Triumphal Entry

Campbell Chapel Free Will Baptist Church

Ironton, Ohio

Campbell Chapel FWBC of Ironton Ohio - Pastor Bob Bradley

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Free Will Baptist Church
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Ironton, Ohio 45638

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A Triumphal Entry

February 20, 2008

Bob Bradley

_________________________

Easter Bible School

Matthew 21:1-11

1 And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples,

2 Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me.

3 And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them.

4 All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying,

5 Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.

6 And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them,

7 And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon.

8 And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way.

9 And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.

10 And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this?

11 And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.

Introduction:

Tonight we are going to be looking at Jesus Christ, at Him being the King. We have been studying in the book of Mark and about different things that He has been doing. Last Sunday morning in our Sunday school we studied about different things that Jesus did.

However, tonight we are going to start for the next five weeks looking at the last week of His life. Many things have happened up to this point. He has healed many people. He has raised people from the dead. He fed untold thousands and thousands of people in a very miraculous way. He made people’s better. Peter testified in the book of Acts that Jesus was a man that went about doing good and we know that He did that. Even though the majority of the folks did not believe Him, would not accept Him, yet Jesus Christ came to do His Father’s will and He did that. He came and did those things that the Father had said that He would do.

[ Bob reads the verses above and begins lesson ]

As you think about what is happening here, just a few days before this event that is happening here; Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. That is a very familiar story to all of us. As we read the scriptures we know that Lazarus died and Jesus stayed where He was at for a couple of days and He gets there. Women are weeping and Lazarus is already in the tomb. They have already put the stone up there. We know that Jesus simply tells the folks that are there to roll away the stone and tells Lazarus to get up. We know that Lazarus got up and he came out of the tomb alive.

This miracle that Jesus did here really infuriated the chief priests and the leaders even more than they had been. Now He is raising people from the dead. We know that He raised the little fellow/the widow’s son.

Here He is in Bethany, right outside of Jerusalem, and it is very close to Passover time. This guy has been going all over the land telling everybody that He is the Son of God. Everybody has been following Him and He is making blind people see. He is making deaf people to hear. He is making people who cannot walk to walk. He is doing all these things and He is really stirring up the nation. Especially the self-righteous religious leaders that were there because what Jesus was doing; He was doing those things that the prophets and the Law and Moses said that the Messiah would do when He come that He would raise the dead, make the blind see, and the lame walk and so forth. Jesus was doing all these things but as He was doing these things, it was putting these religious leaders on the spot. They wanted everyone to think they were the religious leaders and they were the ones real close to God but here comes a guy by the name of Jesus from Nazareth despised the city they said. They did not look back far enough to know that He had actually been born in Bethlehem where the prophet said that the Messiah would be born. They didn’t look that far but all that they could was that He came from Nazareth.

He was exciting the people—some in good ways and some in bad ways. I’ll talk about that in just a minute. Some people were very glad to see what He was doing and they were excited about that. Some people hated what He was doing and they were also excited about that.

Here He is just a few days before this He’s raised Lazarus from the dead. When you look at this time which is Passover season and there are probably two million people in the city of Jerusalem during this time. The law required that Jewish males come to Jerusalem to worship here a couple of times a year. There are literally thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of people here.

Jesus has proved who He was. He has proved by what He has done, by the miracles that He has done. He has proven that He is the Son of God. There is no mistake about it; there could be no mistake in anyone’s eyes. If they would just take the Old Testament scripture and look at it; you don’t have to be a scholar to understand that Jesus had proved that He was the Son of God. The long awaited Messiah, the King of Israel; He had proved that by His miracles. His miracles attested to the fact that what He was doing, He was doing by the great power of Almighty God. Nobody can raise the dead except God. Nobody can heal lepers except God. Nobody can make blinded eyes see except God. People knew that but when they looked at Jesus, He didn’t fit the mold that they had in their mind about Messiah. They could not see they could not accept a Messiah being the Son of a carpenter. They could not accept the Messiah being raised in Nazareth, even though He was born in Bethlehem. They could not accept that. They could not accept Him as being their Messiah, being someone that was poor. He did not have an entourage that run before Him. He did not have a big white horse to ride upon. He did not have a lot of things that they thought that Messiah, when He comes or King, when He come would do. He was not doing those things even though what the scriptures had said that Jesus would do, He had done those things.

So many times we get ideas in our mind that living for Jesus Christ is this way. Sometimes we get things in our mind that we think things are this way, that have no real scriptural foundation for that, but we just think that this is the way things should be. We get things in our minds and thinking, we have always done things this way so this is the way that it ought to be.

The Pharisees, the scribes and the religious leaders here, they were a whole lot like that. It wasn’t because they did not have the truth because they had the truth. It wasn’t that they didn’t have the capability of knowing what the truth was because they did. The problem was that their idea of what the Messiah would be and what the scripture said the Messiah would be did not coincide.

Sometimes we want pastors to be a certain way. Sometimes we want singers to be a certain way. Sometimes we want this one to be this way or that one to be that way. The thing that we need to understand is that the Bible is what we must look at for our rule, our guide, and for our foundation; it must be the Word of God and not opinions or convictions. The scripture must be our foundation.

This is what they had done. They had their own idea about what the Messiah would be but now when He comes, He doesn’t come the way that they thought that He was going to come. This was the reason that there was so much opposition against Him.

1 And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples,

2 Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me.

Jesus is doing this to fulfill the prophecy. If you go back to Zechariah 9:9 it tells us some things about the Messiah. One of them is that when He comes, He is going to come riding upon the colt of an ass. We know that.

Zechariah 9:9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.

It says some other things about Him, but Jesus is doing this so when He comes into Jerusalem here and when the people start praising Him as being the Messiah, He is coming just exactly as the scripture says He was going to come. It would have been IMPOSSIBLE for Him to NOT do those things that the scripture said. We know that He was God and we know that He was going to do those things.

Here you are you have been with Him for three years or so. You have seen Him raise the dead. You have seen Him walk on water. You saw Him heal the blind. You Him heal the lepers. You saw Him do all kinds of great things. You saw Him take five loaves and two fishes and feed thousands of people. You saw Him calm the storms. You saw Him do all these things and now He is about to enter Jerusalem and declare Himself to be King of Israel, but He looks at you and says, “I have a job for you. Go over there and get these two donkeys and bring them over here to me.” What would you be thinking?

I don’t know if you ever used donkeys or mules much, but they can be real stubborn sometimes. Years ago, dad bought a mule, a young mule—a year or two old. That is back when he was young and we probably 15 and 16 years old. We thought we were going to break this mule. Had never been broke and he had never had a harness on. We were going to break this mule to be able to work it. After it drug us up and down the road and through the barn and drug dad over a hay bailer and through some stuff; he just about killed us all. We finally figured out that this mule wasn’t quite that important after all. We let somebody else have that.

What I want you to see is that sometimes if Jesus would ask us to do something like going to get a donkey for Him to ride on, what would we do? Everybody wants to do the great big jobs. Everybody wants to do the jobs that have a lot of publicity with it and show and pomp with it, but just to go get a colt and her mother and bring over—many of us would not have thought too much about that. The great thing is if we are going to be able to ever to get in life to be able to do great things for God, we have to do some small things first. We have to be taught. We have to be trained. I know everybody wants to be way up here but if don’t ever learn to be obedient when we are here [low, or lower level] then we will never be able to get up here [higher level] on a spiritual level. That is just the way it works. That is not being mean or cruel. There is a way that we must do things. When God asks us to do something simple then it may seem simple to us, but it was something here that had to be done.

To get the colt here and its mother, this had to be done to prove who Jesus was. This was something that was very important. It was something that Jesus could not do any other way. It had to be done this way. These two animals, particularly this one animal was important to fulfill what God said He was going to do in His Word. Sometimes we don’t think about that. Sometimes we don’t look at things real simple. We don’t think that they are very important. There have been many simple things in my life that may have taken me a long time to just do those things that God has asked me to do that has had the greatest impact on my Christian life. I mean that. Not only that, but in my physical life there have been some things that God has asked me to do that has been very small, takes a very short time and little effort, but they have made a tremendous difference in my life physically. It works that way.

Jesus asked these two disciples to get the donkey.

2 Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me.

3 And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them.

Go get them and if anybody says anything to you about them, just tell them the Lord has need of them and they will send them.

Isn’t it great, that Jesus, the Son of God; not only does He control the weather—the sea, the storm and all these things—but even the animal kingdom is in harmony with Him. These guys might not have been able to lead these donkeys around had he not done what He done here. When Jesus has need of something, He is in control of things and He can do things that we cannot do.

A donkey was an animal that Kings would ride in peace times. Many times when they would return from battles instead of riding a stallion they would ride a donkey in peace time. They would come riding an animal that was a very humble animal. Jesus didn’t even have an animal to ride. He had to go borrow one. He had been here on this earth for 33 ½ years. The Bible says the birds of the air have nests, the foxes have hole but the Son of man hath no where to lay His head. He had been for 33 ½ years or just about on planet earth and He didn’t own anything except the clothes on His back. He wasn’t putting significance on material things like you and I do. We put a lot of stock in those things and the things we own, and possess. We want more. Jesus can teach us some things here about humility. He can teach us some things about what is really important in life. It is not what we own. It is not the money that we have in the bank. What is important is if we are doing the will of our Heavenly Father. That is what is important.

If we do this one thing then He takes great care of His people. He came here, He lived and He died. He didn’t own a big mansion. Every one of us here tonight lives a hundred times better than He lived. Yet He was the Son of God.

4 All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying,

Go back to Zechariah 9:9.

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.

Jesus is going to come into Jerusalem here just exactly like the prophet said that He would. But it says something here, “Rejoice greatly…” The city here should have been rejoicing greatly and they did for a few days. It says here, “…O daughter of Zion…” In other words “daughters of Jerusalem.”

Zechariah 9:9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.

He is coming and He is offering salvation or deliverance for the nation of Israel. The Bible says in the book of John, He unto His own and His own received Him not…and unto as many as received Him gave He the power to become the sons of God even to them that believe on His name. We know that He is offering them salvation. He is coming in grace. He is coming in mercy. He is coming in a very meek way. He is not coming to make war. He is not coming to execute judgment at this time. He is coming in a very meek and lowly way. He is coming to offer salvation or deliverance to this nation. He is riding upon a donkey. Here He comes just like the prophet said that He would come.

Zechariah 9:9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.

Matthew 21:5 Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.

Here He comes…

6 And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them,

7 And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon.

They go get the animals and they bring them back just like He said. They didn’t question anything. They didn’t say, “What are you doing with these things? Why do you have need of them?” They didn’t say, “I’m tired.” They just went and did what He said. That’s a good lesson for you and me. It may not make any sense to us. It may not make any sense to these disciples at this time. There are times in our life when we are living as we should live, God will ask us to do things that may not make any sense to us. If He is asking us to do those things then He has a reason behind those things. Those things that He asks to do, if we will just do, then they will bring glory to His name. Likewise, He will bless us for doing those things.

7 And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon

They took their outer coat and put it upon the donkey and they took Jesus and sat Jesus upon them. These disciples were not rich either, but to take their clothes off, they probably didn’t have a whole lot to spare. They probably were not rich people.

They took their clothes off and put them upon the donkey then they sat Jesus upon the donkey. Picture that in your mind.

Here He is sitting upon the donkey and He is getting ready to enter Jerusalem, go down the street. On both sides of the street there were probably people lined up fifteen, twenty and hundred deep on both sides. There were people all the way before you got into the city and right down into the city. There were people everywhere.

It was something similar to when the President came to Ironton. Or if some movie star comes into these big cities, how they all get out and try to see.

Here the multitudes were trying to get to where they could see Jesus. Here He comes sitting upon the ass here.

8 And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way.

Some of them took their outer garments off, their coats, put it on the animal and now as He is going down the street here they are taking their coats off and laying them in the street as the donkey is walking down the street. Others are cutting off palm branches and laying them down. Do you know what they are doing? They are recognizing that He is royalty. That is what we would call rolling out the red carpet. That is what it means here. These folks knew and understood who Jesus Christ really was. They were not worried about getting their garments back and them smelling like a mule or getting them back and them being dirty. They were interested in what they were doing in worshiping and praising Jesus Christ, their King. A million or two million people here. Some were very excited to see the Messiah come. Some very loyal and dedicated Jewish people that knew the Law; they knew that this was the Messiah. They had heard about what He had done. They heard about all the miracles that He did. His fame went all over the land. They knew who He was and now He was coming to Jerusalem, just exactly like the prophets said that their King was going to come. Do you think that would excite you? If you would have been a Jew, do you think that would excite you? If you would have been looking for the Messiah to come, wouldn’t that have excited you? Do you know what they were looking for? They were looking for deliverance. They needed to be delivered. They were in bondage. Rome was in control and Caesar was the king. They were being heavily taxed. The monies and things that they had were being used for Caesar and Rome and to do all the things that they were doing. They needed to be redeemed. They needed salvation, they needed to be delivered. That sounds like people today.

We are in bondage to sin. Satan is our master. He is pulling the strings and folks that are unsaved are doing what he wants them to do. Do you know what people needs today? They need a savior. They need to be redeemed. They need to trust Jesus Christ. This excited the devout people. This excited those that were long awaiting the Messiah.

When you get in a crowd and a crowd gets excited sometimes. There might be some people back here that might get excited also and they may not have any idea what they are excited about.

If you read in the book of Acts, when Paul was a certain place, some people were hollering and screaming but they did not know what they were hollering about. There is no doubt here in this crowd that there were some people like that. However, there were people here interested in seeing who Jesus was.

Here He comes on the donkey walking towards the city. They laid coats in the street. They were cutting branches off of trees and laying them down and here He comes riding on a donkey.

9 And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.

Hosanna means “save us.” Save us now. They were crying and saying we know that you are the king. We know that you are the Messiah. We know that you are the one that has been promised to come. “Save us now.” Set us free from the oppression of the Romans. “Save us now.” Probably the excitement, if you would have had a meter there, would have pegged itself because of the noise and the excitement and all the things that were going on. It probably was a very exciting time.

“…cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David…” They recognized who He was. They recognized Him being the Son of God.

“…Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.” We know that you are the Son of God. We know that you are the Messiah. We know who that you are. “Save us now.”

10 And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this?

The whole city was moved, not just the east side, west side, north side or south side, but the whole city was moved and they were saying, “Who is this?” Who is this guy?

11 And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.

The city said who is this? The multitudes that were there, the multitudes that were following Him, that was on the east side of Him were saying, “This is Jesus. This is the Messiah. This is the King of Israel.”

12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,

Now see, He had done this once before. If you remember back at the beginning of His public ministry, He did this before. However, He comes back three years later and you know what He finds? He finds that the house of God had been made just a place of business. It had been made a place of merchandise.

I know I get beat on every now and then and tongue lashed every now and then about different things, about not allowing soft drinks, and food in here. This is a very Holy place. The Bible says that we have houses to eat and drink in. We come here to worship. I have seen people want to sell all kinds of things and do all kinds of things right here in God’s house. This is not a place for that. This is not a place like we think it is many times. It is a very Holy place. You had better respect this place.

It is just a building and I understand that. However, it is a building that has been set aside and dedicated for the worship of Almighty God.

Whether we are having play practice, a wedding, or a worship service in here or whether you are cleaning; this is a Holy place. We need to respect that.

Just a short time ago, there were some people in here having a wedding rehearsal. I came in we had some little kids jumping from one seat to the other. You know how long that lasted. We had a couple of fellows sitting over here that had their hats on backwards. You know how long that lasted. There were a couple of them up here eating and drinking. I didn’t mean to make anybody mad but this is God’s house. I don’t let the kids here jump over the seats and throw song books and tear up things. If you come in here and forget to take your hat off, I am going to politely tell you to take your hat off. If you come in here to eat and drink; I am going to tell you to go back to your car and do it. Eat it out there.

This is a very special place.

12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,

They had made it just a place of business. They had made it a place here where that they were buying and selling right in the house of God. They did it sort of in a way that they tried to disguise it because there were people coming form out of town and they needed doves and they needed to be able to exchange their money from where they lived at into Jewish currency. They needed to be able to buy things to sacrifice when they came there. They needed to that to offer it unto God. But it was not to be done in the House of God.

12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,

13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

Wouldn’t that be an awful indictment for the Son of God to make about a church, about a place that was dedicated to worship of Almighty God; for Him to come in and say this is a house of worship that is what it is supposed to be, but ye have made it a den of thieves.

I’m afraid in America today that phrase would fit in a lot of places. That would be right at home.

We put bars in our basements. We play bingo on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We get drunk on Fridays. We cuss, lie and cheat then we come to church on Sunday morning, smile and talk about how much we love Jesus. We are liars. If that is how we live then we are liars. We are just deceiving ourselves because there is more to living for Jesus Christ than that. We fold our seats up that we sit aside in a lot of places, and we have square dancing, right in a place where we ought to worship. If you want to square dance then do that, that’s fine, but not in the church house.

We have lost the reverence that we once had for God’s house and God’s property and the land even around the church is a very sacred place. Even for the unsaved it was a sacred place, but it is not anymore. Now it is not even sacred for a lot of folks to even come to church. We throw our trash in the lot and in the floor. We do all kinds of things. But before we do that next time remember that this is God’s house. God owns it. It is His.

He made the statement here: “…My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.”

14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them.

15 And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; they were sore displeased,

He cleaned it out. He cleaned it up and when He got it cleaned up there were some people there that needed to be healed and He healed them. Sometimes if we get our lives cleaned up, we could see a few more people healed.

The children were crying “Hosanna” or “Save us now.” When the chief priests and scribes saw they were so displeased because they hated Jesus. They did not accept Him as being their Messiah. They didn’t want Him there. They were going to do everything they could to get rid of Him.

It would be my prayer today that we would understand how important it is that we recognize who Jesus Christ really is; that He is the Son of God. He just wasn’t a good man. He was more than that. He just wasn’t a prophet. He was and is the Son of Almighty God.

He came here in this scripture that we read today, to declare Himself to be their Messiah. Openly and plainly coming as the scripture said, saying, “I am the Messiah.” They were excited for a while. However, the excitement wore off and we are going to talk about that in the next coming weeks.

If you don’t know Jesus Christ as your Savior tonight, if you don’t know Him for the pardon or remission of your sin, if you are not saved, I would pray that you come and make things right with Him.

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