Palm Sunday 2026

0:00 If you have your Bible with you, would you turn to Luke's Gospel, chapter 19, please? It's really good for us just to reflect again, just have that opportunity to think about Jesus' death and resurrection and ascension over this Easter period. And the catalyst for that, the Messianic Big Bang, if you want to put it that way, that started the chain reaction that would culminate in the events of Easter weekend is the journey that Jesus took into Jerusalem here in the second half of Luke 19. We're going to travel with Jesus this morning as he approaches Jerusalem. Many of you will know the story while riding on a donkey, but we're going to see how he uniquely choreographs this event So that he publicly, he unequivocally, and he provocatively reveals something about himself. That he is God's Messiah. The King of Israel who's come to his capital. So let's read Luke 19.

1:10 We'll start in verse 28. And when he had said these things, he went on ahead going to Jerusalem. when he drew near to Bethpage and Bethany at the mount that is called Olivet, that's the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples saying, go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it here. And if anyone asks you, why are you untying it? You shall say this, the Lord has need of it. So those who were sent away found it just as he had told them. And as they were untying the coat, the owner said to them, Why are you untying the coat?

1:52 And they said, The Lord has need of it. And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the coat, they set it on Jesus. And then verse 36. And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road, and as he was drawing near, already on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven and glory in the highest. And some of the Pharisees in the crowd then said to him, teacher, rebuke your disciples. And he said, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out. I know many of us here enjoy a good drama series, whether it's The Crown, or Yellowstone, or Blue Lights, or the supernatural epic Stranger Things. One of the ones that my wife watches occasionally is called Emily in Paris.

3:08 See a few fans about a young American woman making her way in the fashion houses of the most romantic city in the world. Now when I watch that show I just come away feeling ugly and poor and hungry. I heard there is a sequel called Suzanne Bennett in Paris but I only watch these shows to do a particular you know intellectual cultural analysis but I know we do like them. And if you're familiar with these shows in any way, you will know that they're almost always organized into seasons. There's an overall big story and each individual season contributes its own slice of the story and progresses the narrative. And then we get to the final season where all of the momentum, the questions, the tension, the drama comes to a climax, and we discover what the ultimate outcome of this story is going to be. And if Luke's gospel was a Netflix series, here in Luke 19, we will be pushing play on episode one of the hotly anticipated final season, where all that Luke has told us so far is going to climax over the next few days in the city of Jerusalem. We're only, of course, jumping into it for a few weeks over the Easter season.

4:30 But if we had been tracking with Luke the whole way through his gospel, the whole way through this series with the previous seasons, we would know that at the end of chapter 9, the focus and the trajectory has been Jesus moving to Jerusalem. Luke 9, 51 is where it really kicks off. It says, in the days drew near for Jesus to be lifted up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. That is where Jesus' journey has ultimately been going. Jerusalem was the capital of the throne of David. It was where the worship of God was centralized at the temple. It was where God's Messiah King was expected to establish God's kingdom. So if Jesus is the Messiah, if he is the son of the most high, whom God has promised to give the throne of his father David to, as John the Baptist's dad had prophesied, then Jerusalem is exactly where we would expect all those events to crystallize.

5:30 And it was always Jesus' plan to come face-to-face with Jerusalem, not just in the geographic sense, but in the spiritual sense of confronting as God's king all that Jerusalem represented in terms of the worship and the promises of God. And as we'll be reminded throughout this week, that that coming of Jesus as king to his capital to confront the city is going to precipitate a confrontation, an ultimate showdown with the religious establishment that, spoiler alert, will result in Jesus being catastrophically rejected and crucified. But the catalyst for all of those events is Jesus physically coming into the city in our passage. All of the Gospels make clear that Jesus didn't just come into the city. He came in a very specific way and at a very specific time. It was the days leading up to the Passover festival. There were thousands of Jews across the region thronging into Jerusalem, making the pilgrimage up to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. And on this particular occasion, Jesus has been in Jericho.

6:51 John tells us that he was in Jericho. He then comes down probably about 15 miles into Bethany in order to have dinner with Mary and Martha and Lazarus. Of course, Lazarus had been resurrected by this stage. So the crowd find out, oh, the one who raised Lazarus is here. So they all turn up. And that probably spills from the Saturday. So it's six days before Passover. So it's the Saturday before Good Friday.

7:15 That probably spills into the Sunday, which means that it's more probable that Jesus left for Bethany to enter Jerusalem on the Monday, even though we celebrate Palm Sunday. And the route that Jesus would have taken from Bethany would have probably come through the little village of Bethpage at the top of the Mount of Olives, down the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron Valley, and into the Golden Gate in East Jerusalem, and into the temple courts. It was a normal route for people traveling from the north or the northeast into the city. But what was anything but normal was the way that Jesus specifically chose to approach this final mile and a half, from Bethpage right into the temple courts. Traveling among the many other pilgrims going up to the city, Jesus could easily have approached this quietly, keeping a low profile, blending in with the hundreds and thousands of others who were going the same way. And in fact, Luke tells us that throughout Passion Week, throughout the course of the next few days, Jesus does go in and out inconspicuously from the city between there and Bethany. But here in Luke 19, Jesus's arrival is anything but conspicuous. In fact, the complete opposite is true.

8:36 It's specifically designed and strategically engineered by Jesus to gain maximum publicity. Because Jesus wanted to reveal something that he wanted no one to miss. You might have noticed that up to this point in the Gospels, Jesus is often keeping his messianic identity quite secret he doesn't often or sometimes at all come out and explicitly say i'm the messiah and when he heals people or does something that convinces them that he is the he will often say don't tell anyone his identity as messiah has been kept quite secret up until now but now his entry into Jerusalem this public embargo on Jesus's identity as God's Messiah is lifted intentionally and unequivocally in what one writer has described as Jesus's blatant messianic self-advertisement we've many of us have been familiar with this story for a long time we've known of those kids it probably seems very normal to us that Jesus would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. But if you were tracking with Luke across the course of this gospel, or you were one of the disciples or one of the pilgrims on that day making your way to Jerusalem, you could not have avoided the standout scene and be captivated by what was going on with what Jesus was doing. It was intentionally designed by Jesus to do exactly that, to get everyone's attention and put on record something that was absolutely vital for everybody to realize. And the reality that Jesus wanted people to realize was that the long anticipated royal son from David's line, the Messiah, the one that the prophets had foretold would come, had now come in him.

10:34 So it's not less than a story about Jesus, gentle and meek and mild, entering into the city on a donkey, but it is so, so much more than that. It is Jesus publicly and unambiguously announcing himself on the scene as God's Messiah King moving to his capital in royal procession. The whole road is about revelation. Revelation about who Jesus was and revelation about what had come to do. It's finely tuned by Jesus to communicate that. It is a vision, not just simply of Jesus as king, but a vision of what kind of king he actually is. It's a vision of the character of the royal leader that we all need. You know, some of us this morning might be feeling the impact and the limitations of our earthly leaders or people who have positions of power over us in our lives.

11:36 And very often that impact is not necessarily the result of their competency. It's often the product of their character. And we don't know that their character is like that sometimes until we're on the other end of it. Well, this morning we are invited to meet a king, a leader, a boss, who invites us to look at not just his claim to be God's king messiah, But what sort of king is he? To put his character and heart on display. And on that basis, invite us to trust him with our whole lives and join the song of the pilgrims who were following Jesus down that hill. So I just want to look at three quick things this morning that reveal to us three characteristics that I think this text reveals to us about the kind of king that Jesus is. And the first thing is that he's a sovereign king.

12:36 He is a king who is ultimately in control of everything. He has complete authority. One of the recurring characteristics of Jesus that Lucas demonstrated is that he possessed an authority that people realized was literally out of this world. It was an authority that was more supreme than anything people had encountered before. when he taught people they experienced his teaching as having a quality and authority that they'd never encountered from their other teachers jesus demonstrated his authority over sickness and disease where with one command from his word he would put to end years of illness and disability and restore people as if they'd never had it in the first place authority over evil spirits over the sabbath over their forces of nature authority to forgive sin authority even over the dominion of death in raising Lazarus' daughter. And Jesus never needed to ask twice. The most powerful, uncontrollable, unrelenting forces that human beings ever come up against in their lives all recognized and responded to the supremacy of his authority and submitted instantly to his command.

13:53 And here in Luke 19, Luke makes clear that the reality of Jesus's authority is central to how he approached Jerusalem. Because the initiative and the instruction that a colt of a donkey be recruited for Jesus to ride into came expressly from Jesus himself. This wasn't an accident. Jesus didn't find a lonely donkey by the side of the road. He wasn't planning that day to adopt a donkey as a good PR exercise. This was intentional for him. In verse 29 to 30, he tells his disciples when they leave Bethany to go into the next village, which is probably Bethpage, and they will find a colt, a young donkey, a foal of a donkey. And they're to untie it and bring it to Jesus.

14:41 And if anybody asks them on what basis they're going to take this, they're simply to say, the Lord has need of it. And in a sense, Luke could have stopped there. And in verse 32, he just said, well, it happened exactly as Jesus had said it would, and they brought the donkey. But he doesn't do that. He repeats the detail over again. The disciples go into the village. They find the colt, as Jesus said they would, and they are asked by the owners, as they're going to take it, what are you doing? And they respond, the Lord has need of it.

15:23 That's it. Not, they're not to hand over money. They're not to try and negotiate. They're not to try and explain, oh, we're just going to borrow it and we'll look after it, stuff like that. We really like donkeys. It's nothing like that. All they're to say is, the Lord has need of it. That is the authority that they are to give that gives them the right to take this animal for Jesus to use.

15:51 Now here's the thing. In other words, Luke is emphasizing that at the core of Jesus' kingly approach into Jerusalem is this question. What right does Jesus have to take something that doesn't belong to him? What right does Jesus have to take something that belongs to somebody else? And the answer is, the Lord has need of it. In fact, the answer is, what do you mean it doesn't belong to him? Because the word in the original Greek New Testament that is used here for Lord is the Greek word kurios. But it's also a word that means owner.

16:42 Somebody who had absolute ownership and rights over something. So in verse 33, when Luke says that the owners challenged the disciples as to what they were doing on tying this coat. In verse 34, they answer not just that the Lord has need of it, but they say the owner has need of it. Kurios. And in recognition that there is this higher kurios, there is one who has more authority, more ownership rights over the things that belong to them, they submit to Jesus' sovereign authority as the ultimate owner, and they let the donkey go. They submit to the reality that his purposes, his plan, his ownership over what they have is more supreme than them. and I find myself asking the question what about me? what about us?

17:43 all of us have things in our lives that we care deeply about and it's so easy to convince ourselves that we ultimately own those things and have the right to have them it could be our time it could be our money it could be our children It could be our physical health, our career, our future. It could be anything. And one day, maybe very unexpectedly, the Lord makes clear to us that he is asking you for it. He is asking you to hand it over to him because he has need of it. Am I prepared to acknowledge that he is the ultimate and rightful kurios, the ultimate owner? Am I willing to surrender to his sovereign authority as king of my life? Not just as a theology in my head, but in a way that might actually cost me something. That might actually ask me to sacrifice something.

18:44 Jesus is a sovereign king who if he puts his finger on something in our lives and asks us to hand it over to him and his purposes, he expects us to recognize that it's because he ultimately owns it, not us. And he expects us to recognize his authority and surrender to it and say, your will be done. What sort of meaning would it give to our claim that Jesus is Lord and master if the first time Jesus asked us to demonstrate it? We don't. This whole first half of this passage is saturated with examples of submission to Jesus' authority. There's a submission of the disciples to go and do what Jesus asked them to do in getting the donkey. They've never been asked this before, but maybe we can understand that because they've learned to follow their rabbi. We've just talked about the submission of the owners of the donkey to Jesus' authority.

19:40 But here's the one that gets me. What about the submission of the donkey to the one riding on it? Don't miss the detail that Luke gives in verse 30. He says that they are to find a colt, a young donkey, on which no one has ever before sat. I don't know if there's anybody here who knows a lot about riding donkeys. I don't. I work with some of them in my job, but I'm not allowed to tell you that. but one thing I do know is this you do not just jump on the back of an unbroken donkey and expect it to go where you want to go I'm tempted to say if you did you would be the ass in that scenario but I'm far too holy to say that but just a quick internet search about tips for training your donkey as I did this week in my extensive research for this talk, the things you do to teach the Bible,

20:52 this is a direct piece of wisdom from a donkey whisperer. Bet you never thought you were going to do that this morning. Training your donkey requires patience and consistency and understanding the unique behavior and their temperament. Donkeys are naturally cautious animals. They need to develop a bond and a trust with whoever's working with them. So avoid noisy and crowded areas when working with them. And if you force them on and they're not sure, they will freeze and stubbornly remain immobile. And yet, when Jesus sat on this unbroken donkey, and that donkey felt the pressure of Jesus on its back for the first time.

21:44 It recognized its maker and master and it submitted completely to Jesus's authority and direction. This young unbroken donkey that probably never had a blanket on it, never mind an adult human, with all the noise and the chaos around it, walks forward at Jesus' direction as if it had done it a thousand times before. What kind of authority do you need to have in order to control that kind of stuff? Jesus is in absolute control. As Jesus descends the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives on that donkey, with the city on his horizon and all of the suffering and all of the uncertainty and all the questions and the chaos that it was going to bring, moving closer and closer and closer, he is not entering that city as a helpless victim of circumstances that will get beyond his control. He is entering as the true and rightful sovereign king in control of it all. Who says, no one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord because I have authority to lay it down and to take it up again.

23:03 The reality that Jesus is a sovereign king and absolute authority over every situation is good news. When you're approaching or in the middle of a world of chaos. Maybe like this donkey, you find yourself in circumstances this morning that you can't control. Or you didn't choose. where you're surrounded by new and intimidating things and you've no idea where it's going to take you or how it's all going to go. And that uncertainty and turbulence can generate fear in your heart, wondering what on earth the Lord has walked you into. Whatever those realities are in our life this morning, and I know for some of us, those sorts of things has hit like a flood in recent weeks. Can I say just as carefully as I can, do you think Jesus is sitting over that situation going, I just can't get it to go.

24:09 He is our sovereign king in absolute control, always working for the good of those who love him, always in every circumstance, working in our waiting, teaching us patience, chiseling away pride, weaning us off our autonomy and self-dependency, teaching us to trust him that he is in absolute control, teaching us that he is saying to us, you are not going forward into an uncertain future with me. I am in control, and there are nothing that you will face that will go outside the boundaries of the jurisdiction of my authority. I am king over your future. I will lead you. I will lead you and I will never forsake you. You just need to trust me as I take you there. My sovereignty, as Spurgeon, I think once said, will be the pillow on which you can rest your head no matter what's going on. Jesus is a sovereign king.

25:14 We'll do these last two just really quickly. He's also a servant king. This passage reveals that Jesus isn't simply a king who has authority. He's a humble king who comes not to be served but to serve. You know, nowhere else in the Gospels do we read of Jesus riding any animal. Jesus could have so easily just walked the one and a half, two miles from Bethpage down into Jerusalem, but he doesn't. He chooses to ride a donkey. Why?

25:46 Why choose to ride a donkey? Clearly, this is for a very specific purpose, where he knows that his actions will speak louder than any words. And Matthew tells us, he sort of lets us in. Luke doesn't quite go there, but Matthew lets us in. what exactly is going on here. And what is going on is that Jesus is fulfilling what the prophet Zechariah said about how Messiah would come to Jerusalem. 500 years before, Zechariah, inspired by the Spirit of God, said this about the coming Messiah. He said, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion.

26:27 Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you, Righteous and bringing salvation is he. Humble and mounted on a donkey. On a colt, the foal of a donkey. 500 years before this obscure reference to a donkey. A donkey as the means of transport on which God's king would come. And here is Jesus taking up this niche messianic prophecy in blatant self-advertisement that he is the king on the colt. He's the king that Zachariah said would come.

27:08 Here is Jerusalem's king coming to them. But listen again to what Zachariah said this king would bring when he does come. Zachariah says he would bring salvation. But the way that he would bring salvation to them is not through power or force or threat or riding roughshod over people's wills or concerns or questions or terrorizing people into submission. It would be through the way he would bring this salvation is through an incredible expression of his humility. Emptying himself of all the rights and expectations we would have of him as God's king and taking the form of a servant in great humility. Jesus is the coming king with all sovereign power in his hand. Rather than use that power to crush people,

28:10 he uses it to humbly invite them to himself by laying down his rights in bringing salvation through the greatest act of humility that the world has ever seen. And just in case we're in any doubt that this is really Jesus' character and not just a PR exercise to fulfill a prophecy. Luke goes on in verse 41 to 44 to tell us that when Jesus was descending the Mount of Olives, he drew near the city, he wept over it. He cries, if only you knew. He sees what the city is going to do. He knows that even some of them, despite their enthusiasm on this day, are going to turn around and elect to execute him outside of the city on Friday. And rather than take up a sword and crush his enemies under his feet. He weeps and says, if only you knew and could see the things that make for peace.

29:17 If only you knew the time of your visitation. Here is the conjunction of the triumphant. The sovereign, most high, with undiluted authority and control over everyone, is simultaneously the gentle and lonely one who longs for people to receive the salvation that he is bringing, whose hearts break over their spiritual blindness and rejection. As one author put it, make humble gentle. Jesus is not trigger happy. He's not harsh, reactionary, or easily exasperated. He is the most understanding person in the universe. The posture most natural to him is not a pointed finger, but open arms.

30:02 The same sovereign, powerful King Jesus is the same Jesus who breaks over our weakness and distance from him. He knows when we need to be handled gently. He knows when we're stressed or fearful or really struggling that we don't want anybody else to know. He knows when we feel like a bruised reed that's just about to fall over her. He knows when we are like a faintly burning wick of a candle that feels like it could snuff out at any moment. And as Isaiah said, he, a bruised reed he will not break. And a smoking, burning, faintly burning wick he will not put out. He is gentle and lowly alongside powerful and completely authoritative.

30:53 And finally, he is not just a sovereign king, not just a servant king, but he's a savior king. Jesus' pronouncement that he is the king on the coat that Zechariah talks about is not lost on any of the crowd. In verse 36, Luke says, they spread their cloaks on the ground. And the other gospels add that they tore down palm branches. That's why we call it Palm Sunday. And they spread them on the ground and they wave them in the air in expressions and recognition and homage to Jesus as their king. And that part wasn't choreographed by Jesus. It's the spontaneous free will response to conviction that this is our king coming to us, bringing salvation.

31:44 And as they go down the mountain, the praise cranks up to 11. And Luke says the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen. And they say, blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Mark adds that one of the songs on that playlist was Hosanna, which means save us. Hosanna, blessed is the king. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David. They knew what Isaiah had said the king on the colt would do. He would be a savior.

32:21 And their song is, Lord, do that. Save us. And the lyrics that the pilgrims are quoting is from a psalm that they would have known very well. Psalm 118. A psalm about the Lord being the one who saves people. A psalm about the king leading a procession of worshipers to the altar in Jerusalem. Here's some of the language of Psalm 118. This is the day that the Lord has made.

32:50 Let's rejoice and be glad in it. Lord, save us. There's your Hosanna. Lord, grant us success. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. From the house of the Lord, that's the temple, we bless you. The Lord is God and he has made his light shine on us with bows in hand. There's your branches.

33:10 Let's join the festival procession up to the horns of the altar. This is a psalm of people rejoicing in the salvation that their king is bringing. but don't miss where the psalm says that the king is leading the people to. He's leading them to the horns of the altar. And the horns of the altar of sacrifice in the temple were symbolic of God's might and power to save and forgive. That's why in 1 Kings 1, when Adonijah declares himself to be the king of Israel and then he realizes that David has appointed Solomon and suddenly he's in a fix, because he's a usurper, he runs into the temple and clings to the horns of the altar. Because that was where you went when you were seeking mercy and forgiveness and salvation. And as Jesus approaches in Jerusalem on the donkey, they realize who he is and what he is claiming to be.

34:18 And they say, Lord, take us to the horns of the altar. They use it as their praise. And that's why the Pharisees in verse 39 turn on Jesus and rebuke him and say to him, shut these disciples up. Come on, like we're all having a good time here, but that's gone too far. That's not appropriate. Tell them to be quiet. But if Jesus is the Messiah King leading people to the source of grace and forgiveness, then that song could never be more appropriate. Jesus replies, if they were silent, the very rocks would recognize it and cry out, this is a song you cannot silence.

35:09 Jesus affirmed in the strongest possible language that the claim that his disciples were making was true. I am the king who comes in the name of the Lord. I am the promised Messiah bringing salvation, and I will bring peace to my people by going to the altar. It's a moment for praise and rejoicing and dancing and singing. So Jesus says, open your mouth and join the chorus. But finally, what's so interesting is that when they get down the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron Valley and into the city, into the courts, we have what is probably one of the most anticlimactic moments in the whole gospel. Luke doesn't mention it in exactly this way. And if you were just following the flow of Luke, you'd have thought that when Jesus got into the temple, he would have overturned the tables and cleansed the temple.

36:09 It's more likely that Jesus did that in a day or two after this. What Mark says happened was that they got into the temple. Jesus had a look around. It was nearly even time, so he just went back up the road to Bethany to spend the night. What? Is that it? All this drama, all this proclamation, all this momentum, all this atmosphere, we're going to Jerusalem, we're going to the altar, and then you get there and nothing? What's it all about?

36:47 Well, perhaps we're meant to feel the anticlimax of coming to this temple and this altar, precisely because it's not the altar that Jesus is ultimately leading us to. Mentioned before at the beginning about drama series, and one of the most famous in the last 10 years is the supernatural epic Stranger Things. And of course, the final season of Stranger Things dropped over the new year. And a lot of people were watching it and a lot of anticipation for the final season. I'm not going to give any spoilers, but just to say that the reaction to the final episode was mixed. Make your own judgment. And because of that, a lot of people were on social media saying, this can't be the end. This can't be all we're led to.

37:40 In fact, there was a rumor going around social media that actually it's not the end. There's a secret episode about to drop in three weeks' time. They didn't want that to be the final destination. They didn't want what they were given to be the end of the story. And here's the thing. In getting to the temple, in getting to the altar that was in there, if we feel a sense of anti-climax with how Jesus responds to it and what he does, then we're meant to. Because he's going to lead us further. Because that's not the altar where he's ultimately going.

38:23 He is the king, leading the people in a procession, riding humbly on a donkey and yet having full sovereign power, but bringing in his hand a salvation, leading the people to the source of that salvation. But we're only at episode one of the final season. There's further places to go. And there's a different altar that he's going to. And when he goes there, the sacrifice will be himself. When he leads the people to that place, they will realize that the true altar that they will find that grace and forgiveness in, that source of complete salvation and peace with God, is him. The sovereign Messiah King would give himself up to die in humility and in doing so, would be the king who brings salvation, would be the true altar, the true Passover sacrifice, who would become the ultimate Lamb of God, who once for all takes away the sin of the world, who would become the true temple, a king who would surpass the current temple and altar, that his path would lead right through them to where those systems were ultimately pointing people to and had been pointing people to for centuries, all the way to the cross.

39:59 A humble king who did not come to be served, but to serve and give his life. A sovereign king who was raised again on the third day. And a saving king who this morning invites us to give our allegiance to him and join the chorus of those pilgrims who descended the hill with him by saying, Hosanna. Lord, save me. the king who calls us to complete surrender and submission. And yet in that place of ultimate surrender and submission, we realize that he is gentle and wise and lonely and will bring us to our salvation right to the point where it is complete. This is our king. Follow him where he is leading you.

40:54 Let's pray. Father, thanks for an opportunity to consider your word. Thank you for the picture of our king writing humbly and yet in absolute authority as our champion, bringing with him the salvation we all need, the peace that we all need. Lord I pray that today in this place that we would look at you and as we look at you and as we look at you throughout this week and reflect again on all that you've done that we would buy the knee to King Jesus and open our eyes and join the chorus and say blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord Amen