The Triumphal Entry

Discussion Questions:

1. Read John 12:12-19 together. What is one thing that stood out to you, or surprised you from this story?
2. Who did the crowd think Jesus was? What did they get right? What did they get wrong?
3. The people thought they knew what Jesus should for them, but they were wrong. Yet even in their misguided beliefs, Jesus showed them compassion. Can you think of an example from your own life when you thought you knew what the Lord should have done for you, but you were mistaken? Describe.
4. We saw from this story that the Pharisees loved their lives more than they loved Jesus, and so they "gained nothing." Read John 12:24-26 together. How does Jesus describe the truth path to "gain"?
5. Read John 12:15. What does John mean when he speaks of Jesus being "glorified?" 
6. How should the "disciples dimness" and slowness to grow in their faith and knowledge inform the way that we interpret our own spiritual growth, and the growth of those around us? 

Sermon Manuscript

This morning we are back in the gospel of John. By way of recap, Jesus has just left Bethany where he spent an evening with his friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, who he raised from the dead several weeks before. And it was during this dinner that Mary, in an extravagant act of worship, anointed Jesus feet with a pound of pure nard, a costly perfume that was worth a year’s wages. Judas is appalled at Mary’s lavish gift, not because he cares about the poor but because he was greedy and wanted the money for himself. And Jesus rebuked Judas, but not in the way we would expect. He didn’t rebuke Judas’s greed or duplicity, but his disordered loves. Interestingly, in Matthew’s retelling of this encounter in Matthew 26, we see that it was actually all of the disciples, and not just Judas, who had the “heart of a Judas”:

“And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, “Why this waste? For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.” But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.” (Matthew 26:8-11)

The question Jesus posed to Judas, to his disciples, and to us as the readers is this: what is it that you love the most? If you love anything or anyone more than Jesus, you have the heart of a Judas.

But while Jesus’ has strong words for Judas, he has nothing but tender words for Mary. Looking back at Matthew’s account, Jesus says,

“In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial. Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.” (Matthew 26:12-13).

Mary’s anointing of Jesus held a deeper significance than even she knew—she was anointing Jesus for his burial which would happen just six days later. John’s gospel is full of this kind of divine irony where **people reveal deeply profound truths about Jesus without even realizing it:

1. Think back to John 2, when the Jews were asking Jesus for a sign and he said to them, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will rise it up,” and they respond, “It has taken 46 years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?”

2. Or John 9 where Jesus’ healing of the man born blind reveals what it truly takes to “see” Jesus, and the hardness of heart that keeps the angry religious leaders blind to him.

3. And then we saw just a few weeks ago in John 11 maybe the most striking divine irony yet, when Caiaphas, the High Priest and enemy of Jesus prophesied,

   “It is better that one an should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish” (11:50-52).

What is John’s purpose with these divine ironies? He wants us to understand that we are utterly hopeless to see Jesus clearly and believe in him rightly unless God first opens our eyes.

In our text this morning, we’re going to see three more expressions of divine irony carried out by three groups of people, and what each reveals to us about who Jesus is and what he came to do.

1. The Irony of the People’s Praise
2. The Irony of the Pharisees Fear
3. The Irony of the Disciples Dimness

1. The Irony of the People’s Praise

Our story begins the morning after Jesus is anointed by Mary. Jesus had stopped in Bethany because he was on his way to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast. The Passover Feast was a celebration commemorating God’s deliverance of his people through his judgment of Egypt through the ten plagues. God passed over the homes of those who painted the blood of a spotless lamb over their doorposts. This is the third Passover and final passover feast in John’s gospel, where the blood of another spotless lamb would be shed.

This is why Jesus had come into the world, and what all of his miracles and teaching ministry was pointing to. Jesus had not come simply to give us a good example (although he did that). He had not come simply to show us what God was like (although he did that too). Jesus was born into the world so that he could die for the world. What was it John the Baptist said all the way back in chapter one when he saw Jesus at a distance?

“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

Jesus came into this world to bear away the wrath of God that you and I have earned by our sin. The good news of the gospel is not that God has decided that he is no longer angry at sin and is handing out a free pass. The good news of the gospel is that God himself has provided the necessary sacrifice who will absorb his righteous wrath against our sin in our place—the Son of God and Lamb of God, Jesus Christ—so that through faith in his blood, the guilt and condemnation of our sins could be fully washed away.

And so, Jesus’ entering of Jerusalem one last time for one last Passover signals to us that he is coming as the Lamb of God. But in our text this morning, John also wants us to see that Jesus is coming as Conquering King.

Look with me again at verses 12-13:

“The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!”

Before he even clears the gates of Jerusalem, the heart of Israel, we see that there is a large crowd that heard that Jesus was coming and went out to meet him outside the gates with the joyous words of Psalm 118 on their lips. They cry, “Hosanna!” which means, “Save us,” or “save now!” This is a Messianic plea. This crowd had heard that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and must have connected the dots—”Surely, this must be the King that God had promised long ago!”

John is the only gospel writer that specifically tells us that the crowd came out to meet Jesus with palm branches. Nowhere else in the Bible do we ever see the Jews laying down palm branches for a King of Israel. What we do see throughout the Old Testament are cloaks and garments being laid down for kings, like for King Jehu in 2 Kings 9. In fact, the other gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all mention cloaks being thrown down before Jesus, but not palm branches.

Do you want to know what palm branches were used for in the Old Testament? Worship—not worship of kings or prophets, but worship of Yahweh God. In Leviticus 23, during the Feast of Booths, God commanded his people to break off branches of palm trees in order to “rejoice before the Lord your God” (Lev 23:40). And then later on when Solomon constructed the temple, do you know what he engraved all over the walls of that temple? The temple built for the express purpose of worshiping God? Palm trees.

And here is where see the first element of divine irony in the Triumphal Entry. I don’t think this crowd was fully aware of just what they were saying about Jesus when they waved their palm branches before him. But I also don’t think they fully understood what they were saying when they welcomed him with the words of Psalm 118. The same Psalm that prophesied Jesus coming as King is the Psalm that would also prophesy Jesus coming as something else. Look with me at Psalm 118:22:

"The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”

The same cornerstone that Isaiah prophesied would become a “stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense” for the Israelites (Isaiah 8:14). And with a sad twist of irony, this is exactly what would happen to this same crowd. This same crowd that stood before King Jesus now, waving their palm branches, shouting, “Hosanna in the highest!” would stand before Pilate just five days later, shouting, “Crucify him!”

But how did that happen? How could these Jews on the one hand get so much right about Jesus, and yet get so much wrong? It was because they failed to understand who their true enemy was. By the time Jesus came on the scene, Israel had been under Roman occupation for nearly 90 years. And this wasn’t the first time that Israel had been oppressed by foreign powers—not even by a longshot. The Old Testament is filled with accounts of God’s people being dominated by nations like Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, and Persia. If you count it all up, Israel spent almost 500 years under the power and coercion of foreign nations throughout the Old Testament. The cycle was this: Israel would fall into gross sin and idolatry, and God would judge his people through the raising up of other rulers and nations who would oppress them. Through this discipline, Israel would repent, and God would graciously deliver them from their oppressors, often by raising up a godly king or ruler from among themselves.

And this, I think, is what was running through the minds of the crowd who came out to meet Jesus with their palm branches and shouts of praise. They believed Jesus was the next king that God was raising up to overthrow their latest enemy. The Jews believed that the greatest threat to God’s people was the tyranny of Rome. But Jesus came to show them that the greatest threat to God’s people was not an enemy outside of them, but the sin within them. And what Jesus does next shows us that he understood exactly what the crowd was wanting from him. Let’s look again at verse 14:

“And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it…”

Jesus, the conquering king, enters the heart of Jerusalem, not atop a chariot of majestic horses, but on the back of a young donkey. This, John tells us, was in fulfillment of another prophecy, this time from Zechariah 9:9. What, do you think, Jesus was trying to communicate to the people (and to us as readers) through all of this? I think he wanted to do two things: Correct the people, and comfort the people.

Correct: Through coming into Jerusalem on a donkey, Jesus was correcting the crowd’s misunderstanding of why he had come into the world. On Palm Sunday, they believed they were welcoming in a conquering military leader who would overthrow Rome with physical power and might. But they were really welcoming in the Lamb of God who would conquer an even greater foe, and not with physical power and might, but through his death. Jesus mounted a donkey, not a chariot, to correct the crowd’s misunderstanding of who Jesus came to conquer.

Comfort: But Jesus’s actions in the Triumphal Entry did not bring only a word of correction—they brought a word of comfort. I love how rich and multi-layered the Bible is. We saw in John 12:15 how John referenced Zecheriah’s prophecy, but we haven’t yet read the actual words of Zechariah 9:9. Let’s do that now:

"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

There’s a key difference here between Zechariah’s original prophecy in Zechariah 9:9, and John’s reinterpretation in John 12:15. Did you catch that? Listen again to the first two words in Zechariah—”Rejoice greatly.” Now listen to the first two words in John 12:15—”Fear not.” This isn’t some trivial matter of semantics. All throughout his gospel, John repeatedly reinterprets Old Testament prophecies to show us how they have all found their fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

So what message of comfort does John intend for the Jews and for us through this small but meaningful change of phrase? I think John wants us to see the compassion Jesus had for his people, even amidst their confusion—even knowing their coming betrayal.

Matthew 9:36 “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

Luke 23:34 “And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’”

It’s as if he’s saying, “I see your fear, and your pain, and your confusion. But fear not. I have come to save you, even though you don’t realize yet what I have come to save you from.” The Jews thought they knew who their true enemy was. They thought they knew what Jesus needed to do for them, but they didn’t. And yet, see what incredible compassion Jesus had for them!

And what incredible compassion Jesus for us! Maybe, right now, you are feeling as if you are under the oppressive power of an enemy of your own. And you’ve been crying out to Jesus, “Lord, I know what I need from you! Take this diagnosis away! Fix this relational issue with my child! Make my boss treat me more fairly! Give me a spouse! Fix my spouse!” But maybe, brother and sister, Jesus is wanting to help you in a way that you are not expecting; maybe even in a way that you do not like. The question is, will you trust him? Will you trust, as we heard last week in Hebrews 12, that God “disciplines you for your good, that you might share in his holiness?” He knows what you need far better than you do, so trust him, and fear not.

2. The Irony of the Pharisees’ Fear

Let’s move our eyes down now in our text to John 12:19 to consider our second group and our second irony—The Irony of the Pharisees Fear.

You might remember from Marc’s sermon from John 12 two weeks ago how shaken the Pharisees were by Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Up to this point, Jesus’ teaching and miracles had greatly angered the religious leaders, but they still seemed to hold out a hope that his power and influence with the people would eventually fizzle out. They had seen this before with other “flash-in-the-pan” leaders who would stir up the Jews with their thrilling speeches and displays of power only to be killed off or vanish into obscurity. They probably thought this would happen with Jesus to.

But when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, everything changed. The chief priests and Pharisees realized they could no longer sit on their hands. They had to do something, and fast. They were so afraid and jealous of Jesus’ growing influence that they determined not only to put Jesus to death, but Lazarus too, because “on account of him,” John says earlier in chapter 12, “many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus” (John 12:11).

So, keeping all that in mind, look with me again at verse 19:

[As they witnessed Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem] “The Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.”

In this one verse we see two elements of divine irony baked into the Pharisee’s fear:

1. “You see that you are gaining nothing,” and…
2. “The world has gone after him.”

“You see that you are gaining nothing”: Every minute that Jesus remained alive, his power and influence continued to grow, and this terrified them. Why? On the one hand, if Jesus’ power and influence was growing, that meant that their power and influence was shrinking. But on the other hand, the Pharisees also believed that Jesus’ rising star placed the Jews in greater danger from Rome. Caesar allowed for the Jews to practice their religion freely, and gave the Pharisees and chief priests authority over the religious practice of the Jewish people. This gave them incredible power, position, and prestige—all things they did not want to lose. So When Jesus came on the scene, proclaiming the coming “Kingdom of God” that he himself would inaugurate, the Pharisees feared Rome would catch wind of this messianic uprising and bring not just Jesus down, but all the Jews with him.

So, “Look,” they said to one another, repulsed by the crowd praising Jesus, “You see that you are gaining nothing.” Gaining nothing, they thought, because the longer they waited to put Jesus to death, the more popular he became. But John wants us to see the irony here. They were actually “gaining nothing” because they refused to recognize Jesus as Lord and follow him. Look ahead with me at Jesus’ words in John 12:25-26—we don’t have time in this sermon to dig too much into these verses, but it’ll give us some context into the Pharisee’s predicament:

“Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.

You see this language of “losing” and “keeping?” Jesus is turning the worldview of the Pharisees on its head. If you live for this life—money, power, the praise of people—you will lose your life for all eternity. But if, instead, you live for Jesus and work for the life to come, you will keep your life for all eternity.

CS Lewis: “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.”

So actually, the Pharisees were quite right, but not in the way they thought—by opposing Jesus they were indeed “gaining nothing” and losing everything*.*

But there’s a second element of divine irony we can see in the second half of the Pharisee’s comment in verse 19:

“See, the world has gone after him.”

What did the Pharisees mean? They probably were speaking in hyperbole—”everyone and their mother are going after Jesus!” Historians estimate that there were likely several thousand people, possibly tens of thousands of people that would have been present at the Triumphal Entry. Remember that the Passover is the largest festival on the Jewish calendar, and there were easily hundreds of thousands of Jews who would have made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the celebration. The Triumphal Entry was not like the pastel water-color paintings you may have seen before with a small number of Jews lined up to the right and left of Jesus, playing gentle music from a respectful distance. The sight would have been overwhelming—thousands of Jews frantically swarming around Jesus, chanting and singing at the top of their lungs. The Pharisees fear was probably more plausible than we realize. To their eyes, it really did seem like “the world has gone after him.”

But even in this, the Pharisees spoke more truly than they realized. Look with me just one verse down in verse 20-21:

“Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.””

John wants us to see that it was not just the “world” in a numerical sense that was going after Jesus, but the nations! King Jesus had come, not just to liberate the people of Israel from their bondage to sin and death, but people from all nations—anyone who would repent of their sins and turn to him in faith.

3. The Irony of the Disciples’ Dimness

We’ve seen 1) The Irony of the People’s Praise and 2) The Irony of the Pharisees Fear. Let’s end by considering what I think is the most surprising irony in this story —3) The Irony of the Disciples Dimness.

Look with me at verse 16 where John clues us into the disciples’ response as they are watching all these events unfold:

“His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.”

The 12 disciples, who had walked with Jesus for three years now, and had witnessed his miracles, and heard his teaching, and received his private instructions were still very much in the dark. The gospel writers show us that their growth was often slow, uneven, and marked by failure:

1. In John 2, the disciples are just as confused as the religious leaders when Jesus talked of his body as the temple that would be destroyed and raised three days later.
2. In John 4 when Jesus spoke of himself as the “bread of life,” many of his disciples said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”
3. Even when a disciple seems to finally “get it,” like in Matthew 16 when Peter confesses Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” he immediately shows how little he really understood when just a few verses later, he rebukes Jesus for speaking of his coming death and receives a sharp rebuke in return—”Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matthew 16:22-23).

What did it take for the disciples to finally “get it?” John tells us that though they didn’t understand these things at first, “when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.” It took seeing Jesus “glorified” that finally made things click. What is John referring to? Jesus himself will give us two clues. First in verse 23:

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

The second clue comes just nine verses later in verses 32-33:

“’And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.”

“Glorified.” “Lifted up.” These are kingly words, aren’t they? What were the people in John 12 expecting to happen? They were expecting Jesus to march into Jerusalem and be “lifted up” onto a physical throne to be crowned with glory and splendor as the conquering King of Israel. But Jesus had come to be glorified and “lifted up” onto a very different kind of throne. It was on the cross, where Jesus’ glory would be displayed in all its majesty, where justice and mercy embrace. Where he would absorb all of God’s wrath that our sins deserved, and crown us with his righteousness so that we can stand before God not only as forgiven sinners, but beloved children.

But what we as Christians now know clearly, the disciples had yet to understand. For some reason, in God’s providential plan, the disciples remained in the dark until they saw Jesus glorified on the cross. And even then—even after Jesus’ death, and resurrection, and ascension—there was so much that they had left to learn! The Disciples didn’t even understand until Acts chapters 10 and 11 that the gospel and the Holy Spirit were meant for the Gentiles too!

God had determined that the disciples growth in wisdom and godliness would be a slow and gradual path—one that would take a lifetime. He would use not only their spiritual successes, but their spiritual failures to fashion them into godly, useful men. Should it be any surprise that this is also how the Lord works in us today?

Think about your own Christian journey. Have you been growing at the pace that you would like? I’ve found in my own life that the more I grow in Christ, the more I become aware of all the sin and ugliness that remains within me. Sin is like a hydra—when you cut one head off, it seems like two more grow back in its place. And all of this can make us feel incredibly discouraged.

And maybe, if we’re being honest, it’s not only our own slow spiritual growth that discourages us. Are you quick to get frustrated with the people in your life who seem to fall into the same patterns of sin over and over again? With your spouse? Your children? Even other members of this church? You think to yourself, “We’ve been over this so many times, when are they going to get it? Will they ever change?”

So, what should we do when we feel discouraged by our own slow spiritual growth, and the growth of those around us?

Remember Who It is That Gives the Growth: If we’ve learned anything from our time in John this past year, it’s this—God is the one who opens the minds and the hearts of his people. “You cannot see the kingdom of God” Jesus tells Nicodemus in John 3, “unless you are born again by the Holy Spirit” (3:3). And “No one can come to me,” Jesus tells the crowds three chapters later, “unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). But this isn’t just true in salvation, is it? In that initial moment of conversion? No! Every moment of our Christian lives after conversion requires a minute-by-minute dependence on the Lord to further open our eyes and give us deeper understanding! Jesus’ disciples could not control when they would receive understanding—that was in God’s hands. But what they could control was how closely they stuck with Jesus amidst their confusion and faltering faith. And what happened for them? The Lord gave them growth… in his time. Follow their example. Attach yourself moment-by-moment to Jesus and trust that he, the author and perfecter of your faith, will bring the growth.

The Triumphal Entry is a story filled with divine irony. King Jesus enters Jerusalem not as a mighty military hero, but as the Lamb of God. He rides humbly, on the back of a donkey, not toward a palace throne to receive a crown of gold, but to the cross to receive a crown of thorns. He came, this time, not to triumph over Rome, but to triumph over sin and death.

But friends, there is a second triumphal entry that we are looking forward to. The same Apostle that wrote John 12 wrote these words of prophecy: There is coming a day soon when Christ will return to us, not on a donkey but on a white horse! Not in meekness and humility, but with “eyes like flames of fire” and a “crown with many diadems,” and the armies of heaven behind him on chariots of white horses”. And what will he do? He will strike down the nations with the word of his power and bring to an end every evil dictator, regime, and enemy that would oppress the people of God. And not only this, John tells us in Revelation 21:4, but “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”