Day 7 of 14 — The King Enters Jerusalem

Today is Palm Sunday, and now we step into the week everything has been building toward. For six days, we’ve traced this thread through the Old Testament, and before we move into the final week, it’s worth stopping to see how all of it comes together.

It all started in Genesis 3, right after the fall. God made the first promise. That promise was that He would send One who would crush the head of the serpent, but He was also going to be wounded in the process.

Then we come to Genesis 22, where that promise starts to take shape. God chose Abraham’s lineage as the line through which the Deliverer would come. And when Abraham was told to offer Isaac, he was obedient, and God provided a substitute. He provided a ram that took the place of Isaac.

Then Exodus 12 showed us the same pattern, only this time much larger. It took on the scale of a nation. The blood of an unblemished lamb was to be spread on the doorposts, and that blood stood between the household and the judgment of God.

Then Isaiah showed us the servant and what His death would do and why it had to happen, that He would be pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. He would bear the sins of many.

Then, a thousand years before the cross, David gave us the words of that suffering servant Himself in Psalm 22. And yesterday, we looked at Luke 9:51. The One all of this had been pointing to, Jesus, up until this point in Luke, had been ministering. But then He stops, sets His face toward Jerusalem, and starts to walk. That was the turning point that led to this week.

Everything we’ve looked at this week has been getting us ready for this. The promises and patterns were all moving toward one person and one week in Jerusalem. And today, that week begins.

And it begins with a King riding into the city on a donkey.

Zechariah wrote about this moment hundreds of years before it happened.

”Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, Humble, and mounted on a donkey, Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah 9:9)

Then Matthew shows us that it happened exactly as God said it would. Jesus sent two disciples ahead to find the donkey and the colt, told them exactly where they would be, and then He rode into Jerusalem on the colt while the crowds spread their cloaks and branches in the road and shouted,

"Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest!" (Matthew 21:9)

It’s a powerful scene, and the crowd clearly believed they were welcoming their Messiah. But the kind of King Zechariah described, and the kind of king the crowd was looking for, were two very different things. Zechariah said their King would come humbly, riding on a donkey. A conquering king rides in on a warhorse. A king who comes in on a donkey is telling you something about the kind of kingdom He’s come to bring, but the people lining the road weren’t seeing it yet. They were shouting for a political deliverer. They wanted a son of David who would overthrow Rome and restore Israel’s glory. But what they were actually watching was the Lamb of God entering the city where He would be killed.

And that tension runs through the whole final week. The same people shouting “Hosanna” on Sunday would be shouting "Crucify Him" by Friday. And the separation between those two shows how much they misunderstood. Jesus went into Jerusalem exactly the way Zechariah said He would. The prophecy was fulfilled right in front of them, and they still missed it.

Every scripture we’ve walked through over the last six days has been leading here. And the One riding into Jerusalem on the donkey knew exactly what this week would cost Him. He set His face toward the city, and the crowd waving palm branches had no idea that the King they were welcoming had come to die.

The final week begins here. Tomorrow, we go to the temple.