Teaching Tuesday: Dying Breaths - Hosanna to the Humble King

Series: Dying Breaths
Sermon: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." (Luke 23:46)
Watch the messages HERE. 

We get accounts of Palm Sunday from all four gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each tell the story, and they emphasize different pieces of it.

In Matthew, Jesus arrives in Jerusalem and goes straight to the temple to clear out those who have turned the dwelling place of God into a marketplace.

No one saw this coming. People expected Jesus to take on the Romans and their oppression, not take on the unfaithfulness of God’s chosen people.

This scene has something to say to us today, I think. Jesus did not storm the gates of Jerusalem with an army behind him and wage war against the Roman government to get them to stop making Christians’ lives difficult. He went to the Israelites’ most sacred place - the place where the spirit of God dwelled - and he said Hey! This is a temple for your worship of God, not a storefront for your worship of money.

This is the most angry and aggressive we ever see Jesus, and that should tell us something. He was more passionate about the faithfulness of God’s people and the appropriate approach to holy things than he was who might be trying to stop them.

In Mark, Jesus rides into town on a donkey, and the donkey takes up half the story, because Mark wants to make it clear that Jesus was indeed the Messiah fulfilling the prophesy from way back in Zechariah 9:9:

“Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Luke shows us the contrast in reactions to Jesus: his disciples praise God for him; but the religious leaders moved from skeptical to nervous to This guy has gotta go.

John connects Jesus’s triumphal entry with the story of him raising his friend Lazarus from the dead, as if Jesus wanted to preview his own temporary death and point to the power of new life in him.

Jesus was praised, and he was pushed away. Some of these people did both in just that one week. And before we get too critical of them, maybe we should ask ourselves if we do the same thing.

As Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the crowd shouted, "Hosanna!" laying palm branches before him. They saw a King—but not the kind they expected. Jesus came not to conquer by force, but to save through sacrifice. Holy Week reminds us of one of the great paradoxes of our faith: that the road to ultimate victory leads to the cross; that life requires death…at least for a while.

As we reflect this week, let us welcome Jesus with hearts ready to follow him—through celebration, through suffering, and into the joy of resurrection. "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!"TO KNOW HIM AND TO MAKE HIM KNOWN!

- Pastor Brady