho. And then from Jericho, he moved on to Jerusalem. Jericho's about 846 feet below sea level, by the way. It's down by the Dead Sea. Jerusalem's about 2,500 feet above sea level. So he climbed roughly 3,300 feet or so from Jericho up to Jerusalem, a long, dusty road. If you're trying to get an idea of how much, that is roughly twice the height of Blacksburg from Roanoke. So he traveled this long road, he'd finally made it up to the top, and now he set in motion the events that would lead to his death a few days later. And the first of these events would be riding into Jerusalem on a colt. And this wasn't some last-minute idea in Jesus' way. He didn't think, as he got to Jerusalem, oh, I think I'll ride in on a colt, that'll be kind of fun. It wasn't that. This was a well-laid-out, well-thought-out plan. We're not told how Jesus arranged the cult, but we know that he was approached in the village of Bethany and Bethphage, two villages close to each other, just outside Jerusalem. We know that Mary and Martha and Lazarus lived in Bethany. And they were close friends of Jesus. My guess is that he arranged through them with the owner of the cult, or owners, it was a plural ownership, they weren't rich people, he arranged with the owners of the cult to let Jesus borrow it. And the phrase, the Lord has need of it, was kind of a password. When someone comes along and starts untying the cult and says, the Lord has need of it, that means it's okay, they can take it. That's just a guess, but I think it's, if it wasn't Mary Martha Lazarus or somebody else, he arranged with the owners of the cult. So the disciples got the cult, they brought it to Jesus, they threw their cloaks on the cult, and Jesus put Jesus on it. And just one thought, though, this was a cult nobody had ridden before. It was a little animal, not a big animal. Nobody had ridden it. Have a man sit on your back for the first time, what's your reaction? You want a kick and a void and, you know, whatever. If you're a real cult, you don't want somebody sitting on you. Jesus sat on this cult, he was perfectly happy. Just a wonderful testimony to Jesus' gentleness and peace. So why did Jesus choose to do this? This rather complicated arrangement. Why did he choose to enter Jerusalem in this complicated but also very obvious way? He knew the Jews were out to get him. That had been clear for weeks, if months, if not years of his ministry. He knew they didn't like him. He knew they wanted to get rid of him. So why did he publicly enter Jerusalem in this way? Wouldn't it be a lot safer to walk into Jerusalem with a crowd, just hide in the crowd and walk in and sneak in? Of course it would be safer. But safety wasn't what Jesus was about. Jesus was about saving others, not himself. And so he rode into Jerusalem, I think, for two reasons. The first one was to fulfill prophecy. The Bible, you know, is just not one book. It's two books, what we call the Old Testament and the New Testament. There are two parts to it. 39 books in the Old Testament, 27 in the New. And many of the Old Testament books contain prophecies about the coming of the Messiah, the coming of the Savior, the coming of the Christ, the one who will finally ransom and redeem Israel. Biblical scholars differ on how many prophecies there are in the Old Testament. Some go as low as 100. Adersheim found 456 prophecies in the Old Testament. Somewhere in that range, but there are lots of them. That's all you need to know. And one of them was the prophecy of Zechariah in Zechariah 9.9. And this is what Zechariah says. 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. So Jesus' deliberate choice to ride into Jerusalem on a colt was to fulfill, in many ways, this prophecy that had been written about him hundreds of years ago. But there's a second reason, and the second reason is to declare his kingship. He is the king of creation, the creator of the heavens and the earth, and he rides on the colt of a donkey. It doesn't sound very kingly, does it? I mean, in those days, kings rode into cities on horses, with great pomp and circumstance, or rode in on a chariot. But nevertheless, it was clearly understood by the crowd as a fulfillment of prophecy, and a statement that Jesus was indeed the king prophesied by Zechariah. So the crowd cried out, blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. And Jesus didn't say, oh no, you've got it wrong. He said, he accepted that praise. He was declaring his kingship as he came in. And it was understood as a declaration of kingship by the Pharisees, because they said, shut your crowd up. We don't want them to say these things. They're not true. But we're going to come back to the Pharisees in a moment. I want to take a look at one other aspect of the triumphal entry, and that is the humility of the triumphal entry. As I said earlier, real kings rode in on horses. Jesus rode in on a donkey. Real kings had pomp and circumstance. I'd like to quote some words from the late British preacher G. Campbell Morgan. You probably haven't heard of him. He was actually a really well-known preacher in his day. He was pastor of the Westminster Chapel in London for many years. And Martin Lloyd-Jones, some of you have heard of him. Martin Lloyd-Jones was his successor as pastor of Westminster Chapel. So he knew D.L. Moody. He knew Spurgeon, he knew, he was a great guy. And he asked this question, why did the Romans allow the triumphal entry? Think about it. Jerusalem was filled to the brim with pilgrims there for the festival. It was a time when insurrections came about. It was, put a lot of Jews together and put, you know, in that circumstance, in that city, they're crowded together. What happens when crowds sit together? There can be insurrections. People can get talking and... supporting each other and so on, and so it was ripe for insurrection. So what did the Romans do? They imported all their troops. So it was chock full of pilgrims and chock full of Roman troops. Even the Roman governor, a chap called Pontius Pilate, had moved to Jerusalem from Caesarea. He normally lived in Caesarea, on the sea coast. But he moved to Jerusalem, so he's on hand. If some insurrection arose, he needed to condemn somebody to death by crucifixion, he was there to do it, right on the spot. So why did the Romans, with all their power and all this rumpus going on, why didn't they stop the triumphal entry? And the answer was, I'm going to quote Cranmer Warren, I've modified his quotation, it's mostly his. He writes the following, he says, the Romans were there to quell insurrection, to hold in check the turbulent Jews, and yet there was no interference on their part. They're accustomed to see vast multitudes gathered for religious exercises at Jerusalem. They were perfectly aware of this strange movement and this unusual excitement. They knew the prophet of Nazareth, but they did not interfere. Why not? Because the whole thing was so utterly and absolutely contemptible. He then goes on to say, what we describe as a triumphal entry would have been a laughing stock in the eyes of the Romans. The Romans would have seen the triumphal return of a conqueror with kings he'd overcome in battle, chained to his chariot wheels amid the acclaim of the assembled multitudes, entering the city of Rome in military magnificence. Someone who had seen such an entry into Rome would look at this entry, characterized by old clothes, broken trees, and unarmed peasant folk, would have held it in supreme contempt. It was just a mob, unorganized, shouting, tearing branches from trees and casting them in the way, taking their garments off and putting them across the back of the colt on which a man rode. A man riding on old clothes in the midst of broken trees, surrounded by a shouting mob. That would have been the Roman outlook on the whole thing. Grotesque. End of quote. So even though Jesus is not only the King, but is also with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Creator and Upholder of the Universe, he takes a path of humility. And he does so as our example. A few days after the triumphal entry, Jesus was sitting at the Last Supper and said this to his disciples in Luke 22, 28. Jesus said to them, The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who exercise authority over them call themselves benefactors. But you are not to be like that, he says. Instead, the gracious among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater, one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. So for Jesus, the way up is the way down. There's no place for pride, no place for strutting in the kingdom of God. Jesus, our great example, showed us that throughout His life and supremely during this last week of His life. What a wonderful Savior He is. Just a thought, how are we doing in this area of humility? Do we reply gently to those who attack us for our faith? Do we show disdain for those who differ from us, either politically or culturally or in our faith? The Apostle Peter, who started out as a foot-in-the-mouth sort of guy, ended up writing in 1 Peter 3, 15-16, But in your hearts set apart Jesus Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have, but do this with gentleness and respect. That's learned from Peter. Learn from our Lord to be gentle in our lives and humble. The next thought I had is the courage of the triumphal entry. The courage of the triumphal entry. Jesus entered Jerusalem to declare his kingship, knowing it would lead to his death. He knew that the Jewish leaders had determined to put him to death. He knew that they would arrest him and condemn him and turn him over to Pontius Pilate for cruel lashings and a death sentence by crucifixion. He knew also that his death would not only involve horrible and intense physical suffering, but also the intense spiritual agony of bearing the sins of the world in his body and being cut off from God his Father, with whom he'd enjoyed a relationship of love since before the dawn of time. All this he knew, and yet he still humbly and deliberately rode into the home city of his bitterest enemies. Would you do that? Would I do that? I'd need a lot more courage than I have to do that, I think. But far from the gentle Jesus, meek and mild of the child's prayer, although he is that, he also had a backbone of steel with an inflexible purpose to offer his body for the sins of the world. That includes my sins and your sins. What courage, what humility. The hymn Ride On, Ride On in Majesty captures this aspect of the triumphal entry, and I'll just read a couple of verses. Ride on, ride on in majesty, in lowly pomp, ride on to die. O Christ, your triumphs now begin, o'er captive death and conquered sin. Ride on, ride on in majesty, in lowly pomp, ride on to die. bow your meek head to mortal pain, then take, O God, your power and reign. So next we look at the response to the triumphal entry, and there were two major groups. We've already seen a bit about the Pharisees and a bit about the people. Let's just look at the people again. The people were streaming into Jerusalem that day, knew of Jesus either by word of mouth or because they'd actually seen him doing miracles and heard his teaching. Luke called some disciples. But the Gospels, the other Gospels, simply refer to him as a crowd. So I think Luke is using the word disciples here in a very broad sense, including everybody who had any acquaintance with Jesus. And the crowd understood what Jesus was doing. He was declaring himself to be the coming Messiah. They're all in favor of that, because most, if not all of them, thought he was going to be the one to defeat the hated Romans and be the new king that they were all waiting for. So the whole crowd began joyfully to praise God in loud voices. Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. But they were celebrating Him for the miracles He'd done. And many of them probably saw Jesus primarily as a miracle worker. He could take some bread and two small fish and make a banquet for 5,000 people. He could walk on water. He could raise the dead. He could heal the sick. For those powers, it would be nothing for him to walk up to the Roman governor and snap his fingers and say, make him order the hated Roman overlords to pack their bags and say, sorry for the inconvenience, and leave. Or maybe he'd go the military route and lead an army against the Romans and defeat them in battle. What they did not expect was to see this same Jesus, whom they were acclaiming as king, standing beaten and bloodied in front of Pilate, being condemned to death. The other group were the Pharisees. The Pharisees also understood what Jesus was doing, and they did not like it one little bit. They asked him to shut up the crowd, but Jesus refused, saying, I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out. In other words, he was saying, I am the Lord of creation. If people don't praise me, then nature will. My creation will praise me. So two very different responses to Jesus' entry. Then we need to look at the pain of the triumphal entry, because as Jesus approaches the city of Jerusalem, he reaches the point where he could see the city below him, separated from his current location by the Kidron Valley. He's overwhelmed with sorrow as he sees the city for the first time on this occasion, because he knows the fate that will befall it in just about 40 years. As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, if you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace, but now is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you." You know, first of all, Jesus, real sorrow over Jerusalem. He knew what was gonna happen. And yet, and he knew also what's going to happen to him in that same city in just a few days time. And yet he's so sad, so heartbroken over the pain and suffering that's going to come upon Jerusalem. And the peace that Jesus is talking about here, that they're not going to see, is not just physical peace, but it includes the idea of being at peace with God, being in a relationship with God. Because real peace only comes about through reconciliation with God, through the Prince of Peace. And although the Jewish leaders of his day claimed to know God and claimed to obey him, This knowledge didn't seem to result in any practical results of peace and of gentleness and of love in their lives. And their failure to love God and obey Him was now final. Jesus says, if only you'd known what would bring you peace, but now it is hidden from your eyes. And just to fast forward 40 years, Jesus' prediction came true. Jewish riots in AD 66 led to Judean rebel factions controlling Jerusalem. The Romans then began a siege of Jerusalem three days before the Passover in AD 70, when the city was full of pilgrims for the festival. The siege lasted about five months. The Romans built banks around certain parts of the city to keep the Jews from leaving. This brought famine and disease. Eventually, the Romans set fire to parts of the city. The Roman general Titus had ordered the temple not be burnt, but it accidentally caught on fire. And when the gold of the temple melted and ran down into the cracks in the stones, the Romans pried apart the stones to get the gold and completely leveled the temple. Jesus' words were fulfilled to the letter. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you. But also, please hear Jesus' words of pain in the light of what was to come. I don't know about you, but if I were to look on a city governed by people who were going to reject me and kill me, and then know that the city would be destroyed a few years later by an invading army, I might just say, well, they got what they deserved. But not so, our Lord. He looks down on the city of Jerusalem and weeps over the destruction and loss of life that he sees coming. What love he shows for his enemies. Our Lord is grieved by the sin and wickedness he sees because he is God and is a God of love. And Peter describes him this way. He says in 2 Peter 3, 9, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. So, to move on. I'm going to skip the passage about the moving, about overcoming the money changes tables because I'm, there's a clock up here now and I see I'm running a little late. So excise this, I'll send it, I don't want to see it, I'll go ahead and send it. But here's the good part of this whole story. Jesus, so first of all, Jesus went there for us. He went there to die. He went there with courage. But you know, there's going to be a second triumphant entry, did you know that? Second triumphal entry. Listen to Revelation chapter 19. And John writes, I saw heaven standing open. There before me was a white horse whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood. His name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. He will rule them with an iron scepter. He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh, he has this name written, King of Kings. and Lord of Lords. That rider, the Word of God, is of course Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Creator of this universe, the Upholder of this universe, and our Lord and Savior. And this second triumphal entry is going to be very different from the first. Instead of a colt, it's going to be on a horse. Instead of a humble colt, it's going to be on a white horse. Instead of a crowd of peasants in old clothing, it's going to be followed by the armies of heaven on white horses. And instead of going humbly to his death, Jesus is coming to bring judgment to the nations. So we're living between these two events. We're living between The entry into Jerusalem, on the one hand, on a halt, and the entry into the world from heaven on a horse. And as Christ follows, we can look back with amazement and adoration and worship of Jesus, the Lamb of God, entering Jerusalem to offer himself as a sacrifice for our sins. But we can also look ahead to his return in triumph to judge the nations and to establish his kingdom of love and joy forever. Lord, hasten the day of your return. Just four final thoughts. things that stand out to me. First of all, the courage of Jesus. I mentioned this already, but he introduced them on a cult with one set purpose, the purpose to give his life as an offering for our sin, my sin, your sin, the sin of the whole world. He did this knowing the personal cost to himself, both horrendous physical suffering, as well as unimaginable mental and spiritual anguish. That then highlights the love of Jesus because he did this for us. He endured the cross for us, for our salvation. He loves you. He loves you. Whether you know him or not, he loves you. If you're a believer here, you know he loves you. If you're here and you're hearing this for the first time, he loves you too. He loves you and he loves you so much that he endured the cross for your sake. But then also be warned by the fickleness of our hearts, Jesus entered Jerusalem to the cheers of thousands of his followers. Only five days later, another crowd was shouting, crucify him. We don't know who was in each crowd, but my guess is that some in that first crowd welcoming Jesus, when they saw he wasn't gonna be the king they thought he was, they saw he was gonna be killed, they jumped on the other side and started shouting, crucify him. Let's be sure that our faith is firm, that we are firmly following Jesus Christ, not swayed by the world, by the people around us, but faithful in obeying him to the end. Let's be sure we're guided by the truth at all times. And then finally, the awfulness of rejecting Jesus. Let's understand the awful danger of rejection of our Lord Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for us. Again, many of you have already accepted Christ your Savior, but if there's anybody here hearing these words who has yet to follow Jesus Christ, yet to acknowledge that He is Lord, yet to acknowledge that He loves you, that He died for you, for your sins, and yet to accept Him then as your Lord and Savior, He's gonna come again, and he's gonna tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God, and you'll be part of that winepress. You'll be in that winepress, judged by Lord Jesus Christ, judged by God the Father. All who reject him will be judged in that way. I pray that no one within the sound of my voice will be guilty of the sin of rejecting the one who would rather die than live without you. May God help us to hear these words. In the name of Jesus, amen.