Talk 33 Mark 11:1-10 The Triumphal Entry
Welcome to Talk 33 in our series on Mark’s Gospel. Today we’re looking at what is often referred to as Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. This is found not only in Mark 11:1-10, but also in Matthew 21:1-11, Luke 19:28-44, and John 12:12-19. We will be concentrating on Mark’s account, but we’ll also refer to the other accounts where they enrich our understanding of this wonderful event in the life of Jesus. But first, let’s read Mark 11:1-10.
1 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 3 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.'” 4 They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, 5 some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” 6 They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. 7 When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. 8 Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. 9 Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted, “Hosanna!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” 10 “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” “Hosanna in the highest!”
Today we’re going to look at six things this passage teaches us about Jesus, but first let’s set the scene in the overall context of Jesus’ life and ministry. Jesus had spent three and a half years teaching his disciples, meeting the needs of the people, forgiving sinners, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, driving out demons, giving sight to the blind, cleansing the lepers, and raising the dead. He is now on his way to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover with his disciples and where within less than a week he will be crucified.
The Passover was the annual festival celebrated by the Jews in memory of their ancestors’ deliverance from slavery in Egypt. It was called the Passover because the angel of death sent by God as the final judgment on the Egyptians passed over the Israelites when he saw the blood of a lamb sprinkled on the doorposts of their houses. What Jesus was to do later that week was to become the final Passover Lamb whose blood was to be shed on the cross to save not only the Israelites but those of all nations who would trust in him as the atoning sacrifice for their sins.
Few, if any, in the crowd who were praising Jesus as the coming king would have understood this. It’s more likely that they were expecting him to use his miracle working power to overthrow the Romans, but God’s plan and purpose was far bigger than that. Jesus had not come to save Israel from the power of Rome, but the entire world from the power and consequences of sin. So Jesus comes, not as a military conqueror riding on a horse or in a chariot, but as the humble king of peace, riding on a young donkey as prophesied in 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.
So, having set the scene, let’s now see what the passage teaches us about Jesus. As we saw right at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, Mark’s intention is to proclaim Jesus as the Christ (the Messiah), the Son of God. This has been clear throughout all he has taught us about Jesus so far, but nowhere is it clearer than in today’s passage. First, we see that
Jesus was a man with authority
He tells his disciples what to do, and they do it. Note the words of instruction in verses 1-3.
Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you… you will find a colt tied there … Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.'”
Jesus expects unquestioning obedience from his disciples, and this includes the owner of the donkey – Tell him, The Lord needs it. In fact, with the exception of the Pharisees (Luke 19:39-40), everyone in the story accepts the authority of Jesus. Even the crowd of pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem for the Passover festival acknowledge that Jesus is the one who comes in the name of (with the authority of) the Lord (v9). They even proclaim him as the King of Israel (John 12:13).
And finally, it seems that even the young donkey seems to have accepted his authority. No one had ever ridden him (v2). He was an unbroken animal. But the lowly beast submits to the authority of his Maker and carries Jesus on his final journey into Jerusalem.
Jesus was a prophet
He was a man who received supernatural revelation and this gave him detailed foreknowledge of future events. Notice what he says in verse 2
:
Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here.
Now Jesus was on his way up from Jericho where he had healed blind Bartimaeus and the village where the donkey was was ahead of him. He had certainly not been there recently. He had travelled over 100 miles from Capernaum at the northern end of the Sea of Galilee. There is no suggestion that he had made a private arrangement with the owners. Yet he knew exactly where the donkey was – just at the entrance of the village. He knew it was tied there. He knew that no one had ever ridden it. He knew it would be available.
Of course, if you have a mind to, you can possibly think of a natural explanation of how Jesus knew all these things, but please bear in mind that Jesus frequently knew things by supernatural revelation. He knew that Peter would catch a fish and find a coin in its mouth, enough to pay the temple tax (Matthew 17:24-27). He knew that the woman of Samaria had had five husbands and that the man she was living with was not her husband (John 4:17-18). And in Mark 14:12-16 he knew that when he sent two of his disciples to go and prepare for the Passover meal, when they went into the city they would find a man carrying a waterpot.
And in Luke 19:41-44 when he finally reaches Jerusalem he weeps over it and predicts in detail the tragic events which were to take place there some forty years later in AD 70.
So the Gospels are very clear that Jesus often knew things supernaturally. But was this because he was God, or was it because as a man he received supernatural revelation through the Holy Spirit? In answering this question it’s important to stress that Jesus is and always was God, and God is omniscient. He knows everything. And Jesus did not cease to be God while he was here on earth. However, although he was God, it seems that as man he did not know everything. Returning to our passage, we see in verse 3 that, although he knows about the donkey, he says, If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ rather than Someone will ask you. And, as we’ll see in our next talk, there’s another illustration of this in verse 13 where we’re told that:
Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he (Jesus) went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs (v13).
So in my view, the flashes of supernatural revelation Jesus received while he was here on earth are best understood to result not from his deity, but from the revelation of the Spirit. If they do not in themselves prove his deity, they certainly show how close was his relationship with his Father in Heaven. They were supernatural gifts from the Holy Spirit, and if we keep filled with the Spirit, similar gifts may be ours too as, of course, the Holy Spirit determines (1 Corinthians 12:11). Remember how Peter knew that Ananias and Sapphira were lying (Acts 5)? Peter was not God, but he received revelation from God, the Holy Spirit. Jesus, even though he was God, was also man, and he received revelation in the same way. But that brings us to the next lesson about Jesus.
Jesus was the Messiah
Now if, as we have just been saying, Jesus received prophetic revelation through the leading and power of the Holy Spirit, the same is true of the miracles he performed. The miracles were the reason for the people’s joy on Palm Sunday:
When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen (Luke 19:37).
They were longing for the coming of their long-awaited Messiah, which in Hebrew means anointed one. You will remember, of course, that when he was preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus had read these words from Isaiah 61:1-2:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour (Luke 4:18-19),
and had gone on to say, Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing (v21).
In saying this he was claiming to be none other than the anointed one (the Messiah), and he had gone on to prove it by preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight to the blind, and releasing the oppressed. So the people on Palm Sunday were praising God not only for all the miracles they had seen, but because those miracles might well indicate that at last the Messiah had come. So they acknowledge Jesus as the Son of David, (Matthew 21:9), the king who comes in the name of the Lord (Luke 19:38).
So Jesus was a man of authority. But he was more than that. He was a prophet. But he was more than that. He was the Messiah. So what does our passage teach about what should be our attitude towards him?
Jesus is worthy of our worship
Among the crowd around Jesus on that first Palm Sunday, there must have been surely a variety of opinions and attitudes. There were the twelve disciples who had already come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. There were undoubtedly other followers who had either already formed the same opinion or who were at least on the point of doing so. There may also have been those who, caught up in the excitement and emotion of the moment joined in the celebration without really understanding what was happening. And there were of course those like the Pharisees who understood what Jesus was claiming to be and who wanted to kill him because of it.
So can we really say that they were all worshipping Jesus? Three things suggest to me that many certainly were. First, their actions indicate it. Some threw their cloaks and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road in front of Jesus (v8). Secondly, their words, taken from all four Gospels, imply it:
Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in Heaven and glory in the highest!
Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest!
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!
Blessed is the King of Israel!
And thirdly, the Pharisees seem to have interpreted it as worship. They said to Jesus:
Teacher, rebuke your disciples!
But Jesus replied,
I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out (Luke 19:39-40).
So if this wasn’t worship, it certainly looked like it! And their worship was centred around three main things:
o What Jesus had done for them (working miracles)
o Who he was (the Son of David, the King who comes with the authority of the Lord)
o The coming Kingdom of God.
And these are just the reasons we should worship him too.
Jesus is worthy of our trust
But Jesus is not only worthy of our worship. He is worthy of our trust too. The two disciples he sent ahead to get the donkey had come to trust Jesus, even when what he asked them to do might have been questionable. But they had not always. Remember, for example, the feeding of the 5,000? Jesus says, You give them something to eat. But, they reason, that would take eight months of a man’s wages. Again and again, they had questioned his instructions, but by now they were learning to trust him. They obey his instructions and, of course, find things just as Jesus has said. They had learned to trust him, because they had discovered that Jesus knows best. And we can trust him too. He sees what we cannot see. He knows what we do not know. He has detailed knowledge of future events.
And, of course, we can trust him, not only because of his knowledge, but also because of his power. He is not only omniscient. He is omnipotent. He is no longer here on earth as man, exercising power as he was led by the Spirit. He is seated at God’s right hand. All authority has been given to him in Heaven and on earth. We can trust him because he has the power and authority to accomplish whatever he knows is best for us.
And we can trust him because he is good. An all-powerful God who was not good would not be someone to trust, but rather to fear. But our God is not a king who comes to terrorise his people. Like Jerusalem of old, we can rejoice greatly because our king comes to us gentle and riding on a donkey. The gentleness, the humility, the goodness and love of Jesus assure us that we can trust him. And finally…
Jesus is worthy of our obedience and sacrifice
We have already seen the trust and obedience of the two disciples Jesus sent to get the colt. But we also see the sacrifice of those who spread their cloaks on the road (v8). No thought of how dirty or how damaged they might get, not only from the hooves of the donkey but also from the feet of the crowd who were following Jesus. Their worship was expressed in an extravagant disregard for their worldly possessions. And they did not understand that Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem to suffer and die for the forgiveness of their sins. But we do. How much more extravagant should be our commitment to the Lord Jesus?
But now, one final thought. We have seen in this passage that Jesus was a man of authority, a man who received supernatural revelation of future events. We have seen that he was the Messiah, the Son of David, the king of Israel. And yet the story reveals that he needed something. He needed a donkey! Note those words in verse 3 – The Lord… needs it. The Lord, the Creator of the universe needed a donkey! It was to play a part in the fulfilment of God’s purposes. And, believe it or not, he needs you too. Of course, he could fulfil his purposes without us, but he has chosen not to. He has chosen to use donkeys like Peter and Andrew and James and John, like you and like me. Do you know who he is? How extravagantly will you worship him? How much will you trust him? To what extent will you obey him? Jesus is worthy of your sacrificial obedience. He won’t enforce it. But doesn’t his love demand it. Isaac Watts certainly thought so:
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an off’ring far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.