I invite you to turn with me this morning to John 12, John chapter 12, as we read together the first 19 verses, our focus being on the portion that is entitled the Triumphal Entry verses 12 through 18, John chapter 12 beginning at verse 1, hear now the word of our God. Six days before the Passover, Jesus arrived at Bethany where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus' honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard and expensive perfume. She poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected. Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year's wages. He did not say this because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief. As keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. Leave her alone, Jesus replied. It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me. Meanwhile, a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came not only because of him, but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, for on account of him, many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in him. The next day, the great crowd that had come for the feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the King of Israel! Jesus found a young donkey and sat upon it, as it is written, Do not be afraid, O daughter of Zion. See, your king is coming, seated on a donkey's colt. At first, his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him. Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. Many people, because they had heard that he had given this miraculous sign, went out to meet him. So the Pharisees said to one another, See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him. There ends the reading of God's Word. May He add His blessing to it. Well, beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, what a reason to rejoice, to give thanks, and to sing. And indeed, that's exactly what the people did. Even though we know that they misunderstood what was going on, yet the actions of the people and the shouts of the people were not misdirected. They were directed in the proper place. And the waving of the palm branches, as Leviticus 23, verse 40 teaches us, was an expression of joy, an expression of triumph. Here, an expression of the joy of victory, an expression from the people that all will now be better from now on because of this One. And with the shout of Hosanna, an expression of the joy of victory and prosperity. But you see, beloved, the focus here is not on what the people were doing, first of all. But the focus here is upon what Jesus was doing for a people who had watched and waited for so very long. Again, even though they did not understand, even the disciples, we are told, did not understand until after Jesus was glorified, which really is somewhat amazing if you think about it, because in verse 7 we read that Jesus told Judas and we suppose the other disciples that His burial was coming. And in Mark 10, we read that six days before this Passover, so just a couple of days before this very event on this Sunday, He told them plainly what was going to happen to Him when He entered Jerusalem. He would be handed over, He would be mocked and spit on and flogged and killed, and three days later, He would rise again. But they did not understand. And even though they did not understand exactly what was going on, Jesus, here on this occasion, directed their eyes to Himself. He brought their gaze upon Himself through this very episode as the long-expected King enters Jerusalem. And He enters Jerusalem on this day, first of all, as the fulfillment of Scripture. Now, we know that Jesus taught them plainly that the Old Testament Scriptures pointed to him. For example, in Luke 4, we read that Jesus, one Sabbath day in the synagogue, he opened the scroll of Isaiah and read, The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And then he closes the scroll and he says, Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. And in John 5, verse 39, He says, You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about Me. He had plainly taught the disciples that the Old Testament Scriptures pointed to Him. But here on this day, He visibly demonstrates that the Old Testament Scriptures pointed to Him as now His time had come. Now his time had come, contrasted with his early ministry. You may recall that it seemed that throughout his ministry, as we read the Gospel accounts, he seemed to try to hide his identity from the people. But now he accepts their praise to him, especially as king, which he had not done before. In John 6, after the feeding of the 5,000, we read, after the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, surely this is the prophet who is to come into the world. Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make Him King by force, withdrew again to a mountain by Himself. And you may recall that many times as we read about Christ's miracles, after He would do some sort of a miracle, He would say either to the recipient of that miracle, or to those who observed it, He would say, don't tell anyone what you have seen, or don't tell anybody what has happened. Why? Because the Scriptures tell us the time had not yet come for Him to be delivered up. But now, the attention of the people upon Him was orchestrated by Himself. He draws it upon Himself. In Luke 9, verse 51, we read, As the time approached for Him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. Resolutely. Another translation says He set His face toward. He turned intentionally toward Jerusalem. He was determined. And we know it's because Jesus was fully conscious of the task for which He came. A task that His will was completely in harmony with. As we read in John 17, verse 4, He was fully determined to accomplish the work that the Father gave Him to do. And that work included the fulfillment of Scripture. on this occasion, by getting the donkey. Now, we might not think that that's such a big deal. We might think, well, that's just a little bit insignificant. It's just all part of what took place. But it is significant. Now, John, we know, doesn't give us all the details of what took place, but he points out certain facts. And from Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we learn that Jesus knew exactly when, where, and how the two disciples would secure the young donkey for him to ride on. We also learn there that along with a multitude with Jesus, there was a multitude that came out of Jerusalem, most likely it is believed a multitude of Galileans who were pilgrims for the Passover, those who did not yet know about the hatred for Jesus that was rising up in Jerusalem. And they are the ones that are spoken of here that met him. And that when these two throngs came together and began to shout praises to God, that He was already riding on the donkey. But the point that we need to understand, beloved, is that Jesus orchestrated this scene. He put it all together. And He did it for the fulfillment of Scripture. Presenting Himself in an unmistakable way and His presentation of Himself was recognized by the multitude. They got it. Well, they didn't understand it fully. But they got it. They recognized his presentation of himself from Zechariah's prophecy. That's where the words of verse 15 come from. Do not be afraid, O daughter of Zion. See, your king is coming seated on a donkey's colt. Again, John does not use everything that Zechariah said there. But what he needs to point out that this is indeed the king. Zechariah's prophecy, we know, was a prophecy of what would happen to Israel in the future, and there he prophesies of the coming of Israel's king. And here comes Jesus riding on this young donkey in fulfillment of Scripture, and the multitudes recognized it. But they also recognized his presentation of himself through His demonstration of power. Verse 17 says, Now the crowd that was with Him when He called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. They were continually testifying about Him. And we can understand that, I think, because I don't believe that you can see something as absolutely remarkable and as astonishing as what Jesus did with Lazarus and keep quiet about it. There is no way. And therefore, the multitudes were continually testifying about it to whomever they came in contact with. They were spreading the Word. Not by Facebook or text message or email or even telephone. Or telegraph, for that matter. But face to face. Word of mouth. Did you hear? There was this guy named Lazarus. He died. He was in the grave for four days already. Been dead for four days already. And here comes this Jesus, and He says, open the grave. He says, Lazarus, come forth. Wow! Lazarus came back to life. Can you believe it? What power! They recognize Him through His demonstration of power, but not only in the raising of Lazarus. Luke tells us that the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen. beloved the multitudes witnessed his power raising the dead giving sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf and speech to the dumb they witnessed his power over the demons casting out demons they knew the word of Isaiah that Jesus had applied to himself that we read a little bit earlier and they put all of this together you see for a logical conclusion the young donkey the fulfilled prophecy His power could only mean one thing. He must be the long-expected King. And therefore, He is met in the second place with the acknowledgement of His purpose through their shouts. They acknowledge the purpose for which Jesus came. Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the King of Israel. You see, with those words, the people left no doubt as to the meaning, at least in their interpretation. They left no doubt as to the meaning of all that was taking place, and that was that in their interpretation, this one was the very Messiah for whom they had been waiting for so long. And therefore, it's fitting that they used the words of a Messianic psalm, Psalm 118, which is the last of the Hallel, the praise psalms that were sung at the Passover. They use these words in honor of this King. They declare Him to be the King of Israel, the one who would sit on the throne of His father David. And they acknowledge Him through the words of Psalm 18 to be one with power. Blessed. They call Him blessed. And the idea of that word, beloved, is to attribute power to. And that's what they were doing. They had recognized His power And now they were describing Jesus as the blessed one, as the powerful one. And they were saying of His power, that His power was, is, and ever shall be. And they were giving expression to their desire for the happy and the prosperous success of His kingdom. As their words were also an acknowledgement that He came to do God's will. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Psalm 118, verse 26. This one who came in the name of the Lord, came representing the Lord. He was the one promised by the covenant God. He came to carry out the will of His Father to do that which He was sent to do, which in the people's estimation was to save His people. And they give acknowledgement to that as well. That He had come to save. Hosanna! Now we don't find that word itself in Psalm 118, But verse 25 says, O Lord, save us. O Lord, grant us success. And the word Hosanna we know means literally save now. The people recognized this one who was riding on a donkey. They recognized him as the Messiah who was foretold, the one who came with power, who came in the name of the Lord to do the will of the Lord, who came to save his people. But they took all of these things and they put them together and they had a mistaken notion of what the Messiah would be like. The excitement of the multitudes for Jesus, again, was not misdirected. But it was indeed misunderstood. The multitudes misapplied Scripture to fit their own ideas of what the Messiah's kingship would be like. You see, beloved, we know that in their expectation, they expected the Messiah to reign as an earthly king. They expected him to bring them salvation from their earthly enemies and problems and struggles. They expected the Messiah would deliver them from earthly oppression from the Romans. They expected that he would once again raise up Israel as God's chosen people, as a showcase before all the other nations of the earth as he had done so many years before. They expected that the Messiah would provide earthly peace and prosperity for his people, the very same bill of goods that some have preached throughout every age. Today too. Maybe you listen to some of them on the TV. There are those today who still preach a name-it-and-claim-it religion. A health and wealth gospel. They will say, God wants you to be successful in this life. And if you believe, if you just believe, you will be healthy and wealthy and life will be grand with no sickness or hunger or need. Or if you are sick, you will be healed if you just have enough faith. And when all of that doesn't happen as has been promised, then so many reject Him. Like some of those who shouted just a few days later, crucify Him. The multitudes rightly praised Jesus as being the Messiah, but they had a mistaken notion because they did not understand their true need. They did not understand that He did not come to wage war against Rome to take them by force. He did not come to claim an earthly throne. He did not come to be a political leader. Indeed, Jesus said in Matthew chapter 10, Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. So is there a problem here? Is there a contradiction here? Absolutely not. The war He came to wage. The sword He came to bring is against sin. And Satan, beloved, He came to fight the battle that you and I had already lost by ourselves. John the Baptist said of Him, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And the Passover with the sacrificial lamb was a constant reminder of the need of the blood for another to satisfy God's justice, to remove His wrath, to save God's people from death. And on this very day, Jesus entered Jerusalem, most likely with thousands of other lambs that were being led into Jerusalem that day to be sacrificed a few days later. On this day, Jesus enters Jerusalem, as it were, along with all these other lambs, but He enters as the true and the final Passover lamb because we needed peace with God. We needed that enmity that existed between us and God removed, that enmity because of our hatred for Him, because of God's wrath against us, we needed that to be removed. And that's what Jesus came to accomplish, as He would give His life as a ransom for many, while being pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities, and having the Lord lay on Him the iniquity of us all. Beloved, the shout of the people was an accurate shout. The multitudes cried, Hosanna, save now. But they didn't understand their true need. And they didn't understand just how great that salvation would be. They didn't understand on that day that King Jesus would indeed take His throne, but it would be by way of the cross, and in doing so, He would bring them peace with the One with whom they really needed peace, namely God. They didn't understand how great and eternal His victory and His rule would be, but by the grace of God, we do. Because the disciples came to understand sometime later. They came to understand, and by the grace of God, they wrote down this truth for you and me today. So there's no question for us as to why Jesus entered Jerusalem. There's no question as to what He came to accomplish. There's no question about the fact that He did indeed accomplish it for you and me who believe. But on that day, yet they did not recognize. They did not recognize as the long-expected king entered Jerusalem that he was in the third place. By his very entrance, he was pointing to the nature of his kingdom. That it would be a kingdom of peace. And that kingdom of peace, beloved, is seen in the king's accommodations. If he were entering according to the people's expectation, we would have expected that he would be on a fine war horse. Or that he would be in a beautiful chariot. We would have expected that all the dignitaries and the city officials would have flocked along with the multitudes out to greet Him, to thank Him for coming, but they didn't. The people who came were those to whom He had ministered throughout His ministry. Oh, indeed, there were some Pharisees there, but for them, they were solidified in their idea that He must go. We would have expected a military entourage, His secret service like our President receives. We would have expected his army gathered with their weapons of war ready to do battle. But the reality of Christ's kingdom is seen in that lowly donkey. You see, beloved, even a king rode a donkey. In 1 Kings 1, when David announced that Solomon was going to succeed him, he had Solomon put on his own mule and led throughout Jerusalem. But that donkey, you see, is a symbol of peace. And Zechariah's prophecy is a prophecy of peace. 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. I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war horses from Jerusalem and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea. And from the river to the ends of the earth, the nature of His kingdom, beloved, was that it was a kingdom of peace accomplished through His death. Dear people of God, Jesus presents Himself as the long-expected Messiah King. And we know beyond a doubt that He knew that the pomp and the circumstance of this day was going to lead directly to the cross. And it was on that emblem of suffering and shame that He was punished. He suffered. He died for our sins to pay the debt that we owed to God. It was on that cross that He was made, as Paul says, to be sin for us. It is there that He became a curse for us with the result so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him, so that He might redeem us from the curse of the law. And therefore, as Paul says in Romans 5, Beloved, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what you and I have with Him by faith. God's anger has been removed far from you and me. Instead, His favor is poured out in rich abundance. Beloved, our salvation was planned by God from before the creation of the world, as Paul says in Ephesians 1. And in verse 7 there he says, In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. And that salvation was not only planned by God, but also promised by God to those who believe. Paul says in Romans 10, If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But that salvation has not only been planned by God and promised by God, but also protected by God. Again, though the multitudes misunderstood, yet the palm branches that they waved, the shouts that they gave on that very day were in anticipation of the joyful triumph that Jesus was about to secure and of the eternal prosperity that He was about to earn for His people so that we might be triumphant in Him eternally as we are more than conquerors. And so that we might be eternally secure in Him because nothing can separate us from His love. Dear people of God, as we prepare to come to the Lord's table, the Lord willing, on Friday evening, that preparation includes that you and I are called to recognize this table as a table of salvation. That's what we are to see as we gaze upon the table of the Lord. A table of salvation. Salvation accomplished by Jesus Christ, accomplished for those who by the illumination, the gracious illumination of the Holy Spirit, truly recognize their desperate need for a Savior. And that Jesus Christ has done it all. He has left nothing undone of that which you and I needed to stand before our God in righteousness. He has done it for those who trust in His blood and righteousness alone. But this table, you see, also points to Christ's kingdom. It points to that kingdom of peace with God. That kingdom of love and fellowship with God, which is already ours by faith right now. And that kingdom of peace and love and fellowship that you and I enjoy with God includes prosperity in this life. And it also includes that for you and me as believers, it will be better from now on for us. Not in the way that the multitudes expected. Not in the way that the health and wealth preachers are preaching. But indeed, that kingdom of peace and love and fellowship with God includes prosperity for us in this life, that everything will be better from now on for us in this life, simply because we belong to Him. Because we are His treasured possession. Because He cares for us both now and forevermore. And because He gives you and me comfort and contentment and strength for every situation of life that we may face, good or bad, for everything that we may face in this world that still despises Jesus and would crucify Him again and again and again. A world that is ignorant to the true fact that their doom is sure. But our eternal security is sure also in Christ Jesus. And beloved, on this day which we call Palm Sunday, may we learn from the multitudes so long ago. May we learn the excitement of being in the presence of the only Savior. May each one of us be excited about that in such a way that we cannot keep our mouths closed. That we just have to be like the multitudes of that day who continually testify about Him. And may we rejoice to come to the table of Him who perfectly carried out His Father's will for our salvation. And may we rejoice that He has brought us into His prosperous kingdom which will have no end. Beloved, the reality of the situation on that day was that Jesus entered Jerusalem as our only hope. He entered Jerusalem to settle the score that existed between us and God. We could not begin to pay that eternal debt to God, but Jesus Christ paid it all. He entered Jerusalem that day to find out just how bad the rejection of God would be so that you and I never have to. He entered Jerusalem that day so that we might no longer be on eternity's death row. Indeed, we too are guilty with the crowds of shouting, crucify Him. But praise be to God that because of our faithful Savior through Jesus Christ. And the work of His Holy Spirit. Those shouts from our lips have been changed to alleluia, what a Savior. And therefore, beloved, may our song of praise forever be all glory, laud, and honor to Thee, Redeemer King. Amen. Let's pray together. Dear Heavenly Father, You have reminded us once again that Your Son, our Savior, is the very one that You spoke of through Your servants, throughout the history of Your people in the Old Testament. That He Himself is the very fulfillment of Your Word, Your promise to send the Messiah, to crush the serpent's head, to save Your people from their sins. Indeed, You have reminded us as well in a fitting way of the excitement of the multitudes of that day. And even though they did not understand, Father, You have given to us an example through them of the excitement, the joy, the rejoicing that is to be ours because of Jesus Christ, our precious King. And we pray that You would lift us up in such a way that we would give expression to that joy day by day through laughter, even through tears, in joy, even in sorrow, that in every situation of life we might rejoice in Jesus Christ the King, the One who reigns forever and ever, the One who indeed cares for His people in such a way that our protection is perfect and it is secure. Father, we thank you that we too are triumphant in him, that you now call us your children for Jesus' sake. Thank you again for this blessed gift through Jesus Christ our Lord. In his name alone we pray these things. Amen.