THE TRIUMPH OF GOD—COMES THROUGH KING JESUS

Matthew 21: 1-17

INTRODUCTION

Several weeks ago, Jane and I saw the movie, “Seabiscuit”.   It’s based on a true story about a horse named “Seabiscuit” who won a match race against the Triple Crown winner in 1938.   The beginning part of the movie traces the lives of the four main characters, the horse, the jockey who rode the horse, the trainer that prepared the horse and the owner of the horse, prior to their meeting in 1937.   The man who ended up owning the horse quit his job working in a bicycle manufacturing plant and moved west to San Francisco around 1915 where he made a fortune selling the first cars.   He married a beautiful woman, became prominent in the civic life of San Francisco, built a beautiful home in the countryside and had a son.   Then in 1929, his nine-year-old son was killed in a car accident, he became completely despondent and uninterested in life, his wife divorced him and the Great Depression began.   In very short order this man’s life, which was so rich and full by American standards, was shattered.   He had no joy in the present and no hope for the future.   The other three characters have very similar stories.   All of them begin life in an idyllic and “blessed” condition and then, due to various circumstances their lives are shattered.    The rest of the story is about how these four characters, along with the entire U.S., which is in the grip of the Great Depression, regain hope in the future.   It’s a great story.

The story of the Bible is a lot like the story of Seabiscuit.   God created the world in perfect condition.   Everything worked the way it was supposed to work. He made men and women and put us in this world to take care of it and to enjoy it while living in unbroken friendship with him.   We lived as perfect people in a perfect world enjoying perfect fellowship with our Creator.   However human beings chose to believe the lie of Satan, rather than the promise of God and so the good creation was shattered.   God cursed the world and cursed humans because of our sin.   He promised, however, in the midst of the curse that he had a plan to restore his world and his people to their original condition.   He gave the ground for hope by making a promise to send a Savior who would restore the shattered creation.   God has always intended that the ground of our hope and joy be his promise to send a Savior.   We however, insist on trying to find our hope and joy, not in his promise and his work to fulfill that promise but in our own abilities to manufacture our own salvation.   Our hope and joy are rooted in creation, not the Creator.   The fragility of our joy and hope are regularly exposed as we encounter all kinds of obstacles to obtaining and maintaining the things we love.   While we can fool ourselves, sometimes for long periods of time that life has purpose and there is reason for optimism, the reality is that we cannot create a good future for ourselves.   No matter how well we are able to protect and provide for our future the reality is that death awaits each one of us.   All of our self-made security is a fantasy.   There really is, in this world, no enduring hope, and no real reason for optimism or joy.

The only future that is a good future is the future that God is working to create.   It is only those who are living in light of what God is doing and depending upon his promises for the future who can have a joy and hope that is steady and will not falter, no matter what happens.   The message of the Bible is that God has given abundant reason for joy and hope in the coming of Jesus into the world.   He is the one who guarantees all God’s promises to all those who trust in him.   In Matthew 21:1-17 we have one of the clearest and most forceful descriptions of why it is that only Jesus Christ can secure the future and only those who trust in him are secure.   As Matthew records the entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem one week prior to his betrayal, arrest and crucifixion he heaps up evidence for the trustworthiness of Jesus.   It is his aim to convince you and I that the only way to live a hopeful and joyful life is to live knowing, trusting and loving Jesus.   He records this occasion of great joy to show us how we can live full of joy, no matter what is happening in our lives or in the world.

MAIN POINT

Your life can be full of joy and hope because Jesus Christ is God’s king…

 

I.   Who has come to establish God’s kingdom of peace (vv. 1-11)

The scene begins with Jesus coming to the top of the Mt. of Olives which is just northeast of the city of Jerusalem and which rises over 250 feet higher than Mt. Zion, the mountain on which Jerusalem is built.   Jerusalem lays spread out before Jesus and his disciples and the crowds of people who are traveling with them on their way to Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish feast of Passover.   They can see streams of people entering the city from every direction as the people of God gather to the annual celebration of their deliverance from slavery in Egypt.

Near the summit of Mt. Olivet is the small town of Bethphage.   Jesus commands two of his disciples to go into the town and get a donkey and its colt that they will find tied up as soon as they enter the town.   He instructs them that if anyone asks them what they are doing they should simply say that the Lord has need of them.   Notice that Matthew in vv. 4-5 inserts an editorial comment explaining what it is that Jesus is doing.   He says that Jesus is fulfilling what the prophets Isaiah and Zechariah said would happen some 500 years prior to this event.   Isaiah 62:11 says, “The Lord has made proclamation to the ends of the earth: ‘Say to the Daughter of Zion, “See, your Savior comes!   See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.”’”   Zechariah 9:9 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.”   Both of these verses are in the midst of passages describing God’s coming to judge his enemies and save his people.

Notice what happens when the disciples go and find the donkeys and bring them back to Jesus.   Jesus sits on the colt and rides it into Jerusalem in the midst of a massive crowd of people.   When the people see Jesus riding on the colt they begin to throw down their cloaks on the ground for the colt bearing Jesus to walk upon.   In addition others cut branches off from trees and throw them on the ground in front of Jesus on the donkey’s colt.   While they do this they begin shouting out, “Hosanna to the Son of David.   Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.   Hosanna in the highest!”   The middle line is a direct quote from Psalm 118 while the other statements are a combination of words and ideas that are literally in hundreds of OT passages.   The throwing of the cloaks and laying down of the branches are also symbols that are found in several OT passages describing the joy of God’s people when God comes to visit and save them.   In other words, these massive crowds of people acknowledge that Jesus is the long awaited Messiah.   He is the Savior who was first promised in Genesis 3:15.   He is the descendant of David who will reign over God’s people forever.   Notice that when he gets into Jerusalem the entire city is stirred up.   The people in the city who have not been part of this exuberant crowd ask the most important question that anyone can ever ask, “Who is this?”   They are asking for identification of the person but also for an explanation as to why all the excitement.   What kind of a person could create such a stir and arouse such joyful praise?   The crowds entering Jerusalem answer, “This is the prophet, Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.”   They identify him as the prophet, whom God promised when talking to Moses in Deuteronomy 18:18, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth and he will tell them everything I command him.”

What does all this mean for us?   First, there are over a dozen explicit quotations of OT passages in these seventeen verses.   There are literally hundreds of passages that are alluded to by these events and the language Matthew uses to describe them.   Israel’s escape from Egypt, their rebellion at Kadesh Barnea, the wandering in the wilderness, Moses, King David, King Solomon, the prophets, all these and more are alluded to in this story.   One of the main things this story, indeed the entire Bible is meant to convey is that history is going somewhere.   Whenever you feel like the world is out of control or your life is out of control you should come to a passage like this and consider the ways in which God has worked out the millions of details to accomplish his purposes.   There is nothing random in your life or in this world.   God, in the mystery of his providence, is working right now to accomplish the salvation of all his people.   You don’t need to be afraid.   You can be secure.

Second, if you are at all familiar with the accounts of Jesus’ life you will know that prior to this event, Jesus has regularly told people not to talk about his miracles.   He has acted as God’s Messiah in his teaching and works of power but he has, without exception, told the recipients of his kindness not to tell anyone.   Now, however, Jesus says and does things publicly to show that he is the long-awaited Savior. He is the one who instigates this entry into Jerusalem in fulfillment of all the OT prophecies.   Why does he act so openly now, when he has been so reticent before?   He does this now because it is true, he is the Messiah and he wants all Israel to know it.   When we as Christians claim that Jesus is the Savior of the world we are not making it up.   Jesus himself, in his riding on the colt and receiving the worship of the crowds is openly acknowledging that he is the long awaited Savior.   He also does it because he knows that this open display will force the religious leaders to take action against him.   As he said in Matthew 20:28, “the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”   He knows that this enthusiasm is going to be short lived and that it will bring about what he really came to do, die upon the cross.

Third, there are many prophecies describing the coming of God’s Savior into the city of Jerusalem in the OT.   The one that Jesus chose to emulate is this one from Zechariah where he enters seated on a donkey’s colt.   It is the prophecy where he is called gentle.   He is not mounted on a warhorse.   An army does not surround him.   He does not come dressed in royal robes and in gold gilded chariots.   He does not come with coercive power but in humility.   As he told his disciples he isn’t coming to be crowned king but to be crucified as Savior.   While it is right for the crowds to be full of joy and they are correct in identifying Jesus as the Son of David, yet, as we will see they do not really understand what kind of a kingdom Jesus is bringing.   He comes as the emissary of peace.   He comes to bring peace between God and man and between man and man.   That is exactly what v. 10 of Zechariah 9 says, “He will proclaim peace to the nations.”   His riding on the colt of a donkey upon the cloaks of poor peasant people is a sign of the kind of kingdom he is bringing.   He is not creating a kingdom like the kingdoms of this world.   He did not come to bring his people earthly wealth, health and power.   He has come to reconcile men to God and to one another.

Fourth, the joyful praise of the crowd is the response that God commands his people to have towards Jesus Christ.   Zechariah 9:9 begins “Rejoice greatly O Daughter of Zion.”   We know the reason the crowd was joyful was wrong.   They, like the disciples, do not understand what it is that Jesus has come to do.   They love money and power and health and food and security and they are convinced that Jesus is going to give all these things to them.   What motivates the enthusiasm of this crowd is not very different from what motivates the enthusiasm of the supporters of the candidate who wins the election.   They are not so much rejoicing in who Jesus is but in what they expect Jesus to do for them.   They are not worshipping Jesus because he has come to die for their sins and give them an eternal relationship with God but because they expect him to set up an earthly kingdom with the Jewish nation at the head of the world.   We know this is the case because in less than a week these same people will be calling for Jesus to be crucified.   However, in spite of their wrong motives, their joy is the correct response.   God commands the “Daughter of Zion” to rejoice.   This is a poetic description of believers, all those who are trusting in Christ to save them, not their own efforts.  

Joy is the fitting response of every believer to the coming of King Jesus.   These crowds are giving us a portrait of that joy.   Peter says in his letter, “Though you have not seen him, you love him and though you do not see him now you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”   What makes a Christian a Christian is delight in Jesus Christ, amazement that he has come to rescue a sinner like me from my sin.   We know in better ways than the disciples and these crowds that the coming of Jesus into the world, to the city of Jerusalem was for the purpose of making peace between us and God.   When a person has understood and embraced this king who comes seated on a donkey’s colt, they can live in peace and joy.

 

Your life can be full of joy and hope because Jesus Christ is God’s king…

•  Who has come to establish God’s kingdom of peace

•  And…

II.   Who confronts and destroys all false religion (vv. 12-13)

Notice that the first thing that Jesus does when he comes into the city of Jerusalem is that he goes to the temple and drives out all the merchants who are doing business there.   There were tens of thousands of Jewish people who didn’t live in Jerusalem coming to town for the annual Passover celebration.   They were doing this because God commanded, in the OT law that they were to do this.   Each family had to do at least two things at the temple.   They had to sacrifice an animal, a year old lamb if they could afford it or a pair of pigeons if they were poor.   They also had to pay a “temple tax” of a half shekel for each male member of their household.   Obviously, if you have to travel a great distance it is difficult to bring along a lamb or two pigeons.   Therefore, there were local farmers and merchants who would set up shop to sell the pilgrims the required animals for sacrifice.   Also, you couldn’t pay your temple tax with any coins.   You had to change whatever currency you had into temple money.   What had happened is that the Jewish religious leaders had made arrangements with the merchants.   They were permitted to set up their booths right in the courtyard at the entrance to the temple for a fee.   The religious leaders were getting paid and the merchants had the best location for selling their products.

Now Jesus, when he sees this pandemonium is furious and he goes among the merchants tipping over tables and overturning chairs.   While doing this he quotes two OT passages.   First, he quotes from Isaiah 56 where the prophet is describing how the Lord is going to save non-Jewish people and bring them to his house, the temple and accept them there in his “house of prayer.”   In other words, the temple is to be the place where God and man meet.   God repeatedly said that he has placed his name upon the temple in Jerusalem and that he dwells there among his people.   It is the physical symbol of the presence of God with his people and when people come there, they are to do so as if they are coming to meet God.   It is a house of prayer, of communication with God.   Jesus, by quoting Isaiah is showing that the center of OT religion is God.   The point of the whole thing is to meet God.   The primary thing that man lost when Adam and Eve sinned is a relationship with God.   The main thing that human beings need is God.   We were made by God and for God.   The presence of these merchants in the house of God is proof positive that the religious leaders and the people were not in the temple to meet God.

When he says they have turned the temple into a den of robbers he is referring to what the prophet Jeremiah said.   Jeremiah says to the nation Israel as they come to the temple in his day to offer sacrifices, “Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, ‘We are safe”—safe to do all these things?   Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you?   But I have been watching! Declares the Lord.”   The people in Jeremiah’s day and the people in Jesus’ day were using God to get what they really love.   Their indifference to the purpose of the temple shows their indifference to God.   All false religion, whether under the guise of Christianity or any of the other counterfeit religions in the world, seeks to use God to get what is really loved.   The religion that Jesus has come to destroy is the religion that seeks to use God as a cover to justify pursuing what we truly love.

Does this “cleansing” of the temple strike you as a particularly “gentle” action?   Yet that was the emphasis of the passage quoted from Zechariah.   We discover something here about what the Bible means when it uses the term gentle.   It doesn’t mean “tolerant” as we use the word.   Jesus is not going to tolerate human sin and rebellion.   He is opposed to the proud and will not tolerate those who want to use God to justify their own wicked behavior.   Jesus came into the world to confront our love for everything except for God and to give us a heart that is in love with God.   The best thing that can ever happen to a human being is to be loved by God, that is what we were made for.   Your greatest need is not a better job, a better house, a better spouse, a better child, a better self-image.   Your greatest need is to know God.   That is what Christ has come for.   He is opposed and will destroy everyone who seeks to use God to get something else.   He is against all who come to the church, not to get God, but to use God to justify themselves and how they want to live.

 

Your life can be full of joy and hope because Jesus Christ is God’s king…

•  Who has come to establish God’s kingdom of peace

•  Who confronts and destroys all false religion

•  And…

  III.   Who rescues the weak that come to him (v. 14)

Look at what Jesus does next.   He throws out the merchants.   He rejects human attempts to use God.   He opposes the proud.   Then he welcomes the blind and the crippled into the temple and he heals them there.   Throughout the OT blindness and lameness are often associated with God’s judgment upon sinners.   In Zephaniah 1:17 he says, “I will bring distress on the people and they will walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord.”   I’m not saying blindness and lameness are caused by personal sin.   I’m saying they are used as a metaphor of the effect of sin.  

What a beautiful picture of the grace of God given in and through Jesus.   He throws out those who are seeking to manipulate God and he welcomes all who come to God in their weakness and broken because they need God.   When Jesus welcomes these disabled people into the temple and then heals them it is a graphic picture of his central work.   Jesus is in the business of making sinners acceptable to God.   No sinner can expect to walk into God’s presence and be accepted by God while in their sins.   Sins must be forgiven and washed away in order for a human being to enter into God’s holy presence.   You cannot heal yourself of your sin anymore than these blind and crippled people could heal themselves.   You are completely helpless and must live outside of God’s presence forever unless you come to Jesus to be healed of your sin.   So Jesus stands in God’s house of prayer and welcomes all sinners who know they need what Jesus offers and who want to know God.

There are none of us who are not blind and crippled by sin.   All of us need to have Jesus heal us in order that we might know God and enjoy him forever.   So I simply tell you to come to this Christ who is God’s Savior and be healed of your sin so that you can live with God forever.

 

Your life can be full of joy and hope because Jesus Christ is God’s king…

•  Who has come to establish God’s kingdom of peace

•  Who confronts and destroys all false religion

•  Who rescues the weak who come to him

•  And…

IV.   Who is the Creator God (v. 15-16)

Verse 15 is one of those shocking verses in the Bible because it so confronts our illusions of human goodness and exposes the depths of human blindness and wickedness.   When the Jewish religious leaders saw Jesus throwing out the merchants and healing the blind and crippled and when they heard the joyful exclamations of the children praising Jesus because of his healing, they were furious.   Matthew in recording their response does something to capture the significance of what is happening here that anyone familiar with the OT as translated into the Greek language would have immediately seen.   The phrase “wonderful things” is only used here in the NT but it is used over sixty times in the OT.   In the OT, it is the word used to describe the wonderful things that God does in running his world and in saving his people.   It is first used in Exodus 3 when God is calling Moses to go to Egypt to bring the people of Israel out of their slavery.   After telling Moses that he must go to Pharaoh and command him to “Let my people go,” God says, “But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him.   So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonderful things that I will perform among them.   After that, he will let you go.”  

So Matthew uses a word that is used throughout the OT to describe the work of God, to show that all that Jesus has done, including the throwing out of the merchants and the healing of the blind and crippled, is the work of God.   If you will remember, the people of Israel saw all these wonderful things that God did to bring them out of Egypt and how did they respond?   They were furious with God and wanted to kill Moses and Aaron and return to Egypt, just like these men want to kill Jesus.   As Psalm 78 says, “They forgot what he had done, the wonderful things he had shown them… they continued to sin against him.”   Witnessing miracles has never convinced any human being to abandon a life of sin and to pursue Christ as the treasure of life.   The Israelites in the time of Moses had overwhelming miracles performed for them as did the people of Jesus’ day and yet the majority of them never believed but continued to rebel.   People are not living in unbelief because there is not adequate evidence.   People refuse to come to Christ and they construct false religions because that’s what they want to do.   No amount of miracles will change the mind of a sinner.   It takes the healing work of Christ to change a human heart.   These religious men are simply responding as their forefathers responded and as every natural human responds to the glory of God.

These furious leaders ask Jesus if he can hear the jubilant cries of the children praising him.   This is such a stunning picture.   Jesus has just put his hands on a blind person who is now able to see and who is jumping up and down holding his children in his arms while they cry out, “Hosanna to the son of David.”   The religious leaders stomp up to him and demand to know if he can hear what these children are saying.   He looks at them and cocks his head and smiles and says, “Yes, I hear them.”   But then he says, “Have you never read Psalm 8 that says in part, ‘From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise?’”   That is what verse two says.   Verse one says, “O Lord, our Lord how majestic is your name in all the earth!   You have set your glory above the heavens.”   In other words, Jesus is stating in as plain a language as you can imagine that he is God.   His casting out the merchants and his healing the disabled is God setting his glory over the heavens.   He is doing the wonderful things that the OT says God does and they are witnessing these things.   The children are doing what God has ordained children do, worship him.   But they are praising Jesus, thereby showing that Jesus is God.

My dear friends, joy and hope are not found in secure jobs, full retirement accounts, healthy children, lots of friends, good self-esteem, hard work and accomplishment.   If your joy and hope are based upon these realities it will fail for even if you escape serious tragedy in this life you are going to die.   The only place that lasting joy and hope can be found is in the person of Jesus.   He is God.   He has come into the world as king to destroy those who are seeking to find life apart from God and to rescue all who will come to God through him.   He heals every crippled sinner who comes to him and makes them acceptable to God and gives them a place in God’s eternal kingdom.   You really can live full of joy and hope because Jesus is God’s king…

•  Who has come to establish God’s kingdom of peace

•  Who confronts and destroys all false religion

•  Who rescues the weak who come to him

•  Who is the Creator God

BENEDICTION

Romans 15:13