WHAT WAS JESUS REALLY DOING IN THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY?

I think all Christians would agree that Jesus never did anything without keeping His great mission to save humanity foremost in mind. He never flew by the of his pants, as the old saying goes, but rather, every movement, ever destination, every conversation, every miracle was perfectly designed to bring fulfillment to His one overriding mission.

So take, for example, Jesus’ riding into Jerusalem on that donkey a week before the Feast of Passover. It is easy to see it as a bible story about the king coming into the Holy City and all the people worshipping Him and throwing palm branches along the way in a show of worship. It is easy to reduce the narrative to Jesus being haled by the crowd, entering the city, saying a few things and then leaving as a popular figure. But it is important to realize that there is a whole spectrum of emotions, jealousies, expectations, and undercurrents the lie behind his entrance into Jerusalem as He clip-clops on that beast of burden. That slow trip was a prophetic sign-act that had as its goal one purpose; to show forth the end of an age marked by His pending death. Jesus was purpose assuming the role of a victorious king not to be coronated, but to be despised and rejected of men in order that they would nail Him to a tree. So let’s go back and work our way through this climactic event that we call Palm Sunday.

In Luke 9:51 we have that famous turning point of Jesus’ ministry described by Luke; ‘now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.’ This Galilean Rabbi was on a mission that no one could stop. He passed through Samaria and when they saw his determination they refused to accommodate him. But this was intentional. His mission was to move steadily toward the Holy City to die on the Passover. His ministry of spreading the good tidings was now over. But in order to fulfill His mission Jesus must enrage the Romans along with the Jewish leaders and people. He would do this by entering Jerusalem with all the pomp of a conquering king. This display of regal conquest would be a massive threat to both the ruling Romans and the Jewish leaders. Not only that, but when the people who initially cheered Him on saw that His purpose was not to conquer but to die, they were turn on Him like a sudden change in the wind. The gospel narratives are replete with hints that Jesus’ ride on a young donkey was a carefully concocted plan, hidden from most, that would anger everyone in the city. Everything we see Jesus saying and doing during this trip into the city is geared toward this end. And when it is all said and done, the contours of God’s covenant relationships with man will have massively changed. The ‘Triumphal Entry’ will be the first step toward a total covenantal upheaval.

We find here an immediate application. We should never try to predict Jesus’ plans for they are almost always hidden from view and often counterintuitive. He is the infinite Son of God who sees the end from the beginning. And so His ways are always infinitely higher than our ways.

I am sure many are thinking that what I have said is a contrived interpretation. It is hard to let go of the traditional view that Christ is entering Jerusalem to show Himself as the King of the Jews. And let me be clear that this is correct as far as it goes. The question is, however, ‘why was Christ entering the Holy City as this king-hero?’ And this is where a close examination of the text helps us to see what Jesus was actually trying to do. I am simply asking the reader to listen and weigh the evidence.

Our goal is to look at all that happened immediately before, during and after the events of the Triumphal Entry. We will follow Luke’s narrative in the main and turn to Mark briefly to fill in a missing detail. We have already mentioned that in chapter nine of Luke’s gospel we find Jesus shifting His ministry from healing and preaching to a steadfast intention of reaching Jerusalem before the Passover in order to die. By the time we reach chapter 19 of Luke Jesus has passed through Jericho and is now getting close to the Holy City. It is there he meets up with a dishonest, opportunistic tax collector named Zacchaeus. Jesus sovereignly saves this man. But what is the reaction by the people? If you read the text you wil see that the Jews were not at all happy that Jesus had reached out to this man who had sold his soul to the Romans. They complained about it, but were still enamored about Jesus in the hopes He would actually defeat the hated Romans (19:7). This incident seems innocent, but it fits right in with Luke’s purpose to show us that Jesus is doing things to anger the Jews and the Romans. In essence Christ is fulfilling what had long been said about Him in Psalm 2,

‘The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord and against His Anointed.’

The anointed One must make many enemies in order to die on a cross. He begins by saving a hated traitor.

Luke links the Zacchaeus story to what comes next in verses 11-27. ‘Now as they heard these things (19:9-10) He spoke another parable, because He was near Jerusalem and because they thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately.’ In response to their optimism that the kingdom is about to be inaugurated Jesus gives the Parable of the Minas. The parable begins; ‘a certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return’ (vs 12). We can all see the connection here. The nobleman was, of course, Jesus. But in the story, the nobleman ‘went away.’ The people would wonder why the nobleman who came to save them would go away? Wasn’t he about to bring in the kingdom now? The entire parable was aimed to dash the Jews’ hopes that the kingdom was coming anytime soon. Instead of bringing in a kingdom, the nobleman in the parable left the operation of the kingdom in the hands of servants. The point of the parable which could not be missed was that the kingdom was not happening now but would only come as the nobleman’s servants would labor to expand the kingdom by diligently using the gifts the nobleman had given them. But that is not all. The parable also speaks of the citizens who refuse to acknowledge the nobleman and for that they would be punished. Clearly this was a prediction that Jesus, the nobleman, would be rejected by His own people. So far from supporting any notion that Messiah was bringing in the kingdom in a triumphant way, this parable taught that the kingdom was light years away and that the people would actually turn on the king. How would have thought that the people cheering Jesus along as He headed for Jerusalem would deeply despise Him? The events of the next week would bear this out.

Now very close to Jerusalem, Jesus takes control of the narrative. He commands His disciples to go into town and find a colt of a donkey tied to a post and to bring it to Him. If anyone asks what they are doing they must say ‘the Lord has need of it.’ So they secure the donkey and bring it to the Lord. What must be noted here is that Jesus is orchestrating all the events. He intentionally seeks out a donkey to parallel Solomon’s entrance into the city a thousand years earlier (see 1 Kings 1:33-37). More importantly His riding on a young donkey would fulfill an ancient prophecy found in the book of Zechariah.

‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your King is coming to you;
He is just and having salvation,
Lowly and riding on a donkey,
A colt, the foal of a donkey.’ (Zech 9:9).

This prophecy in Zechariah 9:9 seems to speak of a humble Messiah coming into the Holy City on a donkey. But to read on reveals a whole different purpose for this text.

‘I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
And the horse from Jerusalem;
The battle bow shall be cut off.
He shall speak peace to the nations;
His dominion shall be ‘from sea to sea,
And from the River to the ends of the earth’ (vs 10).

The king would come into the city on a donkey, but for what purpose? He would take away Israel’s strength. And He would then speak peace to all the nations becoming a universal Savior. Again we see that the entrance into Jerusalem was not about the Jew’s getting a kingdom, but about the entire world getting a king. That would entail severing Himself from the Jewish nation as their Messiah to being the Savior of the world via the ‘peace of His cross.’

So Jesus plods on. He knows exactly what He is doing.

As Jesus reaches the interior of the city he does three things; He will cry, He will cleanse and He will curse. Together they paint a dismal picture for the nation of Israel and the entire Old Covenant system. All the religious pomp and fanfare that have characterized the day will turn to rejection and hatred.

Jesus comes into the Holy City looks around and cries. We find this narrated by Luke in 19:41-44. And what is He crying about? For centuries the prophets had exhorted the Jewish people to repent of their sins and to live for Yahweh. But time and time again they openly defied the Lord. And now the day had come for God to destroy their Holy City. In verse 43 He foretells of the day when Jerusalem will be surrounded by foreign armies and destroyed. Jesus as the Messiah was expected to conquer the Romans but instead we find Him predicting the demise of the entire Jewish system including its capital city. But this was Jesus’ city, one he often visited and celebrated feasts. But the day had now come where God would visit the Jews and yet would still not heed the warning. Destruction was the only option left. So He wept.

Next Jesus will cleanse the Temple. If the city was doomed so was its religious system. Jesus enters the city and immediately goes to the Temple. This Luke records in chapter 19 verses 45-46. This building that Herod had beautified and Jesus had visited often as a child was one of the great architectural wonders of the ancient world. It was the place where God dwelled, the center of Jewish religious and cultural life. But the Temple had always pointed to a greater reality. It pointed to a day when God would dwell forever with His people, not in a building but in a person. When Jesus came into the world born of a virgin, He was showing the world that the days of the Temple were numbered. His body was now the new dwelling place of God for He was the God-man. Jesus taught this in John chapter 2 saying, ‘destroy this temple (his body) and in three days I will raise it up.’ But the Jews didn’t understand Him and considered this statement as blasphemy. But the true blasphemy was taking place in the Jewish Temple at the very moment Jesus entered the city. Immoral hucksters were desecrating His Father’s house by selling mangy animals to pilgrims who had come from afar to celebrate Passover. In an act of righteous anger with prophetic implications Jesus chased the charlatans off the precinct crying out that they had made God’s holy house a den of thieves. The symbolism could not be lost. The temple must also be destroyed to allow way for a new and better temple to take center stage, the temple of His body which would die and be raised in three days.

So Jesus was clearly spelling doom for both the city and the temple. This was a clear indication the days of the Old Covenant were drawing to a close.

The next event to take place happens the next day as Jesus re-enters Jerusalem. This event is not recorded in Luke but is found in Mark 11:12-14; 20-24. Here Jesus curses a random fig tree. This strange act of Jesus has puzzled commentators for centuries. Though details can be debated it is clear that the fig tree represents Israel. Hosea 9:10 made it clear that the fig tree represents the nation.

“I found Israel Like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers As the firstfruits on the fig tree in its first season. But they went to Baal Peor, And separated themselves to that shame; They became an abomination like the thing they loved.’

The fig tree represented Israel at her zenith, a prosperous nation, a people blessed of God (see 1 Kings 4:25). Conversely when Israel is rejected by God due to her unfaithfulness she is represented by the fig tree that no longer bears fruit (see Jer 8:13). By cursing the fig tree Jesus is merely doing what Jeremiah had long again prophesied. The coming of Messiah meant that Israel’s days of blessing were now over. This Jesus demonstrated by cursing a fig tree. This act, though strange, fits right into the context of Jesus’ continual warning that the old system, including the temple, the city, and now the people are all about to pass away. His death on a cross will inaugurate a new age and there will be no more Jerusalem, no more temple, no more favored ethnic Israel.

On the other side of the Triumphal Entry Luke records the parable of the Vineyard Workers (Lk 20:9-19). The central theme of this parable fits right into the entire ethos of the Triumphal Entry sequence. The parable is clearly about the Jews’ rejection of God’s Messiah and God’s final rejection of the Jews. The parable is easy to understand. A vineyard owner (God) leases out His vineyard to vinedressers with the expectation they will give back to him part of the yield of the land. But when the Vineyard owner sends his servants to collect his due the vinedressers beat the servants and send them away empty. In one last appeal the owner sends his send to them believing they will respect him. But instead they kill the son. Obviously Jesus is pointing to His own crucifixion as the Lord of Glory which will end with God’s wrath being poured out on the nation.

So what is Luke and the other gospel writers trying to show us in the entire Triumphal Entry narrative? Simply this: Jesus rode into Jerusalem not to receive a crown but to incite the people who would crucify Him; the Jews and Romans. He must die and He so arranged events that would guarantee its fulfillment.

In one sense this narrative is sad. Sad because the nation who was given such advantages to love and serve God would soon be destroyed by the very God who chose her. In another sense this narrative is comforting. Comforting because in the rejection of the Jews God was intending to bring the Gentiles into the very kingdom from which they had been heretofore excluded. There is even another note of comfort encased in this Triumphal Entry. Jesus so loved His people that He would purposely ride into His own trap, be tried, whipped, and crucified so that His church might be saved. When we look at the Triumphal entry, we need not raise our voices in celebration for the entrance of a king but raise our voices in celebration of a Savior who loves sinners. And if Jesus would willingly die for a crowd that would soon cry out ‘crucify Him, crucify Him!’, He is more than willing to save anyone who comes to Him by faith.