I. Introduction The Lamb of God March 28, 2010 Mark 11:1-11 When a new child is born or adopted into a family, everyone hopes for the best in his life down through the years. For example, there is an old Irish blessing that goes like this: May love and laughter light your days And warm you heart and home. May good and faithful friends be yours, Wherever you may roam. May peace and plenty bless your world With joy that long endures. May all life s passing season Bring the best to you and yours! Jesus was the exception to the rule. From the beginning, when the angels first brought the news to Mary foretelling the birth of Jesus, there were hints that Jesus life was not going to be typical. Then there was Simeon, who on the day of Jesus circumcision 8 days after His birth, said to Mary in Luke 2:34-35, This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too. It was in the beginning of His final 3 years of ministry, as recorded in John 1:29, that John the Baptist called Him the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! Since, as we are reminded in Hebrews 9:22 without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness, John was prophesying that Jesus had to die. Jesus death didn t just happen accidently; it was planned from the beginning. Turn to John 3:14-15. Jesus knew that He would be lifted up that is, die on a cross so that everyone who believed in Him would have everlasting life. But all that happened had to satisfy the requirements of Passover and the Passover Lamb. Turn to Exodus 12:1-13. But there was going to be one difference, this time the Passover Lamb, Jesus, would rise from the dead. Jesus knew this, too. Turn to Mark 8:31. 1
If the Jewish scribes and Pharisees had been open and had searched the Scriptures and listened to and watched Jesus, they would have known all of this. But their minds were shut tight with the sin of pride. God would use their pride to accomplish His plan. Turn to John 11:55-57. Soon they would be ready to kill Him, but, as we re told in Luke 22:2, they wanted to do it secretly. However, God had different plans. Let s look at how God dotted the i s and crossed the t s to bring about His plan for the Lamb of God. We see this in the preparations. II. The Preparations As we read in Exodus, timing was important. The spotless lamb was to be brought into the house on the 10 th day of the month and watched or observed for 5 days, until the 14 th of the month, when it was to be sacrificed at Passover. As the Lamb of God, Jesus had to fulfill these seemingly trivial conditions, too. That He was sinless was beyond doubt He had been tempted by Satan several times, but He never yielded. He had lived with His Apostles and disciples 24/7 for 3 years; He had been questioned and grilled by the religious leaders of the day, but no one could point to any sin in His life. So let s consider the timing the days. If your Bible is still open to John 11, turn to John 12:1 and then jump down to verse 12. Jesus entered Jerusalem 5 days before Passover this would be the 10 th day of the month. If Jesus was going to be seen and accepted as the Passover Lamb, He needed to be acclaimed and welcomed by those He came to save. When He entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, that s just what happened. To bring this all about, Jesus was about to do something He had never done before; something He had continually told others not to do for Him. He was going to permit His followers and others to give a public demonstration in His honor. He was going to ride into Jerusalem in a way that would be an unmistakable claim to be the Messiah, God s anointed One and the Lamb of God. We see 3 things in the preparations for His grand entrance into Jerusalem. A. First, they were carefully planned. This wasn t an impulsive act. Jesus didn t leave things until the last moment. He had even made an arrangement with the owner of the mare and colt ahead of time. There was a password that was to be used by those who came to get the colt: The Lord needs it. B. Second, they were a deliberate claim to be a king. Jesus was fulfilling the prophesy of Zechariah 9:9: 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. By riding a colt of a donkey, Jesus was portraying Himself as a King of peace and not a king 2
of war. His peace was peace between God and mankind. He wasn t coming to slay Israel s enemies but to give Israel the opportunity to be saved to become part of the Kingdom of Heaven. He was coming in meekness and humility. C. Third, they were a deliberate challenge to the religious leaders. Up to this point, Jesus had not allowed His enemies to take His life either He withdrew from them like He did in Matthew 12:14-15 or He just walked through them and went away like He did in Luke 4:28-30. But now was the accepted time for His death. Mark 14:1-2 says, Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him. "But not during the Feast," they said, "or the people may riot. The Jewish leaders were determined to wait, but God s plans said otherwise. Jesus had to die as the Passover Lamb in the right place at the right time before all the people. III. The Great Procession All the preparations lead to a great procession. Jesus rode on a colt which had never been ridden before, but He was God the Lord of Creation so neither the weight of Jesus nor all the noise of the crowd bothered it at all. The streets of Jerusalem were swollen with people. Every Jewish male from 12 years old and up was required to gather in Jerusalem for Passover. Since many would bring the rest of their family along as well, Jerusalem, a city of 500,000 people, would be filled with over 2 million people. Many of them would know who Jesus was they had seen Him or heard of Him or they may have seen someone who had been healed by Him. So as He rode into Jerusalem, a large crowd spread their cloaks on the road before Him while others cut palm branches to lay in the road. The expectation that the Messiah had finally come to bring deliverance from all foreign oppression was so greet that the crowd became totally caught up in a frenzy of mob hysteria. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David. They didn t know it, but Jesus had come to bring deliverance not from Roman rule but from the rule of sin in their lives. Jesus came to bring deliverance from sin. The people wanted deliverance from Rome. They were crying out, Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! The word Hosanna means save now. They were crying out for the Messiah s deliverance, pleading, in effect, Save us now, great Messiah! Save us now! The crowd acknowledged 3
Jesus as the Son of David which was the most common title for the Messiah. Jesus was the coming one; the Son of David, He was the Messiah. But the crowd on that day wasn t interested in Jesus saving their souls but in His saving their nation. Now, at last, they thought, He has come to be the Conqueror to be their Liberator. What better occasion or time could there possibly be for God s Anointed, the Messiah the Christ, to make the ultimate and finale deliverance of His people from tyranny than at Passover just like Moses had done thousands of years earlier. But the people wanted Jesus on their own terms, and they would not bow to a King who was not to their liking, even though He was the Son of God. They wanted Jesus to destroy Rome, not their cherished sins or their hypocritical, superficial religion. But He would not deliver them on their terms, and they would not be delivered on His. The words of the multitude were right, but their hearts were not. Jesus came in the name of the Lord not to be crowned but to be crucified. Luke s account in Luke 19:39-40 tells us that Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, Teacher, rebuke your disciples! I tell you, he replied, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out. The Pharisees objected to the enthusiasm on general principles and they certainly didn t want Jesus proclaimed as the Messiah. They couldn t control the rabble, but they assumed Jesus could. John 12:19 says, So the Pharisees said to one another, See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him! The Pharisees were afraid of Jesus and afraid of the crowd. They were going to lose their standing with the Roman rulers and their standing as the religious elite if this kept up. Jesus didn t help when He said that the shouting was inevitable. If the people kept quiet, the very stones would cry out just like they did at Jesus death (Matthew 27:50-53). IV. The Finale Mark s record concludes with Jesus looking into the temple area, where He would return the next day and continue God s plan. Jesus left the city and spent the night in Bethany where it was safer and quieter. Undoubtedly, He spent the night in prayer with His disciples and for His disciples. The next week was going to be very difficult for them. Many times we point at the disciples as spineless, fearful men, but here they aren t spineless at all. They knew that by coming back, Jesus was committing suicide. In John 11:26, just before Passover, when Jesus said that He was going back to Jerusalem, Thomas said, Let us also go, that we may die with him. As John 12:16 says, they did not understand what was happening, but they continued to stand by Him. They were anything but spineless and fearful they were brave men. 4
In Matthew 21:10-11 where Matthew closes his account of Jesus entry into Jerusalem, he writes that after Jesus had entered Jerusalem there was one question being asked, Who is this? The response was This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee. Obviously, many of them had paid little attention to what they had just been shouting so loudly. They had barely finished proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of David, the one who comes in the name of the Lord. But then when the mass emotions calmed down, they were hard pressed to say who Jesus really was, other than a prophet from Nazareth. They no longer called Him the Son of David or praised Him as the great Deliverer. He was now no more than just a prophet. Like Nathaniel in John 1:46, some would soon be saying, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Many of them had heard Jesus messages; they had seen or heard about His miracles, they even acknowledged that He must be from God. But they were totally earthbound, materialistic and selfcentered. They were interested only in the kingdom of this world, not the kingdom of heaven. They would have accepted Jesus as an earthly king, but they would not have Him as their heavenly King. So they asked, Who is this? V. Conclusion God had a plan for salvation and it was complete and carried out to the minutest detail down to the correct day and hour. His plan wasn t one of defeat the death of Jesus. It was a plan of victory the victory of Jesus over sin and death and the victory for those who accept Him as their Lord and Savior. There aren t a lot of events in Jesus life that are recorded in all 4 Gospels like His grand entry into Jerusalem. Obviously it was an important event it wasn t important only to show us that God s plans always work, it, also, showed us Jesus disciples; Christians what our attitude should be towards God s plan. As we read in our responsive reading, Jesus Christ, in spite of all He had and all He was, humbled Himself and became obedient to death. As a follower of Christ, how s your attitude? Like Christ, Christians need to be humble and obedient to God. Do you have a self-sacrificing humility and love for others? If God asked you, would you be willing to die for others? On a day of celebration like Palm Sunday, it doesn t right to end here. In Acts 1:10-11 those who watched Jesus ascend into heaven His Apostles and disciples were told by 2 angels that Jesus was going to come back to earth. The second time He comes, He will come riding a charger; He will come as a warrior King with majesty and power. As Paul wrote in Philippians 2, then every knee will 5
bow before Him. If you are one of His children, you will join in the greatest coronation of all time heaven itself will ring with celebration. Turn to Revelation 5:11-14. What a grand and glorious day that will be. Palm Sunday will be as if it were a mere whisper. Jesus Christ, Our Redeemer, our Lord will be crowned and we will be with Him to celebrate His victory. Let s rejoice today and every day and praise His glorious Name forever. May the whole earth be filled with His glory. 6