Sermon from March 29, 2026

Today we will discuss the Triuphal Entry of Jesus Christ,

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

As we get started this morning, take ask you to take your Bibles. We're going to do something a little bit different this morning. As you know, normally as I'm preaching through verse by verse, we've been going through the book of Ecclesiastes. But today I'd like to take a two-week break from Ecclesiastes to go to the book of John to focus on today what we call the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ. And then next Sunday looking at his death, his burial, and his resurrection. But I want to give you a warning. The warning is I don't like to get off from what I'm normally studying. I get into a book, it's easy to preach it when I have to pull out something different. It takes a little bit more effort and time, and there's nothing wrong with that. But what I've noticed today is I don't want to just give you another simple triumphal entry sermon. Some of you, maybe this is your first time to hear a sermon on the triumphal entry. Others, maybe you've heard this all your life. So today, what I want to do is preach this concept out of John chapter 12, verses 12 through 19, following after a pattern of how John writes the gospel. What I mean by that is if you look at how John writes the gospel, many times you'll see that he uses stories, he looks at plots, he looks at how people interact and their motives and why they do what they do. So today, what we're gonna do, instead of just focusing on all the predictions about Jesus making this financial, uh, not financial, this triumphal entry and talking about that, I want us to step in a little bit deeper and look at the motives of some of the people that are involved in this story. Now, as a pastor, the challenge is I've got to make sure that it connects. It's the word of God, I've got to preach it like it is, but I want to make sure it connects on a level that we can understand and relate to. Sometimes when you do that and you make it so that people can relate to that, it's almost like you're saying something that's gonna make people feel good. Help you to kind of understand something. Well, today the way the Lord's put on my heart to talk about this is not so much in a way to help you understand something good about the triumphal entry, but instead to make you question your motives of why you follow after Jesus. So take just a second, think about this with me. What are your motives for following Jesus? Why do you follow after him? I'm not gonna ask you to give me any of your thoughts. I know it's hard for me to judge people's motives. I like to do that, but I'm not good at that. I'm not supposed to do that, and none of us are. But you know what? Christ knows our motives, he knows why we come to church, he knows why we do what we do. So think about it for a second. What what are your motives for following Jesus? Some responses people might give? Curiosity. I heard he did this in somebody's life, and I'm curious to see what that's like. Could it be that people follow after Jesus because there's something that they want or something they need, and they think Jesus is going to give it to them as though he's just a little magic button you push when you need something. Others might follow Jesus because their grandmama told them to do it. They grew up in church. Others might say they followed after Jesus because they they started coming to church because there was this uh cute-looking girl or for a lady, a handsome looking young man that caught their attention. And because they followed Jesus, you decide to follow Jesus too. Others might say, Well, I followed Jesus because there was a time in my life when I realized that I was not worthy of love, that I was heading for a path of destruction. And this man named Jesus revealed himself through the power of the Holy Spirit in his word and showed me that even though I was a sinner, that God still loved me and had a plan for my life, a future with him for all of eternity. And they made a true confession of faith. And because of that, they want to follow after Jesus because they realize that Jesus first loved them, then want to love him. So this morning, just you're not going to write it down, just in your in your mind, just process it for a second. What are your motives for following after Jesus? As we look at this this morning, the settings, there's going to be a couple different groups of people that we're going to see. We won't talk about all of them, but we'll go into detail specifically today about the Pharisees. We're going to look at the Pharisees, we're going to look at Lazarus, and we're going to look at what I put up here is called two crowds in one. We're going to see a massive crowd. We've already been already read the scripture, but we're going to see there's a massive crowd that showed up. But the question is, why two crowds coming in together as one? And we're going to look at that. So here's the part I want us to think about. First of all, the concept of the Pharisees. And we're going to get in the scripture in just a second. So I wanted to do something today. I did this a couple of weeks ago. I did a little cheating work. Instead of spending hours writing down all these different things and taking Bible verses and writing down each little verse that would back up what a Pharisee is. I just got on the computer and typed, What is a Pharisee? First thing that comes up is what they call AI, artificial intelligence. So I just wanted to test it and see how it worked. It did pretty good. Look what it says for a Pharisee. It says a Pharisee is an influential, often strict religious and political party of the first century Judaism, known for their devotion to both written law and oral tradition. While often opponents of Jesus in the Gospels, due to legalism and hypocrisy, they were respected popular leaders who believed in the resurrection, afterlife, and angels. Now there's just a quick summary. Now, if I would have taken the time to write down all the Bible verses that back all this up and even give you more than this, that would be a couple sermons in itself. And we don't have time for that. So I just did a little AI thing. So if you're if you're ever searching on the internet and want to know something kind of quick, you can type a question in and it'll give you an answer. Now you have to be careful with that because AI, artificial, fake, artificial intelligence, supposedly the right answers, are not always true. So you have to be careful. And I realize uh if you've not gone to seminary or go have some kind of training, sometimes it may be hard to tell the difference. Now, you don't necessarily have to go to seminary, I'm not saying that, but if you don't spend time reading the word and you just believe what the internet says, you could easily run into trouble. To help you that, the church has something we'd like to mention to you today. The uh there's a program called Logos, program I've been using for probably 20 or 30 years in the ministry that goes in in-depth Bible study commentaries, sermons, uh, word helps, language helps, things like that. They they've offered us uh a trial subscription. We can have you know 30, 40 people on this where all you have to do is get online, log in, and you have access to some commentaries and other good information that's good solid biblical teaching. Okay, not that you could get on blue letter Bible and do that as well, but the church has a chance to do this. So just a little commercial there. If you're interested in that, seeing what that looks like, uh text me or let me know later, and I can get you a password to get on that to check it out. I've already given it to some of our Sunday school teachers and some of our deacons to look at. Uh, but that's just a little announcement about um knowing for sure that you're studying the word of God and not just what some computer generated thing said. So, what's the deal with the Pharisees? Well, let's talk about it for a second. Pharisees, Jews, they didn't exactly like the Romans. They didn't want to be oppressed under the control of the Romans, just like anybody wouldn't want to be oppressed under any government today, right? They knew that there was a Messiah coming. They knew the Old Testament, they were strict followers of it, so much so they used the word legalism and to go they've they would follow the law to the T and even further, oftentimes missing the spirit of the law just to look good doing what they thought they were supposed to do. Not out of love, but out of duty. So you have the issue of the Pharisees who just decided they didn't like Jesus. What do you mean they didn't like Jesus? Well, Jesus was becoming very popular, and the Pharisees didn't believe that Jesus was who he said he was, the Son of God. So they didn't see him as the Messiah. What they saw him as was a threat to their position as religious leaders and peace living under the Romans. They were concerned that if it came about that he actually was the Messiah, they had the mistaken belief, like many Jews had, that Jesus was going to come immediately and reign immediately. They had kind of missed the idea that Jesus was coming to die and have a humble death, but later come back a second time through King of Kings. So they were wanted to protect the relationship they had with the Romans, they wanted to protect themselves. So what kind of motives do they have with Jesus? Well, scripture tells us, if you look in John, and I would encourage you to do this later this afternoon, take a look at John, go back to John chapter 11 and read all that to give a precursor to what I'm talking about today. If you look at that in John chapter 11, it says, So from that day on, they made plans to put him to death. Now I just sucked that one verse right out of the middle of John chapter 11, but what we have here is Jesus doing a great miracle. What's the great miracle? He rose Lazarus from the dead. There's lots of stories in scripture about that that could you read another time. But when Jesus wrote Lazarus from the dead, it wasn't like Lazarus died, and two minutes later Jesus went over and said, Get up. The miracle took place four days later. What does that mean? Lazarus was not just dead, but he was good and dead. Like there was no chance that he was going to come back four days later. But that happened. When that happened, people got word of that. You know how when somebody says something wild's going on, something unique, God's moving in a unique way. People like all of a sudden freak out, they all kind of flock to it and see what's going on. That's not necessarily bad, that can be good, especially if it's God working. In this case, with Lazarus, God was definitely at work. But the Pharisees were upset and they had plans to put Jesus to death. Now we got to understand, they had plans to put him to death, but God already had plans for his son to die. So we have to remember in this story that Jesus was in control of his death. They tried to make plans to kill him, and every time they thought they could do it, Jesus slipped away because it wasn't his time. But what we celebrate today, this triumphal entry, is the Jews were coming in for Passover, getting ready for that week. Jesus knew his time had come. He was coming in, being ready for it, and allowing God to do his thing, allowing men to take his life so that he could die on the cross and take away my sins and your sins. Now, one more thing to think about about the Pharisees. We want to understand this story. We we know what a Pharisee is, but how do we look at it for application purposes today? In other words, who were the Pharisees today? Do you know a Pharisee? Does the group even really still exist? Because it had to have been Jews. Well, again, we could take time to take scripture and walk through all the different things of what a Pharisees are, but I didn't do that because we don't have enough time to do that. But look, not at what Scripture says, but look what the computer says. There's some quite a few similarities. But just read that for a second. I'll leave that up there for a second. It says modern-day Pharisees are not a specific group, but rather individuals, often religious leaders or believers. So just if we stop right there, that tells me that in the church today, there could be people who act like Pharisees, religious people, but their motives were not in the right place. Their understanding of Christ is not where it should be. Listen to how it describes it. It says, people who embody legalism, self-righteousness, and hypocrisy by prioritizing rigid rules over what? Love, mercy, and a personal relationship with God. You know anybody like that? When's the last time you looked in the mirror? Let's get real for a second. When's the last time you looked in the mirror? Does that describe you? If it does, you're a Pharisee. Pharisees weren't believers in Jesus, by the way. They were religious, but they were bound to go to hell. So why am I talking about this? Because Pharisees are mentioned in this scripture. And if you're a Pharisee, you're gonna die and go to hell, no matter how religious you are, no matter how much you've studied, even if you've even used that Logos Bible program. I can't judge your motives, but God can because He is all-knowing. So let's look at this. That uh AI, it was so much it said it had to put it in two screens. Look at the second screen there. It says these people who are Pharisees today, believers and religious leaders, oftentimes they display a holier than thou attitude, judging others by doing what? Overlooking their own faults, right? Relying the behavior Jesus criticized in the Gospels. So again, what are your motives for following after Jesus? Pharisees were following after him because they were going to get him. They were ready to take him out because he was a threat. That was their motive. Let's take a look at the scripture. Let's get in the scripture. We've got a few minutes here. Let's do this. John chapter 12, verse 12. Jesus, let me say this just before this. Jesus had just been in the company of Lazarus and his two sisters. He was on his way to come back in for the Passover. He came in late at night because at this point in Jesus' life, when he's only got like a week left to live, people were wanting to kill him. Pharisees wanted to arrest him at night when there was not a big crowd around. Because they were afraid if they upset the crowd who was falling after Jesus, then the people would turn on the Pharisees. And the difference between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, one of the differences was that the Sadducees were more the religious elite with a lot of money. The Pharisees didn't have a lot of money, but they had in common friendship and trust of the common man. So they wanted to protect the status. So what happened was Jesus knew it's his time to come in. He didn't want to come in too early during the day and cause a ruckus. So he comes in later at night. But what he does, he stops off at his good friend's house, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. So if you were to look at John chapter 12, verses 1 through 11, you'd see a little bit of that story. And I don't know if you know it or not, but when somebody is raised from the dead, that causes a stir. That draws a crowd. And we're going to see what took place. After spending the night with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus after being in their home, this is where we pick up in verse 12. It says, The next day, the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. Now they were getting ready for the Passover, so many Jews, upwards of estimates, some people say up to maybe as much as a million people were coming into Jerusalem. But it says here, look what they said. The crowd that had come for the Passover meet feast, they heard that Jesus was coming. Now, they had already heard about his miracle, and they had already heard about other miracles he's done. So that crowd, their motive, they want to see Jesus. They want to kind of know what's going on, right? At the same time, look at verse 13. So they took this crowd we're talking about, so they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying, Hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel. So these people that have kind of been following after Jesus, this crowd that's coming in, a lot of them had already heard about what had taken place with Lazarus. They want to show him respect. Yes, I get it. You wouldn't necessarily have date palm trees grown around Jerusalem. I've never been there. Maybe they don't grow there today, but at the time they had access to them and they got them and laid them down. Now, what's unique about this is the idea of the palm trees that was normally used and celebrated for the tabernacle, uh excuse me, the feast of tabernacles, when the children of Israel would sleep outside and makeshift tents representing their time of 40 years in their wilderness. But for this occasion, they chose to use palm trees again, their leaves. What did they do with them? Well, like it says, they took them and laid them down at the feet of Jesus, and as we're also seeing other verses, uh, they took their cloaks off. What were they doing? They were paying homage to what they thought was going to be their political leader who was going to save them from the oppression of the Romans. So they're acknowledging him as the great king, uh, some of them as a Messiah, but not all of them fully understood that. All right. So what do they do? They shout Hosanna, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the king of the Jews. When we look at that, Hosanna, it literally means I beg you to save. That's the literal translation. Other ways to say it, well, more ways that make sense to us today, would be, save us, we pray. So you've got all these people that are coming in, they've heard about Jesus, they know he can do miracles, and they're like, save us, help us. We want to be freed from this oppression. As it says there, Hosanna is a type of praise to God Himself. And you see that in Psalms uh 113 to 118. There's a hael, which is a praise song that's sung uh in the Jewish tradition. You can see the word Hosanna a lot in there. But look what happens in verse 14 as he's coming in. More of the story. It says that Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it just as it is written. Simple enough. They're quoting Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9, where it says, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, Zion being the children of Israel. 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, a colt, the fall, the foul of a donkey. That's the actual where they're quoting it from. Notice there, your king is coming. So I could easily see by the crowd is thinking, here comes our king, the one that's going to save us now. Not realizing that he's going to come when the time is right to save all of his children, right? Another thing to think about when a king comes, they don't come on donkeys normally, do they? When the president comes, doesn't he have a special vehicle that he rides in? Okay. Christ. If he would have been like the king they were expecting, he would have come in on a horse. Now, pop quiz. In Revelation, Jesus coming back, he's gonna be doing what? Riding on a horse. That's when he's gonna be the true king of kings in terms of the ruler that we see. Now he's that now, but that's how he's gonna come back. But when he's coming to die on the cross to be our Messiah, our Savior, he's coming in humility as was predicted hundreds of years before through Prophet Zechariah. The actual verse in John 12, the way they quote it, fear not, O daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's coat. Easy enough, they've made it clear uh what's taking place. Now here's what's interesting: as this is taking place, the disciples are like, wait a minute, what's going on? Disciples, they walked with Jesus, they talked with him, they knew all this stuff, but it wasn't quite clicking in their head that Jesus was going to have to die. So they see this miracle and they know that when Jesus did miracles, people would get all excited about it. But this is probably one of the first times they've seen not only him coming in on a donkey, but the backstory of the donkey wasn't like did Jesus had a donkey, he just got on it. No, he sent two disciples to go get it. And tell the master, hey, the Lord, the master, the master, the owner of the animals, hey, the master needs this. And this was lots of miracles that took place. It's not particularly in this version that we're looking at today. But here's what's unique. Look at verse 16. His disciples didn't 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. What's unique about that is my Jesus is a Jesus who keeps his promises. Do you believe that? Look at what it says in John 14, 26. Jesus was speaking, he was getting ready to go to the Father. And listen to what he says. Okay, now understand, this is we've just jumped two chapters, okay? But what we're doing in 2026, we're looking back as John wrote what took place. And at the end of Jesus' ministry, right before he ascends, close to his death, here he says, the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things. And look at this bring to remembrance all that I've said to you. I don't know about y'all, but sometimes my memories are starting to get a little bit off, a little bit. I know y'all can all relate, right? We can all relate to that. Okay. But these people had experienced a lot in the life of Jesus. And one of the things it said backing up in verse 16 is they didn't quite understand it until they remembered afterwards that the Holy Spirit was going to help them remember. So, in other words, Jesus dies, he goes to heaven, he sends the Holy Spirit, Pentecost comes, the Holy Spirit's down. All of a sudden, John says, I need to write a book to testify to Christ and who he is. Did he just remember that perfectly? No. But he had the Holy Spirit who did that. God is a promise keeping God. Jesus is a promise keeping Jesus. We need to remember that. As the story continues, look at verse 17. It says, The crowd that had been with him when he called Nazareth out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continue to bear witness. That crowd that had seen what happened with Lazarus, they're following after Jesus. They're curious. Now we don't have time to go into their motives, but some of it was pure, that's awesome. This is amazing. God. Others are like, wait a minute, this is real. We saw it because we see Lazarus now, and we were at the wake. But they were still curious and not fully understanding, or they caught up in the sensationalism. Verse 18. The reason the crowd went to meet him was they had heard that he had done this sign. Let's be careful when somebody comes up or on TV and does, oh, we've got this new thing happening. It's okay to check it out, but check it out with caution because their focus needs to be worshiping Jesus, not the latest little thing that's happened or the latest little trend. People say, I've got a new movement of the Holy Spirit, or I've got this or that. Be careful. Check it out, but make sure it's of the Lord. They were following because of a sign. Are you following Jesus because of a sign? Because maybe you're you're maybe Jesus healed your grandmama when she was sick. You decided to follow him without having a personal relationship with him. Meaning, in other words, I feel obligated to come to church because God did something for me, but I don't talk to him during the week and I don't read my Bible. You see, it's about a relationship with Jesus. It's about checking our motives to make sure we truly love him with all of our heart, with all of our soul, and with all of our mind. So getting back to the Pharisees, look at verse 19. So the Pharisees said to one another, You see that you're gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him. Pharisees wanting to put him to death. They're thinking our time is coming close. The problem is you've got this big crowd that's coming. The two crowds I mentioned, one would be people who've been following after the death of Lazarus, who've been following Jesus off that, plus the crowd that was coming in just for the celebration of the Passover itself. That's why you have two big old crowds coming. During that time, everybody's talking. They find Jesus, they go to worship him, putting the uh palm branches down, and all the people who had seen Lazarus raised from the dead and heard about it, they're testifying to that, going completely against what the religious people wanted. What's the problem? The religious people are simply that religious. They know the right things to say, they do all the right things, they act the right way, they give like they're supposed to give, but they don't have a true relationship with Jesus Christ. So this morning, can we check our motives? Three things to think about. Number one, what Pharisee type of attitude do you need to repent of today? We look very quickly at this, I realize that. Pharisees wanted to kill Jesus. I have a feeling, and I about bet looking at everybody in this room, I don't have a feeling that nobody here wants to kill Jesus. I'm glad of that, by the way. But that wasn't their only issue. They tolerated him, they put up with him, but they were not living for him. They didn't fully understand who he was. Another question would be what type of crowd attitude do you need to repent of today? See, a lot of the crowd just followed along because that was a popular thing to do. Oh, he did a miracle? Let's go check it out. Without truly having a relationship with him. How do I know that? Well, we didn't really talk about it, did we? Well, we didn't have to talk about it. Why? Well, did you pay attention to the children's sermon this morning? Didn't Sandra mention very clearly that that crowd started out, Hosanna, blessed is who comes in the name of the Lord? And didn't you hear her say that exact same crowd came back on what we call Friday and said, give us somebody else? We want to crucify Christ. The same crowd. They flipped just like that. People who were following after Jesus just all of a sudden flipped. May we not be like the crowd, may we be solid. And finally, as I've asked again, what are our motives for following Jesus? Is it to get something out of it? Is it to say thanks for what he's done for us? Is it having a personal relationship and wanting to be obedient out of love? I can't judge your motives. You can do your motives in such a way that you could fool me and everybody in this room. That's not what I'm worried about. What I'm worried about is if our motives are wrong, we can't fool God. And the bottom line is all that we study this week and next week with Christ coming and die on the cross, if we don't truly have a relationship with him, I'm not saying that we pray and ask him to come in our heart, I'm not saying we won't die. I'm saying if we don't have a relationship with him, when we have to stand face to face with him, the wrong motives and no relationship, he is going to say, Depart from me. I never need you. And according to Scripture, you can say things were like, I did this and this and this, and it'll be too late. There's no second chances once you've passed. You'll spend the rest of eternity in hell. Look at our motives this week. Ask God to correct anything that's off. And watch what He'll do through a life who truly testifies about Christ, who he is, what he did on the cross, what that means for us today and in our own lives. A relationship with the Son of God that starts from the time we pray and ask him to come in our heart and are serious about it, and a relationship that will what? Will never ever end. Because it'll be throughout all eternity in heaven. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you, Father, for your word, your clear word, Father, that there's been a triumphal entry that's taken place, of which Christ came back under his own desire and control and willingness to be obedient to you. And as a result of that, we have an opportunity to know you in a personal way. But Father, as we look at your story, as already has been said, people can follow Jesus for the wrong reasons. So help us, Father, today, to evaluate our life, our motives, and correct anything in us that would be causing us to not truly worship you. Father, we've known you forever, we've loved you forever, but that doesn't mean we're perfect. So create in us now a clean heart. We love you. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Savior. Amen.