Palm Sunday

SERMON - Behold, Your King Comes to You!

INI

Text: Zechariah 9:9-10

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem; the battle bow shall be cut off. He shall speak peace to the nations; His dominion shall be ‘from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.’”

In Christ Jesus, who once came and who once again will come, dear fellow redeemed:

When I mention the word “king” of what or of whom do you first think? Do you think of crowns and carriages, or of legends and famous historic figures of the past? Perhaps you have very few thoughts at all, because kings really have little to do with our lives in twenty-first century America. In the context of Palm Sunday, however, our thoughts immediately turn to the scene depicted in our Gospel reading for this morning—Jesus entering Jerusalem seated upon a donkey and being proclaimed “the Son of David” coming as a king in the name of the LORD! (cf. Mt. 21:9)

Earthly kings can be tyrants, but not King Jesus! Earthly kings reign for relatively short periods of time and then die passing on their power to successors, but not King Jesus! Earthly kings come and can be ignored, but not King Jesus, for He is ultimately in control of everything and will sit in judgment over everyone! BEHOLD, YOUR KING COMES TO YOU! Just as prophesied of old He came in humility, and He comes to proclaim peace!

I.

Our text is but one of many Messianic prophecies found in the book of Zechariah, which itself is one of twelve books in our Old Testaments that we have come to classify as the Minor Prophets. Zechariah lived in the 6^th Century B.C. and was among those Jews who returned to rebuild Jerusalem and its temple after the Babylonian Captivity. Zechariah was sent by God primarily to encourage his fellow Jews to rebuild the temple so that the worship of the one, true God might be resumed and the promise of the world’s one and only Savior might be preserved.

This prophecy is striking, because it presents our King Jesus in two ways that reveal His sharp contrast with worldly kings. The first is that He would come in great humility. An earthly king forced to arrive in humble circumstances would hardly be celebrated. Imagine a king today arriving at an official function in a slightly rusted 1999 Ford Taurus, such as my own. The news media would hardly take notice, and everyone would infer that such a king would hardly be worth considering. Yet Zechariah writes: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Jesus came in humility, not because He could not have come in power, but because He was called upon by His Father in heaven to fulfill an eternal plan for our redemption. Jesus, as the One through whom everything and everyone was created and upon whom all things and all people depend, certainly had the power and deserved the glory, but for our sakes He refrained from revealing that power or assuming that glory on that first Palm Sunday so many years ago.

Jesus came in humility entering Jerusalem riding not on a snorting black stallion decked out in silver and silks, but rather upon the back of an unbroken donkey’s colt covered with the outer garments of a number of fishermen amidst the cheers of sinner and social outcasts. Why did Jesus do this? Why not use the power He so plainly possessed to put His opponents in their rightful place? Why not seize the glory that was rightfully His and force those opponents to acknowledge that what the crowds were crying out was indeed the truth—that He was the “Son of David” and truly the blessed Son of God? The reason is found in the words uttered by Jesus just the day before in Jericho, when He told His disciples, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mt. 20:28).

Jesus came in humility through the gates into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday, knowing that six days later He would be walking out those same gates carrying His cross on the way to Calvary. This He would do as a humble sacrifice for us and for all of mankind. He was willing to bear our sins and to become our substitute in order to endure the punishment we so justly deserve in view of our sin and rebellion. As the apostle Paul would later tell the Christians in Corinth: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them…. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Cor. 5:19a, 21).

Jesus came in humility and would be mocked and spit upon, scourged and crucified, because His kingdom was not of this world and His servants did not come to fight for Him (cf. Jn. 18:36), for by His death He was destined, as the apostle John would later write, to be the propitiation (the satisfactory payment) for our sins and those of the whole world (cf. 1 Jn. 2:2). The angels of heaven looked on in horror, as Jesus was treated as a common criminal and was ridiculed and reviled by His lessers, even though the parchment over His head recorded the truth: “This is Jesus the King of the Jews” (Mt. 27:37).

Jesus came in humility—“just and having salvation” for us! Let us not think lightly of Jesus’ suffering and death, for He is our King! It was through His suffering and death that He protected us and won a victory for us that we otherwise would not enjoy and without which we would live in eternal regret. The hymn-writer Savonarola asks in one of our Lenten hymns: “Do we pass that cross unheeding, breathing no repentant vow, tho’ we see Thee wounded, bleeding, see Thy thorn-encircled brow?” I would hope that each of our responses would be, “Of course not!” He then goes on to express why we should not have a careless attitude towards our King, when he explains: “Yet Thy sinless death hath bro’t us life eternal, peace, and rest; only what Thy grace hath taught us calms the sinner’s stormy breast.” (The Lutheran Hymnal, 145:2) My dear friends, BEHOLD, YOUR KING JESUS COMES TO YOU! As Zechariah prophesied, He came in humility!

II.

As he likewise prophesied, He comes to proclaim peace! The Holy Spirit moved Zechariah to write: “I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem; the battle bow shall be cut off. He shall speak peace to the nations; His dominion shall be 'from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.'” These words present the second way in which King Jesus contrasts so strikingly with worldly kings. Worldly kings speak of peace, but seldom produce the same. Should they achieve some measure of that precious commodity, it is always limited both in time and in extent.

Zechariah lived during the time of the Persian Empire—the largest and most splendid of the ancient empires. It produced some of this earth’s greatest kings, and yet the peace they established lasted but a few hundred years and extended only to what now are a few dozen countries in the Middle East, which today is the center of most of our world’s conflicts. Jesus lived at the time of Rome’s greatest empire. He lived at the beginning of what historians call the Pax Romana (the peace of Rome), but it, too, only lasted a few hundred years and only included the lands bordering upon the Mediterranean Sea. England tried to bring peace to a world-wide empire during the 19^th Century, but its kings and queens failed. Our own country, the United States, has tried to bring peace to the modern world in the 20^th Century and continues to attempt to do so now, but our attempts, as all others, are limited in both time and scope.

Jesus comes, however, to proclaim peace! He does so, first of all, by defeating His enemies decisively and so removing their threat from us His people! The “chariot” driven by the “horse” was in Jesus’ day the most effective machine of war known to man. Today, it would compare with the most effective tank the military might possess. This terrible threat, Zechariah says, Jesus cut off from “Jerusalem”—a name representing all believers, including you and me! When Jesus died after suffering on the cross and then rose again on the third day, He effectively defeated our greatest enemy Satan and disarmed his deadly allies—destroying, as Zechariah says, their “battle bows!” The apostle Paul speaks of this in his Epistle to the Colossians, when he writes: “You, being dead in your trespasses…, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them” (Col. 2:13-15).

While Satan is still that “roaring lion,” of which the apostle Peter speaks (cf. 1 Pet. 5:8), he has effectively been defanged. We do not have to fear him, but rather with the Spirit’s help can overcome him. While the world continues to appear to be so seductive and powerful, yet the apostle John was moved to write near the end of his 1^st Epistle: “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (5:1-5) Can the world still do us harm as believers? Oh, yes, it can harm our bodies, but it can never harm our souls! It can harm us for a short time, but it has no control over us throughout eternity—only King Jesus has that control!

Jesus comes, therefore, Zechariah says, to proclaim peace to everyone—the “nations!” This past Friday Larry Hansen, one of our former members and presently a member of our CLC Board of Missions, was with us at our Men’s Breakfast. He shared with us a slide presentation on our synod’s work in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. We saw pictures of university students, Maasi tribesmen, children at a school for AIDS orphans, and congregational groups of various tribes from those different nations of East Africa. Last Sunday after our Mission Festival potluck meal, I shared with the congregation pictures of my trip down to Peru and explained a bit of the work we are doing there through the efforts of Dimas Vivanco and Daniel Pfeiffer. If you read through the various bulletin inserts outlining our synodical mission program, you will find further information on work being done in India, Myanmar, and Nepal. What is the common thread throughout—Jesus is coming through the message we preach to proclaim peace—sins forgiven through the shedding of His blood! What causes the smiles on the faces of the people in the pictures we see? Jesus is coming and His dominion within the hearts of people extends as Zechariah once prophesied: “from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.”

My dear friends, Jesus is our King! We took comfort in that fact once again this past week as we met for the funeral of one of our oldest members, Edna Schweim. Jesus overcame death for Edna, relieved her of her earthly trials, and ushered her soul into the presence of His heavenly Father! No earthly king or ruler of any sort could accomplish that, yet Jesus did for Edna, even as He promises to do so for each of us! BEHOLD, YOUR KING JESUS COMES TO YOU! Rejoice! Amen.

—Pastor Paul D. Nolting
To God alone be the glory!