The Messiah Reveals Himself

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I was talking to somebody before church this morning about how my kids, the five-year-old and the three-year-old, have developed really overactive imaginations here lately, to the extent that the 10-year-old and the 11-year-old never did. I was installing a new sink in our bathroom the other day, and I’m under the cabinet with my legs hanging out and Jojo kept bringing me imaginary balls and imaginary cupcakes and imaginary ice cream cones. And I had to stop and slither out from under the cabinet to get these imaginary things.

And finally, I just, I had a light bulb of an idea and I put an imaginary basket next to my legs and said, baby, put them in the basket. All right. And that, that worked for a little while.

then she told me my ice cream was going to melt. So I don’t know if you’ve ever had melted imaginary ice cream, but it’s not great. Charlie, we have to remind him the things that he watches are not real. You know, all the squirrels in our trees are not Sandy, Sandy squirrel from SpongeBob.

You know, they’re not real. Sorry to spoil any of your day. Batman, not real. You know, Vampires, not real. These things are not real. And he’s so used to us telling him, these things are not real, that I guess he assumes everything we talk about is not real, because the other day we were talking about Jesus, and Benjamin and I were, and he looked at me and Benjamin and says, he’s not real, is he? And the apologist in me, just something exploded in my head, and Charles said, he’s five.

He doesn’t understand. Okay, but we need to clarify, he’s real. And there are people today, there are, you can go in the YouTube comments section today and you can find people who will say Jesus is not real. I beg to differ. There is, for who he was at that time in history, there’s adequate historical evidence that he’s real. There are all sorts of misconceptions that float around that probably, what I was talking about just a moment ago, some of these questions, some of these things that people struggle with, there are so many misconceptions about Jesus that float around that we want to be able to gently and graciously and kindly help people answer.

One of the most common things that we will hear people say is that Jesus Christ never claimed to be God, that he never claimed to be the Messiah. If you’ve ever watched a Bible documentary on the History Channel, there are people on there saying Jesus never claimed to be God. And they’ll hold the book of Mark out as an example of this.

They’ll compare it to the book of John where it screams about his deity and say, in contrast, Mark never, and Mark being the earliest, it shows us that this is just something his followers made up later on. Don’t you believe it? What we’re going to look at today is more evidence.

We’ve spent over a year looking story by story, and as we take them together, we see the case that was being made that Jesus Christ is God the Son. But we’re going to see today where Jesus rips the veil off and makes it public exactly who he claimed to be. Now, I think the reason why the gospel writers got more and more emphatic about it as time went on to the point where you have John spelling it out for us is because sometimes we need things spelled out for us and people still weren’t getting it.

And so John said, I’m going to, you know, here’s the deity of Christ for dummies, basically. I’m going to make it so clear that everybody can see it. But it’s here in Mark also.

When we get to the triumphal entry, when we get to the triumphal entry, Jesus is clearly and unmistakably revealing himself to be the Messiah, the Son of God. And I want to show you three things today in the text that tell us what this claim was that he was making, that show us that he made this claim. And so we’re going to be in Mark chapter 11 this morning.

Mark chapter 11. We’ll look at the first 11 verses of this if you’ll turn there with me. If you don’t have your Bibles or can’t find Mark, it’ll be on the screen here behind me.

But once you find it, if you’ll stand with me as we read from God’s Word together, Mark chapter 11, these first 11 verses, Jesus does three things that show us that he was claiming to be the Messiah. It says in verse 1, Now when they drew near Jerusalem to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and he said to them, go into the village opposite you and as soon as you have entered it, you will find a colt tied on which no one has sat. Loose it and bring it.

And if anyone says to you, why are you doing this? Say, the Lord has need of it. and immediately he will send it here.

I want to explain something that I didn’t put in your notes. I saw this later on. Matthew mentions the donkey, the mother, and the cult.

Mark and Luke do not. It’s not a contradiction. Matthew, being a tax collector, likes to count things.

We saw this with the story of Bartimaeus. He said, here’s how many people were here. And Mark emphasizes the one that’s important.

He says, let me tell you about the cult that he wrote on. So it’s not Mark saying there’s only one donkey and Matthew says there are two. It’s just a difference of emphasis here.

So if anyone says to you, why are you doing this? Say, the Lord has need of it, and immediately he will send it here. Verse 4 says, so they went their way and found the colt tied by the door outside on the street, and they loosed it.

But some of those who stood there said to them, what are you doing loosing the colt? And they spoke to them just as Jesus had commanded. So they let them go.

Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their clothes on it, and he sat on it. And many spread their clothes on the road, and others cut down leafy branches from the trees and spread them on the road. Then those who went before and those who followed cried out, saying, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. And by the way, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record just a little bit differently what the crowds were shouting. Can you guess why that might be?

because everybody in the crowd is shouting something different. They weren’t chanting. They were all shouting praises, and they wrote down things that they heard.

Again, not a contradiction. Verse 11, and Jesus went into Jerusalem and into the temple, and when he had looked around at all things, as the hour was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve. And you may be seated.

This is an event that we call the triumphal entry. And we call it that because it looks like how a king or a conquering general would ride into a city in triumph. When a Roman commander took over another city, he would ride in at the lead of this parade of his people, and the crowds would cheer if they knew what was good for him, and they would call it a triumph.

So we call it the triumphal entry, even though it’s a very different situation. They thought that’s what was happening, but it’s a very different situation for him coming as the Messiah. And for Jesus to do this, for Jesus to do this, he is crossing a red line.

He’s passing a point of no return. He is making a conflict with the religious authorities and the political authorities inevitable. The things that he does here, the things that happened here at the triumphal entry on Sunday prior, make what happened later on that week at the trials and the arrest and the beatings and the crucifixion, they make it inevitable.

And it always had to be this way. Part of the reason why it starts out so quiet who he is in the beginning, he had to gradually reveal who he was. Because there was a very specific plan that he and the Father had all set in store.

That he had to go to Jerusalem. There were specific prophecies that had to be fulfilled from places like Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 that had to be fulfilled by the Messiah in the way that he was killed. And if Jesus had just come right out early on in his ministry when he’s in Galilee and had said, I’m the Messiah, I’m the Son of God, they probably would have stoned him to death.

Well, that wouldn’t have fulfilled Isaiah 53 at all. Or if he had revealed it at certain times in his ministry, if he had been open about who he was, the crowds would have tried to sweep him into power. They would have tried to start a political uprising against Rome.

But Jesus had to go to the cross. And so he very carefully threads the needle all throughout his ministry of revealing to those who needed to know who he was and waiting to reveal it to everybody else, which he does here. He comes out in public and says, I’m the Messiah.

And even if those words don’t leave his lips, his actions indicate that Jesus is making a claim to be the Messiah. Three ways he does that this morning. First of all, he deliberately fulfilled messianic prophecy.

The whole aspect of him going and getting the donkey, and not just the donkey, but the colt of the donkey, the young donkey who Mark and Luke say has never been ridden on before. That’s not just because Jesus had a preference. You know, I’d rather ride into Jerusalem in a Ford than a Chevy.

It’s not that kind of thing. It’s not that he says, I’d rather ride a donkey and pick a young one. There was a specific prophecy about the Messiah and how he would come into Jerusalem that’s found in Zechariah 9.

9. It says, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. This is part of a broader prophecy about the Messiah 500 years before Jesus came.

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. So this prophecy 500 years earlier said the Messiah is going to enter Jerusalem riding on the foal of a donkey. Jesus deliberately fulfilled that prophecy.

And that’s an objection we hear sometimes from skeptics. Well, anybody could go and fulfill these prophecies. Well, there were certain prophecies Jesus fulfilled that were out of his hands from a human standpoint, if you want to say that.

If he was just an ordinary man, he couldn’t make himself be born in Bethlehem. He couldn’t, as a young child, make his parents flee to Egypt if he was just a man. So those prophecies that he, from a human standpoint had no control over.

Now we know he’s God and he orchestrated it that way. But from a human standpoint, they point to him being the Messiah. He went out and deliberately fulfilled this one that was in his human control to fulfill.

And that shows he was making a statement. He told them where to go, which again points to him having God’s understanding because he said, go to this particular place. There’s going to be a donkey tied up just this way.

Go get me that donkey. and Matthew says very clearly that this was done to fulfill the prophecy in Zechariah. For Jesus to say, I want to go into Jerusalem and I want to do it the way the Messiah is going to do it, you don’t do that unless you’re trying to tell people that you’re the Messiah.

This idea of riding into a donkey seems like an unlikely choice for a conquering king. We think about somebody riding in in triumph on horseback or we think about Hannibal coming over the Alps on the back of an elephant, but he’s riding a donkey and a little donkey who’s never been ridden before. Think about this video we watched with the kids the other day about this baby giraffe trying to run and it was just all legs everywhere.

It’s kind of how I picture this donkey or like Bambi trying to stand up for the first time. This was not necessarily a regal animal. It was an odd choice and that’s what made it noteworthy enough to Zechariah to point it out because prophecy is supposed to stand out. It’s people would notice.

And Jesus had all the things planned out in order to accomplish this. We see in verses 2 through 3 as he’s given the instructions there. Matthew 21 points out that they brought the foal’s mother probably to lead the foal because he would follow wherever the mother led.

And so the disciples in verses 4 through 6, they go out and they collect the donkey, the colt, just as Jesus had commanded them to. And when they returned, they prepared the animal to be ridden. When they put their garments on the back of the donkey, they were preparing a saddle for Jesus to ride on.

Now again, this is an odd choice for somebody coming in trying to be the Messiah unless you’re looking at prophecy. That’s what he was doing. So he got on in verse 7 and he prepared to ride it into Jerusalem.

So what I want you to understand from this is if God said in the Old Testament, if the Holy Spirit of God revealed in the Old Testament that the Messiah was going to come into Jerusalem in this really unusual way, and then Jesus made every effort to come into the city in this really unusual way, then it looks to me like he’s claiming to be the Messiah. Because there’s no other reason I can think of why he would go to these lengths to come into town in such an unusual way. And by the way, Matthew 21, 4 through 5, and John 12, 14 through 16, as you may see on the chart, they indicate that that’s exactly what he was doing.

He was doing this in fulfillment of this prophecy. And so just the very fact that Jesus rode in on a donkey and he did so deliberately to fulfill Zechariah 9 tells us that he was claiming to be the Messiah. He was claiming to be the Savior of Israel.

There’s another thing though that points to him being the Messiah and claiming to be the Messiah, and that’s that he willingly received a royal welcome. When they reacted to this as they were expected to, as they would react to somebody who is coming as the Messiah. When they gave him that reaction, he accepted it.

Jesus was not shy about pointing out if they were going too far. You know, there were times that the crowds wanted to elevate him before it was his time, and he was not shy about saying, no, we’re not doing that, and he would often leave. When they were on the Mount of Transfiguration and Peter wanted to build tabernacles for him and for Moses and Elijah, he said, it’s not time for that.

Jesus was not shy about telling people, hey, this is not the plan. And so if the crowds had welcomed him into Jerusalem as the Messiah, and he was not claiming that, there’s every reason to believe that Jesus would have said, no, guys, you’re missing the point, as they so often did. But it says in verse 8, many spread their clothes on the road, and others cut down leafy branches from the trees, and they spread them on the road.

This is the kind of welcome that you would expect for a king. They took their clothes off, their outer clothes, I’m assuming. They had even stricter modesty rules that, well, everybody has stricter modesty rules than our culture, but they took their outer garments and they spread them out on the road so that his animal that he rode on could walk across those.

And they cut down the palm fronds and they waved them and they threw them on the ground, this was the equivalent of a red carpet welcome, like you would give to a conquering king. When somebody rode into the town as a conqueror, as a king or a general, this is what you would expect as the crowd watched the triumphal procession. This wasn’t just something they did for everybody.

This wasn’t like when you fly to Hawaii, which I’ve never done, but I’ve seen it on TV. I’m the airplane, and they give everybody the garland of flowers, the lay. Is that real?

No? They used to. Okay.

Okay. Somebody’s telling me no. Somebody’s telling me it’s real. I’m going to say it’s real because I saw it on TV, right? But at least when they did that, everybody got that welcome.

They didn’t do this for everybody. This is something unique for a conquering king. And there’s evidence here to suggest that this was not initially a crowd of locals.

As a matter of fact, as you read through where we’ve put the Gospels all together, the locals seem to show up later and say, what is happening? Who are all you people? What is happening in our streets?

They seem to be mostly Galileans, people that had come down from the area where Jesus had done most of his ministry, as well as people that had witnessed his ministry along the way. Because it says in the crowd that was moving with Jesus toward Jerusalem, there were a lot of pilgrims who were on their way to the Passover. John 12, 12 says, the next day a great multitude that had come to the feast, they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.

People were traveling into Jerusalem for the Passover, and there were people coming from Galilee who had either seen Jesus’ ministry or who had heard all about it, and they were excited because they knew his reputation, they knew what he was capable of, and they’re thinking, he’s coming into Jerusalem, he’s about to fulfill these prophecies, he’s going to be the Messiah, we want to be there when it happens. But John 12 also tells us that there were those there who were witnesses to the resurrection of Lazarus just a short time before in Bethany. And so there were people all along the way who had become familiar with Jesus’ reputation.

These weren’t just people coming out to see, hey, what’s going on? They had an idea what was going on and they wanted to be there for the festivities. They wanted to be there to see history being made.

So I don’t think this crowd was primarily composed of the people, the same people who were going to demand his crucifixion a few days later. These were people who, by and large, they believed in Jesus, or at least they bought into the idea of who he was and who he claimed to be, even though they misunderstood it. They wanted to see him take his rightful place as their king.

They wanted him to overthrow the establishment in Jerusalem. They wanted him to drive out the Roman occupiers. They wanted him to solve all of their problems. They wanted him to be the Messiah, even if they misunderstood what that meant, and they did.

And so they reacted to him the way that they would to a king or a messiah. They spread out this carpet of garments, this carpet of palm branches, as a tribute to him. And Jesus, seeing all of this happen, and Jesus knowing what this meant in their minds, he let it happen.

As I said a minute ago, anytime their tributes, anytime their fanfare, anytime their reactions did not fit with his mission, he was never shy about shutting it down. And yet we come to the grandest spectacle of all, the biggest celebration they have ever thrown about Jesus. And he let it happen because he’s announcing that he’s come as the Messiah.

Not the way they expected, but he’s announcing that he’s come as the Messiah. And tied to this is the third thing we see in the text this morning about how we know he was announcing that he was the Messiah because he accepted the people’s praise. Look at verses 9 and 10.

It says, Then those who went before and those who followed cried out, saying, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. blessed is the kingdom of our father David that comes in the name of the Lord Hosanna in the highest they were shouting they were singing they were praising him they were praising God for sending him when they called out Hosanna that’s a plea for for them to be saved for them to be delivered and they call him by all these names as we look through all four gospels we see that they called him son of David which is we talked about last week with Bartimaeus is a title for the Messiah. They called him the King of Israel, another title for the Messiah.

They called him he who comes in the name of the Lord, another title for the Messiah. And so they’re praising Jesus, not just as a teacher, not just as a miracle worker, but they are praising him as the Messiah. And Jesus not only lets it happen, but he defends it.

Luke tells us that some of the Pharisees called to him from the crowd when they finally showed up. Teacher, rebuke your disciples. Get your people under control.

They shouldn’t be. This isn’t the way to do things. But he answered and said to them, I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.

That if my people don’t praise me, my creation will. So he never says they’re wrong for praising him as the Messiah. He never says they’re wrong for recognizing that.

He allows it and he defends it because that’s who he is. He’s not going to get on to him for saying something that’s true. Jesus said it was right to let them say these things about him.

I want to give you one more. I know I said three, but I’m going to give you a bonus. Don’t you hate those things on the internet that say three plus photos that blah, blah, blah, and you won’t believe number four.

And I’m thinking, okay, I’m giving this to you as a bonus because I can’t nail down for sure that this is a hundred percent true. So I’m giving you that. I don’t tell you things that I don’t believe to be true.

And I want to have the evidence to back it up. I still have some question about this. So it’s just thrown in there as a bonus, all right?

Jesus appeared to follow the Messiah’s expected route. I’m told, and everything I’ve read, even from reputable sources, says that the Messiah was expected to come in a certain gate, the eastern gate, the golden gate on the east side of the city of Jerusalem. As I said, I’ve seen it in reputable sources that that was an ancient Jewish tradition.

I just don’t like to tell you that I know that 100% when I haven’t seen it in the ancient Jewish writings myself. So that’s why I say this is given with a little asterisk next to it. You trace the route that he followed down from Bethany and Bethphage, that’s the only way for him to go into the city is through that eastern gate.

And so if Jesus came in riding on the donkey and came through the eastern gate where the Messiah was expected to enter, that’s just icing on the cake of him demonstrating that he was the Messiah. Everything he did during the triumphal entry points to him claiming to be the Messiah, or others claiming it and Jesus agreeing to it. Now, do we have the words Jesus standing up in front of the crowds and saying, I am your Messiah?

No, but we don’t need them, because this wasn’t written to us. It was written to ancient people. It was written to people a generation after this happened, everybody understood what these things meant.

When he fulfills the prophecies on purpose, when he accepts the Messiah’s welcome, when he accepts the Messiah’s praises and defends every bit of it, I’m sorry, he’s claiming to be the Messiah. It’s right there for us if we’re willing to see it. And we need to understand this for when we run across, well, Jesus never claimed to be God.

He did. He did in some very vocal ways. One of these days we’ll go through the book of John section by section.

But even in Mark, where it’s a little more subtle, it’s right there in what he did. When it finally came time to tear the veil off, to show everything, he told people he was the Messiah by his actions. When our kids ask us, why do we believe this?

It’s because Jesus claimed it. Now, you can disagree with Jesus if you want to. I mean, I don’t recommend it.

I like to say if a guy raises himself from the dead, I kind of want to listen to him about what he says, right? By the way, there’s good historical evidence that that happened as well. But we need to be prepared to give answers.

But we also need to know for our own peace of mind exactly who Jesus claimed to be. And the question then for us is, do we take what he said about himself? Do we take what he revealed about himself and believe it?

Or do we reject it? And he leaves us with that choice and with that opportunity. But listen, if Jesus is who he claimed to be, and if he is the Messiah, then he’s also made it clear he is the only way for us to be reconciled to a holy God.

You cannot get there by another route. We are all separated from God because of our sin. Everything that we do, don’t do, say, think that disappoints God, that displeases God is sin, and it separates us from God because he’s holy.

And there is no other way for us to get right with God. You’re not going to get right with God by being here at church today. We’re glad that you are.

But God’s not marking attendance and saying if you hit a certain amount, then you’re good. You’re not going to get there by giving money. You’re not going to get there by being a nice person.

We can’t do enough good to erase the wrong that we’ve done. We needed our Messiah to come not to save us from the Romans, not to drive the Romans out, but to save us from our sin and drive that away from us. And so our Messiah came to earth telling us who He was to take responsibility for our sins.

And he knew he was going there. That’s why, while the people are celebrating, Jesus is weeping over the city of Jerusalem because he knows how far separated they are from God. Our Messiah came to take responsibility for our sins, to be punished in our place, to experience the judgment of God on our sins when he did not deserve any of it.

And so he went to the cross. Less than a week after this, he was nailed to the cross where he shed his blood and died to pay for every wrong thing that you or I have ever done, thought, or said. And then three days later, he rose again to prove it.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be talking about the crucifixion. We’ll be talking about the resurrection. We’ll be talking about the ending of the book of Mark.

That’s what we need to keep in mind. Jesus waited until the right time to reveal that he was the Messiah and then revealed it for everybody to know because his plan was to come and push them into crucifying him because that was the plan of God to deal with our sins. And this morning, if you recognize that you’re separated from God because of your sin, the only way of escape is through trusting in him, not through your goodness, not through your efforts, but believing Jesus died in your place to pay for your sins so that you could be forgiven and go free.

if you’ve got questions about that if you’d like to talk with somebody when we stand and sing in just a moment you’re more than welcome to come forward I’d love to visit with you we have others in here who would love to visit with you if you’re nervous about walking forward in front of other people come talk to me in the welcome center afterwards but also right where you are if you understand what I’ve said to you this morning if you understand what god’s word teaches then you can talk to the lord this morning believe that jesus died for you and rose again and ask his forgiveness on that basis.