Sean C. Capparuccia
originally published April 1, 2020
I think Palm Sunday is one of the greatest Sundays in the year, next only to Easter… and Pentecost runs a close third. It marks the nearing of the end of the Lenten season, which, if observed thoughtfully, having spent time in introspection carefully examining the condition of our heart and our soul, has by now put us in the mind to be set free. To see the sunshine after 40 days of cloudiness, so to speak. It is perhaps a little auspicious that the Covid19 pandemic hit the world during Lent as it has given us all a more tangible understanding of the sorrow and lament that underscores this season. And it should make us all look forward to the coming weeks when the threat of pestilence has lifted. Even if it does not happen by this Palm Sunday, though, we have faith that it will come.
Palm Sunday is the day to remember Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, that holy city of God, accompanied by shouts of “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” And with joy we see the King of Glory riding in to His beloved city. But it is also a bittersweet memory because we know how it ends; we know what happens after His triumphal ride into that city. We know that many of the very people who praised Him today will soon be shouting “Crucify!” We know that in just five days our Lord who is now ushering in the Heavenly Kingdom will be hanging on a bloody cross feeling the very pain and loneliness of hell. That is Palm Sunday. Hear then the Gospel accounts of the triumphal entry of Jesus.
Read Luke 19:28-48
The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the Word of our God stands forever.
Oh, the depths and the riches of God’s Word. There are a great many aspects of this story that can be taken and expounded upon; each one could take up the worship hour. It is a beautiful story and it begins with a child (foal of an ass), and ends with a child (the children at the Temple) and at the heart of the story, as is the heart of the story of all of his-story, is salvation.
A DONKEY
Jesus sends two disciples to Beth’phage[1] to get a certain donkey “which no one has ever ridden.” The Lord required (needed) a virgin foal, one upon which no one else has sat. And doesn’t that make sense here? In the beginning we see Christ making His triumphal entry into the world of men through a virgin womb; and later, “At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid” (Jn 19:41). I don’t think there was any miracle involved in Jesus instructing the disciples to get this donkey; it could very well have been set up prior to this. The owners knew who the Lord was, they just may not have known these two particular disciples. “When you see someone untying it, ask what they are doing, they will say, ‘The Lord has need of it.’” It was all part of the Plan. You cannot read the Scriptures, compare it to history, and come away without realizing that God, from eternity past, has had a plan, and still has a plan, and accomplishes that plan. Mary was set apart from eternity to bear the Christ. Sometimes people hail her as a beautifully faithful follower of God who so graciously and willingly said “Yes” to bear Jesus.[2] And she most certainly was a devout Jew, and later Christian, and will always be hailed as one who is “blessed among women” (Lk. 1:42) but as I read it – and more importantly, as it is written – Gabriel came to her and said, “Behold, you will conceive in your womb, and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus” (Lk. 1:31). Gabriel wasn’t a divine emissary coming to woo Mary into agreement with God’s plan; He was the holy Messenger coming to tell Mary what was going to happen. And because she was a follower of God, she readily agreed. Mary was set apart to bear the baby Jesus; the tomb was set apart to bear the crucified Lord; and this young donkey was set apart to bear the King of the universe. God will accomplish His purposes.[3]
But why a donkey? Why would the sovereign Lord and Creator of the universe possibly need a donkey? Jesus could have produced any type of vehicle He desired for His grand entrance into the city of God: a chariot, a war horse, even a Panzer. But He wanted – He ‘needed’ – the foal of an ass because this would fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah spoken nearly 500 years before:
“Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion [Jerusalem, as representative of Israel; namely the believing members of the covenant[4]]! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, gentle [lowly, full of suffering, cf. Is. 53:3] and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey [a lowly animal]” (Zech. 9:9).
While it was an act of humility to ride a donkey, it was not an act of humiliation. Kings certainly rode horses in times of war, but in times of peace the donkey was the ride of choice.
Popular psychologist and heretic Joel Osteen made the comment, “If Jesus were here today He wouldn’t be riding around on a donkey. He’d be taking a plane; he’d be using the media.”[5] Hopefully you can see how utterly wrong the man is; Jesus absolutely would ride a donkey if it was the fulfillment of prophecy. The Lord Jesus was not about being cool and up-to-date and savvy. He was about bringing continuity to the plan of salvation that God had prepared from all eternity. Listen, Isaiah tells us that Jesus was
“despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Is. 53:3).
Kind of like the proverbial trash man I suppose. At least that’s how it used to be – the worst job to have. But you’d sure miss him if he wasn’t there and all your trash started piling up. No, Jesus wasn’t here to win popularity contests, he came to win souls.
Jesus rides in on the foal of an ass, and thereby – because of Zechariah’s prophecy – in sight of all proclaims Himself as the long-awaited King. Up until now He has kept Himself on the down-low. On numerous occasions He forbade His disciples to tell others what He has done-
He raised a dead girl to life: “tell no one about this.” Mt 9:23
He heals two blind men: “tell no one about this.” Mt 9:30
He was transfigured on the mountain: “they kept it to themselves.” Lk 9:36
“My hour has not yet come” (Jn 2:4) He explains. Once before, when He perceived that the multitude was about to take Him by force and proclaim Him King, He “withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone” (Jn 6:15). He was following the plan.
So, He’s riding a donkey- now His hour has come and He has forced on all people a magnanimous decision: either hail Him as King or crucify Him for blasphemy. But He is also establishing in plain view of everyone the type of king He is: a lowly one who comes to bring peace. The peace foretold. Not a vanquishing king of might as we may understand it. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place” (Jn 18:36). Does that mean that Christ’s Kingdom and man’s kingdoms do not mix?; is this Scriptural proof that Christians should not be involved in politics? Absolutely not! When Jesus told Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world He meant simply that His kingdom was not based on man’s laws nor did it derive its authority from man. In fact, quite the opposite: the governments of men derive their authority from God – as Jesus told Pilate: “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above” (Jn. 19:11).
We just had our political primaries and now we will continue to suffer through a long and arduous battle between Democrats and Republicans, and probably even among Republicans and among Democrats – Lord have mercy on us all! But come November – and I can only say this with full trust in the Lord – the one whom God wants on America’s throne(s) will be placed on America’s throne(s). God’s ways are not our ways (Is. 55.8). God’s purposes for America will be carried out through the election process. Nevertheless, every Christian in America has an obligation to our present freedom to exercise the right to vote and at least attempt to make things better for the Church by those votes.
STONES
As Jesus processed along down the road to Jerusalem, the people began picking branches off trees and throwing their garments in front of Him, rolling out the red carpet if you will, and shouting
“Hosanna!” (which means, “Save us, we pray.)
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!”
“Hosanna in the highest!”
“Save us,” they cry. Yet in reality the people of Jerusalem don’t know who their true enemy is. The Pharisees, the “religious leaders” couldn’t stand to hear the commotion from the disciples: “Rebuke your disciples!” they tell Jesus. “If they are quiet, the stones [lithos] will cry out.”
Charles Spurgeon writes:
“Could stones really cry out? Indeed they could if He who freed the vocal cords of mutes also told the stones to lift their voices. And if they spoke, what a great testimony of praise it would be to the wisdom and authority of Christ, who created them by the word of His power. Should we not then speak highly of Him who made us anew?”[6]
Jesus had remarked on stones to the Pharisees once before when He said, “Do not think you can say to yourselves, `We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham” (Mt. 3:7-10).
Now again He looks at the stones, and He is probably looking to the stones that build Jerusalem, the stones of the Temple, not just the rocks that were lying around them. We often think here of the stones giving praise if the people don’t, and well they might. But everywhere else in Scripture the term “cry out” does not mean in praise, but rather in anguish or in judgment.
To a young man who caused premeditated bloodshed, “The LORD said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground” (Gen. 4:10).
Against the man who lives by unjust gain, “The stones of the wall [of his house] will cry out, and the beams of the woodwork will echo it. Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime!” (Hab. 2:11-12).
Now “the stones will cry out.” They don’t “cry out” with praise to Jesus in the absence of human praise, but with an invocation to divine wrath against man’s silence.[7]
If the praise and the worship that is due the very Creator of all things is at this moment silenced, the very stones of Jerusalem (i.e., walls, Temple, etc.) will cry out as a witness against them (the ones who are silent, and by ext. the ones who silenced them.) The King’s subjects must praise Him!
This then leads us right into the next part of the text: Jesus’ lament and prophecy. He is approaching the Holy City, it has come into sight, and the Lord begins to weep. He didn’t just sniffle, He sobbed, as the Greek word eklausen can be translated.
“[Oh Jerusalem,] if you had only known what would bring you peace…” They are about to throw it all away. Here, standing among them, is their Savior and they have no idea because they don’t think they need a Savior; they are doing just fine. 4,000 years of salvation history has finally reached its climax as the very One who was promised to Adam and Eve in the garden as a Remedy for their sin has come. They are too blind to see the Healer. Yes, they want a king, a king who will save them from their political enemies, and bring peace, but as I said before, they don’t know who their true enemy is. They don’t realize their deepest need: salvation from sin. And when we talk about salvation from sin, we mean the sin of unbelief. When John the Baptist said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn. 1:29), notice he said the “sin” of the world, not the “sins” of the world which are so very many. What is that “sin of the world”? It is unbelief; a refusal to acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior.
No, these people don’t need a Savior like that. They say, “Look at these mighty walls, our mighty city, Jerusalem, she will protect us.” But Jesus can see ahead to A.D.70, just 40 years away. Those walls are going fall to the ground; and those stones will cry out in judgment against your arrogance!
I want to point out something I think is significant. Turn, if you will, to Matthew 21:5. Listen again to the prophecy from Zechariah,
“Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious] having [endowed with] salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zech. 9:9).
Did you notice anything? When Matthew quotes Zechariah he leaves out the part that says he is “righteous and victorious, having salvation.” Is something wrong with our translations? No, Matthew was just paraphrasing the quote and most Jews would have known the rest anyway. But isn’t it interesting that the very thing left out by Matthew is the very thing that is left out of Jerusalem: they didn’t know they were in need of salvation.
And Jesus knows even now on this very day standing just outside the city walls that they will not repent and believe in Him; and He weeps. He knows that the Holy City and the Temple and the thousands upon thousands of people will be destroyed.
“If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace, but now it is hidden from your eyes. [You will soon be destroyed] because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you” (Lk. 19:42-44).
The peace He brought was reconciliation between God and man but they could not see it. They thought they could achieve reconciliation through sacrifices, through rites and through religious works.
At the Temple Jesus chastises the establishment of their greed and flagrant selling of “religion.” They have no business selling the sacrifices; that belongs to others. The Church is not to profiteer from the selling of sacrifices; the Church cannot sell grace.
For the next few days Jesus was at the Temple teaching and healing. And the children, like children do, continued the chant and shouting of “Hosanna to the Son of David!” even after everyone else had stopped. The religious leaders told Jesus to “Shut these children up” And Jesus answered from the Psalms, “From the lips of children and infants You have ordained [or, perfected] praise.”[8] Woe to them that try to silence the pure praises of children. Woe to them who “grow out of” praising Jesus.
You talk to some people who are nostalgic about their childhood when they used to go to church, or Bible school. They sang the old songs, “I’m in the Lord’s Army…” and “There is Sunshine in my heart today…”, “the B-I-B-L-E…” Little children don’t care who’s listening to them; they aren’t hyper-aware of the political statement they are making in confessing Jesus as Lord; they don’t think that maybe within earshot is someone who is an atheist or a Muslim and who does not share their religious opinion and who may be “offended.” In fact, children who love the Lord don’t even think of it as an ‘opinion’, it’s just plain fact! And when someone exerts their own opinion and tries to inform that child that ‘Jesus as Lord and Savior’ is just a fairytale that you can believe at home but not here in this institution [fill in your own blank], why that child looks up at them with a look of such confusion as though that person just told him that the sky was green or that bugs are good to eat. But somehow they “grow up.” It amazes me that so many are of the opinion – an opinion contrary to Scripture – that infants and children can’t really “love the Lord.” They think they have to be 12 years old or so to make a true profession when it just so happens that that seems to be the exact time when their hearts – immersed in an anti-Christian culture – begin turning away from Him.
This story was relayed to me awhile back:
(Michael:) I knew a young boy who, his whole elementary years wanted to be a missionary to China. That was his dream. He talked about wanting to learn Mandarin so he could go there and preach the Gospel. In sixth grade he made his profession, later that year he was baptized. By seventh grade he grudgingly came to church; his whole demeanor had changed; his hair grew out like a mop; when he did come to church he wore shorts, a T-shirt, his sneakers. By eighth grade he wasn’t going to church anymore but he was one of the “cool kids.” May God bring him back into the fold.
But do you see the point? Children want to praise God! Their hearts are pure, they are open and free. Like the foal of the donkey, a child’s heart is un-ridden; it hasn’t been broken and calloused. It hasn’t seen the evil of this world and the deficiencies of the Church as the people of God. It hasn’t yet learned to compartmentalize and psycho-analyze; it hasn’t learned sarcasm and indifference. And yet, despite knowing all of this, for some strange reason, it has become a cultural mandate to expose our children to all of these things at the earliest possible age so they can, what? know the difference between right and wrong? Friends, nowhere in Scripture are we instructed to expose our children to what is evil. In fact, we are told just the opposite! Teach them what is good; what is excellent.
“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good” (Rm. 12:9);
“but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil” (Rm. 16:19);
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things” (Phil. 4:8).
May we, like children, continue to praise our Lord with abandon.
In Revelation John writes,
“After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb’” (7:9-10).
Palm branches will continue to be waved for the Lord Jesus who is King. There’s a lot to take from today’s passage but let us not neglect the heart of the matter: salvation belongs to our God. Christ our King has set up His spiritual Kingdom in this world and all those who are His subjects at this time have an obligation to praise Him. As we go about our daily chores and tasks let us remember our first duty: To worship our Savior and bring Him praise. I Peter 2:9 reads, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” Out of utter spiritual darkness, spiritual death even, God calls you so that, listen here, so that “you may declare His praises.”
As the days sometimes seem to just trudge on and we are waiting for our Messiah to return we need to maybe think of every day as Palm Sunday in a way. This world will try at every turn to suppress the praises of God’s people. But I tell you, if we are silent for too long, the stones will cry out. All of creation awaits its redemption – not just man. The lion is waiting for the time when he can lay down with the lamb; the asp awaits peace with the infant.
Paul tells us that,
“the creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rom. 8:19-21).
See, all of creation awaits its redemption and freedom from bondage and the children of God, the children of the covenant will lead it. May we never lose our zeal for Christ, or our fervor for His praise. And may continue to always look to our children to learn how to love Jesus. Happy Palm Sunday.
“To see evil, and to be unable to remedy it because of human perversity, is the greatest anguish of all. To see the wickedness and be baffled by the waywardness of the evildoer is enough to break a heart. The father is cast down with anguish when he sees the wrongdoing of his son. What prompted His tears were the eyes that would not see and the ears that would not hear… But in disobeying His will, men destroy themselves; in stabbing Him, it is their own hearts they slay; in denying Him, it is their city and their nation that they bring to ruin. Such was the message of His tears as the King goes to the Cross.”[9]
[1] Interestingly, this is correctly pronounced Bayt‘-fag–ay“
[2] “If Jesus is the King of the whole world, Mary is also Queen of the whole world: therefore, says St. Bernardine of Sienna, all creatures who serve God ought also to serve Mary; for all angels and men, and all things that are in heaven and on earth being subject to the dominion of God, are also subject to the dominion of the glorious Virgin.” St. Alphonsus De Ligouri, The Glories of Mary. (Spring Grove, PA: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, 2015), 3.
[3] “…so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Is. 55:11). Cf., Ge. 50:20; Dt. 9:5; II Kin. 19:31; Is. 9:7; 37:32; Is. 44:28; Rv. 17:17.
[4] Keil & Delitzsch, Minor Prophets vol. 10, 576.
[5] Brainyquotes.com under ‘donkey quotes.’ Some random search I did. As a side note, the triumphal entry is the only place where Jesus is said to have ridden a donkey.
[6] C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, March 23, evening. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Pub., 1994).
[7] TDNT, Kittel, ed., vol. IV, 270.
[8] Psalm 8:2 “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.”
[9] Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ. (New York: Doubleday, 1958, 2008), 378.
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