The Sign of His Triumph

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Transcript:

Turn to Matthew chapter 21. We’re continuing on with our study of the signs of His coming. If you’ve not been with us, we’re looking at not the signs of Christ’s second coming, but as we’ve talked about in some previous messages before we even started into this series, we believe in the hope of His second coming.

We believe that one day that Christ is going to come and He’s going to reign on earth. He’s going to redeem His people. He’s going to set right all the things that are wrong, and it’s going to be a glorious thing when Christ comes again.

But why would we have that hope when the whole world doesn’t believe it? It’s because the Bible tells us so. Well, why would we believe the Bible?

It is just a book after all, isn’t it? No, the Bible is full of prophecy, and the Bible was right about Christ’s coming the first time. So if you’re here with us for the first time tonight, that’s what we’re looking at these few weeks are the signs where the Old Testament points to Christ’s coming and how they were fulfilled in the life of Christ, from His birth on to His crucifixion and resurrection and even on to His second coming.

Tonight I want to talk to you about the sign of His triumph. The sign of His triumph. We talked this morning about the sign of His messenger, the fact that Isaiah and Malachi both predicted that a messenger would come and foretell the Messiah’s coming, and that He would be the one who would be the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, prepare you the way of the Lord, make His paths straight, and what that means for us.

Tonight I want to talk about, we’re kind of skipping over the miracles of Christ’s ministry here and getting really toward the end of His ministry. Why the prophecy of His messenger and some of the ones we’ve talked about concerning His mother and His birthplace, why those matter is because people talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. These are not things that Jesus, if He was not God, could have come and said, okay, I’m going to deliberately fulfill these things so that people think I’m the Messiah.

Unless he’s God, and he is, but if you believe he’s not God, he could not have chosen who his mother would be. If he’s not God, he could not have chosen his birthplace. I didn’t get to choose mine.

I don’t know that anybody in here got to choose theirs. You didn’t get to choose your birthplace. You couldn’t convince somebody like John the Baptist, who obviously was somebody who was going to say what he really thought and what was on his mind.

You couldn’t convince somebody like that to go and tell people that you’re the promised one, you’re the Messiah, if you weren’t really it. So these are not prophecies that you could fulfill, and that’s important because the one tonight we’re going to look at, Jesus fulfilled an Old Testament prophecy, but he did it on purpose. Say, well, doesn’t that work against the claim that he’s the Messiah?

Because if he fulfilled it on purpose, anybody could have done that. That’s true. Anybody could look at some of these prophecies that you could, on purpose, plan to fulfill, but nobody did.

And the fact that Jesus took steps to make sure that every prophecy of Scripture regarding the Messiah was fulfilled is just another evidence of the fact that He is the Messiah that the Old Testament talks about, that He is the promised King that the Old Testament talks about. I need to turn with you to Matthew chapter 21. I did what I told you not to.

Turn to Zechariah. The world has kind of a skewed idea, I think sometimes, of what a great man is, what a great king is, what triumph or victory are. It has some wrong ideas.

I think, when I was thinking about this earlier today, I think of the movie that came out in, I believe, 1935 called The Triumph of the Will. I don’t know if any of you have ever heard about it. From 1936 on to the end of the World War II, it was required viewing in German public schools.

The Triumph of the Will was a movie that was made in and around the 1935 Nuremberg rallies of the Nazi party regarding Hitler’s rise to power. And what they saw was his godlike greatness, they would say. That’s their impression, not mine.

I just want to make that clear. They made this movie that made Hitler look like he was a deity. And they called this movie, in English, they called it the Triumph of the Will.

Because at that point, they looked at Hitler as being a triumphant, victorious person who was going to restore the greatness of Germany. He later on would acquire Austria and Czechoslovakia of the Sudetenland without firing a shot. And every time that happened, every time he bullied another country and the Germans didn’t have to go to war to do it, the people just grew even more enamored with who Hitler was and said, this truly is a triumphant man.

He’s led Germany to victory. And people looked at him as though he was a great figure. And anybody that can be great in the world, I’m sorry, anybody that can have great power, anybody who can get what they want, anybody who can force others to bend to their will, The world tends to see as a great person.

And if we can’t do those things, we’re nobody. I don’t have a million dollars and probably never will. And to some people, that means I don’t count.

It means the rest of us don’t count. We can’t do anything for them. I don’t hold levers of political power any more than anybody else when I go and vote.

But beyond that, I don’t wield any power. We don’t either. And to some people, that would make it seem as though we don’t count.

And the world looks at people like a Hitler or a Napoleon at their triumphs says these are great men. These are leaders. They look at great captains of industry like the man who was mentioned earlier.

Is it Steve Wozniak? Is that from Apple? Steve Jobs.

I always get them confused. They’re both with Apple, aren’t they? Or they were.

Okay, they were. Steve Jobs. People look at him and say, this is a great man because he had wealth and he had power.

And in the end, what did it get him? We have a skewed idea of what victory is and what greatness is. And yet the Bible talks about something that we call Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

And we call it his triumphal entry. And you know, that’s got to be confusing to the world at large because Christ comes in, and we’re going to talk about this in just a moment, Christ comes in triumph into Jerusalem. The people are ready to boot the Romans out and put Christ on the throne, put him on the throne, make him their king.

They’re ready to do all these things. And it looks like things are going well for him, and then within a week, the same people who shouted Hosanna are shouting crucify him. And by the world’s standards, Jesus Christ would not be a great man.

You realize that, right? We worship someone that the world thinks of as just a humble Galilean carpenter who came because he thought he was the Messiah and came to be a king and then got himself killed. And if they don’t believe in the resurrection, they think that was the end of it.

How in the world can we call it the triumphal entry into Jerusalem when it ended in the crucifixion? That’s what we’re going to talk about tonight. Matthew chapter 21.

And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the Mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples, saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Loose them, and bring them unto me. And if any man say ought, or anything unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them, and straightway he will send them.

And all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy king cometh unto thee meek and sitting upon a donkey, and a colt the foal of a donkey. And the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them, and brought the donkey and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon. And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way.

Others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way, strewed them in the way. And the multitudes that went before and followed cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest. And when he was come into Jerusalem, all this city was moved, saying, Who is this?

And the multitude said, This is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee. So if we’re there in this time and we don’t know how the story ends, and we’re there with Jesus, it looks like it’s a great triumph. That Jesus has come in and he’s told his disciples as they’ve left and they’ve come into Jerusalem, he tells them, Go over into the neighboring village where you’ll find a donkey and a colt and go get them and bring them back to me.

And if anybody says anything to you, tell them that the Lord has need of them. Get them loose and bring them to me. And straightway he will send them.

And the other gospel accounts talk about the fact of this happening, that somebody said something to them. They said, the Lord, if I remember the story correctly, that the Lord needs this. And Jesus said he’ll send it, and they did.

But it says they went and all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, Tell you the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy king cometh unto thee, meek and sitting upon a donkey, and the colt of the foal, and the colt the foal of the donkey. And the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them. They did what he said.

He tells them, Go and get this donkey and this colt and bring them back to me in fulfillment of this prophecy. And they went and got this donkey and this colt and they brought them back to him. And so he rides into Jerusalem on this donkey.

He said, What in the world is that? We think of donkeys as being work animals. We think of them as being not as prestigious as, say, a horse.

We would, in our mindset, we would expect a king to come riding in on a great white horse. From what I’ve read, if I understand it correctly, back in their day, that was the opposite. They would expect a king to come riding on a donkey, not only because it said it in Zechariah, it said it in Zechariah because that’s what they would expect a king to ride on.

And as their availability shifted, I believe, supply and demand over the years, and horses became less scarce or less available than donkeys, and donkeys became the transportation of peasants, we would expect a king to ride on a horse, but it was not so at that time. They would expect a king to ride in on a donkey. And so he gets on this donkey and he rides into Jerusalem.

And this is what we call Palm Sunday. It said, a very great multitude spread their garments in the way. Others cut down branches from the trees and strewed them in the way.

So the people have come out and in recognition that, hey, this man could be our king. They took their garments and they cast them in the road. Kind of, if you think back to some of the hokey 40s Hollywood movies where the guy and the girl are out and he throws his jacket on the puddle so she can step across his jacket.

And I always wondered why didn’t they just both go around the puddle? I guess I’m not romantic, but why ruin the jacket? Anyway, and they would toss the jacket down in the puddle so she could step on it and not dirty her shoes, which, I don’t know, would already be dirty from the street.

Well, this is what they were doing. It was a sign of immense respect and a sign of immense honor that these people were giving to Jesus. They throw their garments down in the street so that the donkey, not even the donkey he rides on, would have to dirty its hooves.

And some of them cut branches from the trees, and we know them to be palm branches, palm fronds. and they would strew them in the way. I love how sometimes the King James uses words that we only use in the south anymore.

Words like strew and reckon and things like that. But they strewed them in the streets for him to walk on, for the donkey to walk on. And they waved them in the air and they shouted, Hosanna to the son of David.

They recognized him as a descendant of David and as a rightful heir to David’s throne. As we’ve talked about in some previous weeks and we’ll talk about again later. They recognized him for this fact Because these people, so many of these people had seen and witnessed and heard the things that Jesus did and said over the previous three years.

They’d seen the miracles that he had done, and so many of them, I think, had come to the conclusion that maybe not he was God or the Son of God, but certainly God was with him, God was involved in what he was doing. So many of these people were attracted to the show they thought he was putting on and said, God’s involved somewhere, this must be the king we’ve expected. because the king we’ve expected is to be a political leader.

He’s to be a king who’s to throw the Romans out and set up a perfect state here. So they shouted, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest. And when he was coming to Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? There were those out there who had been around him and had seen the things that he did and recognized him, they thought, as the king that they were expecting. He was the king that they were expecting, but not the kind of king they were expecting.

There were some who recognized him as the king they were expecting, and when they began to do this, the city of Jerusalem came out to where he was, and people thronged there, and they said, who is this person that we’re about to sweep into power and crown as our king? And the multitude said, this is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth and Galilee. And this is what we call his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, because at that time it looked to the world like a triumph.

It looked like here he is, he’s come in to set up the kingdom that we’ve always dreamed about, And he’s come in on the back of a donkey, and they’ve waved their palm fronds at him, and they’ve shouted, Hosanna. And they’ve recognized him not only as a king, but as a prophet. And they were ready to sweep him into power.

And again, as I said a moment ago, a week later, these same voices who said, Hosanna in the highest, said, crucify him. What a difference a week makes. When they began to hear things that they didn’t like, the crowd turned on him.

And so from a human perspective, how in the world can this be viewed as a triumph? Because this was really the beginning of the end. This is the beginning of the week that would lead to Jesus’ death on the cross, which incidentally was, in their day, in the Roman mindset, the most humiliating way that somebody could be killed.

Later on, Paul, because he’s a Roman citizen, tradition tells us that he was beheaded. He was afforded the mercy of being beheaded. But Jesus was crucified between two thieves, because crucifixion was a punishment reserved for the common, the lowest of the low.

And so why do we view this as a triumph? Part of the reason that we view this as a triumph is because it is not only that it leads to the crucifixion, and we as Christians understand what the crucifixion means for us, but also because of the fact that this was the fulfillment of prophecy and points again to the fact that Jesus is the Messiah of God. The problem was not with Jesus and his ability to do the things that they expected.

The problem was with their expectations because they missed what the Messiah was really all about. Turn with me back to Zechariah chapter 9 for just a few minutes. We’re going to look at the prophecy here that Zechariah gave regarding the Messiah.

And to give you some background on Zechariah and what he was dealing with, because it helps us to make sense of what they’re talking about if we know the time that they lived in. Zechariah wrote around the time that we know of Ezra and Nehemiah, that he was around in the time when they were starting to rebuild Jerusalem. After the captivity that we’ve talked about so many times before, when God said, I’ve had enough with the Israelites, one last-ditch effort to get their attention once and for all, to get them to leave these idols alone, and he allowed the Babylonians to come in and conquer them and carry them off into captivity for 70 years, and it got their attention.

And they came back at the end of that 70 years, and they began to rebuild Jerusalem. They began to rebuild the walls of the city under Nehemiah. They began to repair the temple under Ezra.

And Zechariah wrote around this time, around 100 years before Malachi, about 200 years before Isaiah, just to tell you where he fits in with the people that we talked about this morning. It’s around 500 BC. So he’s writing to the exiles who come back and are rebuilding Israel.

Starting in Zechariah 9, verse 8, he says, And I will encamp about mine house because of the army, because of him that passeth by, and because of him that returneth. And no oppressor shall pass through them any more, for now I have seen with mine eyes. So he’s talking about a day that will come when Israel will no longer have anybody oppressing it.

when God himself will encamp around his house because of him that passeth by. No oppressor shall pass through them anymore, for now I have seen with mine eyes. In verse 9, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!

Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, thy king cometh unto thee. He is just, and having salvation, lowly, and riding upon a donkey, and upon a colt the foal of a donkey.

And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace unto the heathen, and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth. As for thee also, by the blood of thy covenant, I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit, wherein is no water. And this points to the Messiah.

Even the Jews recognized that this passage points to the Messiah. They just disagree with us over who that Messiah is. But what he’s talking about in verse 8, starting out, is a time when Israel will not be oppressed any longer.

If you’ve read any part of the Old Testament, it always seems like Israel is at war with somebody. Now, when that happens in somebody’s personal life, and they’re just always being attacked by somebody, and then the next person’s attacking them, I tell Christian all the time, not about her, but I tell Christian all the time, you know, at some point, you’ve got to really start thinking, maybe it’s not everybody else in the world, maybe it’s me. There are some people that just seem to be always in a fight with everybody.

Israel, I don’t think, is one of those situations where maybe it’s them. I think Israel really is one of those situations where, hey, maybe it is just everybody else. Because God, it’s clear from the Old Testament that people would hate Israel.

And from the very beginnings, they’ve been attacked. Now, that’s not to say Israel’s been perfectly just in everything it’s ever done, because if that was the case, God wouldn’t need to punish them so much. And sometimes God punished them using other countries.

But Israel was constantly under attack from various places, constantly at war with other people. It’s been their history. And proof of the fact that I heard somebody, I’d never thought of this before, but somebody I heard recently said one of the proofs for God’s existence is the state of Israel.

Because there’s no group of people so hated in the history of the world, so small, surrounded by so many multitudes of people who hate them with such ferocity, and yet they’ve survived for all these thousands of years. You can’t do that without God’s hand on you. I mean, look at all the ancient civilizations that have died out.

But God was with Israel even when they were attacked, even through all these things, and pointing to the fact that one day, it will be a remarkable time in Israel’s history when they will be oppressed no longer. That still hasn’t happened. So are we not talking about a future Messiah?

Well, he goes on to say in verse 9, Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion. We’ve seen that in the passage in Matthew. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion.

Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, thy king, your king, comes unto you. He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding upon a donkey, and upon the colt, the foal of a donkey.

So their king was to come into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. Well, who cares? Anybody can do that.

That’s one of those prophecies that anybody could fulfill. I could go riding into Jerusalem today on a donkey. Well, not today, it’s too late.

But I could go riding someday into Jerusalem on a donkey and say, hey, I’m here to be your king. I fulfilled what’s said by Zechariah. However, I could do that, but I couldn’t fulfill all the other prophecies.

Nobody else has ever fulfilled all the other prophecies. And the prophecy here in Zechariah about him coming into Jerusalem on a donkey matters because if he had not done it, he could not claim to be the Messiah. And so he could have done all these other things that were impossible for him to do because they happened regarding his birth, happened regarding things that other people were going to do to him.

But if he didn’t fulfill this prophecy, well, that’s prophecy of the Messiah that he didn’t fulfill. God must be talking about somebody else. You know what?

Every prophecy of the Messiah, Christ has fulfilled. He did come riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. He is just and having salvation.

Well, if any man can be described as just in the history of the world, it is Jesus Christ. Even those who hated him at his trial, at his arrest, and we’ll talk about this some more in the coming weeks, even those who hated him and wanted him dead didn’t have anything bad that they could say about him. They had to make things up. These people were watching him, knew his every move over the last three years.

There were people, we don’t know a lot about the time when he was growing up from about the time he was, well, from when he was born to the time he was 12, from the time he was 12 to when he was about 30. We don’t know anything about those intervening years, but there were people all around him. He grew up with somebody.

Somebody knew Jesus, and yet they could not come up with anybody who had anything credible to say against Jesus Christ. You want to talk about somebody being just. He fits the bill better than anybody in history. It says here that he is just and having salvation lowly and riding on a donkey. He was riding on this animal that the kings would ride in on, and yet Zephaniah, I keep confusing those two.

Zechariah describes him as being lowly. In spite of coming in the regalia of a king, he was humble. How many people with that kind of power just within their grasp are still humble?

And again, at his trial, his arrest within the week, he didn’t fight with them. He didn’t argue. He didn’t raise a word in his own defense, but he stood there and let the truth speak for itself.

That’s a mark of humility I don’t even understand, that I can’t even aspire to. So if we want to talk about, oh, anybody could ride in on a donkey into Jerusalem. Who could ride into Jerusalem on a donkey and still be humble, still be lowly when the people are ready to crown him king?

Who could be just the way God describes being just? Only Jesus Christ. He fulfilled this better than anybody else who could ever ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace unto the heathen, and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth.

As for thee also, by the blood of thy covenant, I have sent forth prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water. It talks again about a time where he will speak peace, where he will do things that haven’t been done yet. And it’s easy to say, well, see, he didn’t fulfill these things.

And I looked at some Jewish websites, and I don’t mean to pick on the Jews. I love the Jewish people. I disagree with them on who the Messiah is.

But I looked at some Jewish websites this week, and they still say, He’s not the Messiah, because He didn’t do such and such. A good example that I read just a little bit ago, talking about prophecy, says if you see two mountains in the distance, it’s easy to look at them and say, they’re right there in the same place. They’re right next to each other.

But you get closer up to them, and you realize they could be miles and miles apart, these two mountain peaks, and even have a wide valley in between them. I’ve learned that to be true since we’ve moved here to the mountains. I’ve never lived anywhere near a mountain in my life, So that was only speculation.

But now I’ve seen it to be true. The mountains can look very close together. They look like they’re in the same place and actually be very far apart.

And so talking about two things in prophecy, they can look from our perspective far away like they’re right close to each other. They’re talking about the same event, and there could actually be a wide space of time in between what they’re talking about. So the fact that he didn’t do all of these things, that he hasn’t done them yet, I should say, doesn’t prove that he’s not the Messiah.

Because the New Testament says it will happen and tells us how. And it also talks about, as for thee also by the blood of thy covenant. Well, who else could God be talking to about the blood of their covenant other than the one who said, this is my blood shed for you?

Talked about it being a New Testament in his blood. It’s Jesus Christ, the one and only Jesus Christ. And so we could look at this triumphal entry into Jerusalem and say, really, it was the beginning of the end. It was what marked the turning point in Jesus’ ministry where he went on from here, and then he lost. He lost everything, all the earthly power and prestige and riches that could have been his.

He lost them. This is the beginning of the end. But if we look at it from what Zechariah is talking about, it’s proof yet again.

It’s evidence yet again that he is the king who one day will do these things. Very briefly, just in the couple minutes we have left, I want to look at the three points I have here. I promise we’ll be brief.

The first is that the Messiah, in this sign of his triumph, the Messiah would come to Jerusalem riding on the colt of a donkey. As I said, that’s important even though anybody could do it, because if he didn’t do it, he couldn’t be the Messiah. So every little prophecy matters whether anybody else could have done it or not, because if he hadn’t done it, it would make him not the Messiah.

That’s why he was so insistent that this will be done in fulfillment of what was spoken. The second is that the Messiah, Zechariah indicates the Messiah would be their king. Whether they recognized it or not, whether they realized it or not, the Messiah would be their king.

See, they said, we’re going to put Jesus in power. He’s our king. He’s the son of David.

He’s supposed to go on the throne. Hosanna in the highest, and they were ready to crown Him king? Well, they were right about Jesus being their king, but a week later they turned on Him because they misunderstood what being their king meant.

And being our king, for Jesus to be our king, doesn’t mean that He is an earthly king, that He’s a military and political ruler who’s here to set up dominion and rule over us. It means that spiritually He is our king of kings. It means He is the greatest and highest power in the entire universe and that we voluntarily submit to Him because He is our king.

And it tells us also the sign of his triumph coming into Jerusalem on the donkey tells us that the Messiah would bring salvation. It says not only that he is, says not only to tell Jerusalem their king, her king comes to her, but he is just and having salvation. Say that when the Messiah comes to you, this king who will ride in on a donkey, when he comes to you, he will have salvation with him.

He will have salvation with him. Folks, so many people throughout history have claimed to be the Messiah of the Bible. So many people in history have claimed to be a Messiah of some other sorts.

So many people in history have claimed to have a new way to God, to be the one who can tell people how to get to God, but it’s always the same old lie just repackaged. And the lie is this, do good enough, do good enough, do good enough, do well enough. Do enough good things and you’ll be all right.

It’s the same old message. But he came bringing another message that Paul summed up later on by saying, For it is by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. That Jesus came having salvation with him because he was the means to salvation.

And when he came as the king and he was crucified, and it looked like it was the end of everything, it was actually the fulfillment of what he was supposed to do. The cross, it sounds so awful to say, but the cross was his triumph because the cross was the ultimate fulfillment of what the Father had sent him for. And it says that the Messiah had to bring salvation.

And if Jesus had not been crucified, there would not have been salvation for anyone. There would be no salvation for anyone today. And so we can see this as a sign of His triumph.

We can see this as a representation of Jesus Christ, a prophecy of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament, because the Messiah was not just the earthly ruler that they expected, but He would be a spiritual King who would bring salvation. And folks, there’s nobody else who’s even come close to credibly claiming that they could bring salvation, Because what they bring is still the same lie that mankind has tried to follow to no avail for all of human history, that we can be good enough, that we can be like God. And it’s not true.

It wasn’t true in the Garden of Eden. It’s not true today. There’s only one way that salvation is brought, and it’s through Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ shed His blood and died on the cross as a payment for our sins to bring salvation, because there was no other way.

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