We're in Luke chapter 19, and
today we're beginning in verse 28. And this block of Scriptures
typically, or most commonly referred to, describes the triumphal entry
of the Lord into Jerusalem. And we'll just read verse 28 through
40 of Luke chapter 19. And when He had thus spoken,
He went before, ascending up to Jerusalem. And it came to
pass, when he was come nigh to Bethphage and Bethany at the
mount called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples,
saying, Go ye into the village over against you. In the which
at your entering you shall find a colt tied, whereon never yet
man set. Loose him, and bring him hither.
And if any man ask you, why do you loose him? Thus shall you
say to them, because the Lord hath need of him. And they that
were sent went their way, and they found, even as he had said
unto them, and as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof
said unto them, why loose ye the colt? And they said, the
Lord hath need of him. And they brought him to Jesus,
and they cast their garments upon the colt, and they set Jesus
thereon. And as he went, they spread their
clothes in the way. And when he was come nigh, even
now at the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude
of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice
for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, Blessed
be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven
and glory to the highest. And some of the Pharisees from
among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples. And he answered and said unto
them, I tell you that if these should hold their peace, the
stones would immediately cry out. And so that's the text that
we're going to be looking at today. And we need to kind of
keep everything in context here and focus. The name of our title comes today
is Thy King Cometh. And you know, it's interesting
that we have to remember that the Passover is like in six days
from this time that we're reading about today. And remember, the
Jews were required to attend these certain feasts. annually,
there are several, three or five feasts they had to attend every
year. And so this Jerusalem would have
been teeming with people that had come from all over to attend
the Passover feasts. And there was probably hundreds
of thousands of Jews there in the city at this time. And a
little bit later, at the close of this chapter, Jesus describes
some things that are going to happen to Jerusalem. And Josephus,
the Jewish historian, estimated that at the Passover that he
was describing, there were as many as three million Jews in
the city for that time. So a lot of people there, a lot
of folks. I would venture to say that there
was probably not only a handful that hadn't heard about Jesus.
He'd been, for three years, he'd been traveling the land and raising
people from the dead and doing all kinds of miracles and things.
So they knew Jesus was near. He's as we looked at our kind
of our graphic from before where he came up from from Jericho
800 feet below sea level to the Mount of Olives which was a An
elevation rise of about 4,000 feet and 14 miles Quite a quite
a change there and as he as you would come up this trail you
would come to Bethany which was a couple of miles out of Jerusalem. And then next you would come
to Bethphage, which was about half a mile. Or what we looked
at last week was that was about the limit of the distance you
could travel on the Sabbath day without breaking the Sabbath
law. It's called a Sabbath day's journey from Jerusalem. So in John chapter 12, it tells
us that there was a multitude of people in the city, and they
knew that he was in Bethany with Lazarus and Mary and her sister,
and they wanted to see Jesus, and they wanted to see Lazarus,
who he had raised from the dead. They were, oh, I want to go see
that. And then it says the next day
they came out to meet him when he started to make his journey
in. So a great multitude of Jews would come out of the eastern
gate of the city and come up the hill to meet him, and so
that's kind of where we're at today. And we have a great contrast
presented here, and it's very valuable for the church. The people, they had expectations
of Jesus that were just wrong. And it's no different today.
People have all kinds of ideas about what Jesus is, who He is,
what His purpose is, and it's just all wrong. It's just all
wrong. And, you know, they hope for
deliverance, but in a physical way. They wanted relief. They wanted to be delivered from
the Roman government. That was the main thing. And
some of them knew that Messiah was coming, but they had this
expectation that when Messiah came, He would throw off the
Roman yoke. Even the disciples that were
with Him in Acts 1 said, when He appeared to them after the
resurrection, said, Will thou at this time restore again the
kingdom to Israel? So that was their mindset at
the time. And it took a while for the Spirit
to guide them into the truth of His purpose and why He was
there. And He said a lot of things to
them And later on he would say, well, remember when I was yet
with you, I said this? Well, here's what that means.
And the Spirit delivered the spiritual truth to them. So they expected deliverance
from the Roman Empire, but as we go down through Luke, we get
down to verse 41 through 44. He says, not only is that not
going to happen, but something far worse is going to happen.
He said, there is going to come a time when the armies are going
to besiege this city. They're going to surround it. And it's going to be horrible.
And when they get done, there's not going to be one stone left
upon another that's not torn down. And when we get to that,
we'll look at that. But that's recorded what happened
there under the Roman general Vespasius. He came because there was a Jewish
insurrection in 70 AD. They came and surrounded the
city and besieged it. with these three million people
in there and starved them to death. And they were dying by
the hundreds. There were so many people dying,
they were throwing them over the wall because they couldn't
bury them, they couldn't deal with it. Gangs roaming the streets
and killing people for just the most insignificant things and
atrocious things. So we'll cover that a little
bit more when we get there. But in this passage, we have
a culmination of what was foreordained by God the Father. And it was
prophesied of in the Old Testament, Zechariah 9-9. Norm's been through
that here in his study of Zechariah, and we've mentioned it a couple
of times in our Bible class here. Zechariah 9-9, and it's also
in Daniel chapter 9, verse 24 through 27. It gives the exact timing of when Messiah
will come and be cut off. I mean, right down, it's pretty
specific. Messiah will be cut off, but
not for himself. Isn't that interesting? You'd
think that the people that are promoting the idea that Jesus
became a sinner would take a look at that verse and say, well,
he was cut off, but not for himself. If he was not cut off for himself,
he was cut off for somebody else. So, enough said about that. Zechariah 9.9, Behold your king
cometh lowly. Rejoice greatly. Zechariah 9,
9. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of
Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, thy king cometh unto
thee, and he is just, and having salvation. lowly, and writing
upon an ass upon the colt the foal of an ass." And Norman spent
quite a bit of time on that back months ago in Zechariah 9.9. And so today's text deals with
that. What a sweet declaration, even
though the people that were shouting it out and hollering the hosannas
and things didn't really have a grasp of what the significance
of it was. They were nonetheless foreordained
to cry those things out, to shout those things out. He was and
He is King of kings and Lord of lords. And He is for and with
His people. Remember our text from Luke 19.10. He says, I am come to seek and
to save that which was lost. And that's a specific, that's
a very specific thing. He says, he didn't just come
to, he said, I didn't just come to seek and save anything. He said that, a specific item
which was lost, to seek and to save that which was lost. And
that, which he's talking about ultimately and by implication
reveals something that was previously possessed. If I had that, it
means that I possessed that at one time. If I had that computer
and lost it, at one time it was mine. So he's kind of inferring
that. And that's what he reports in
this case, it's persons, it's the church, it's the elect, the
sheep which are inferred. And he reports that in John 17,
in that kingly prayer of Jesus, that the Father had given Him
a people They were His eternally, and because of their lost condition
due to the fall, He gave them to His Son to redeem, and then
to present them back spotless and without sin, without wrinkle,
covered with the righteousness of Christ, who paid their redemption
price with His blood." And that's why He is in the outskirts of
Jerusalem, and He's going to be there this week, kind of coming
and going. And it's the last time that he
is coming to Jerusalem in that particular time. In John 17,
1 through 6, it says, These words spake Jesus in his prayer there,
and he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and he said, Father,
the hour is come glorify thy son that thy son also may glorify
thee as thou has given him power over all flesh that he should
give eternal life to as many as thou has given him He's got
power over all flesh, but He's going to give eternal life to
those whom the Father had given Him. And He's going to have judgment
on the others. We're kind of seeing that come
to a culmination here in Luke 19, where they're expecting these
things of Him. They have these wrong expectations
of Him. And they're thinking He's coming as an earthly, physical
King. And He says, not only am I not
going to deliver you, But the Romans are going to come and
just kill you. They're going to deliver judgment. So, that wrong interpretation,
that wrong expectation. And he says, And this is life
eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on
the earth. I have finished the work which
thou gavest me to do. He was the Lamb slain from before
the foundation of the world. And now, O Father, glorify thou
me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee
before the world was. I manifested thy name unto the
men which thou gavest me out of the world. Thine they were. And there we come to that He
came to seek and to save that which was lost. Thine they were,
and Thou gavest them Me, and they have kept Thy word. And
what does that amount to? He says, They have believed in
Him whom Thou hast sent. and that belief given to them. We believe according to the working
of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised
Him from the dead. That's how that belief comes. So this text
speaks so much of His almighty kingship, His sovereignty over
all things. He'd repeatedly told the disciples
exactly that which would shortly transpire. In verse 22 of chapter
19, He said, Then he took unto him the twelve, and said unto
them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written
by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished.
For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked,
and spitefully entreated, and spitted on. And they shall scourge
him and put him to death, and the third day he shall rise again."
How opposite are the expectations, how opposite of what they wanted
Jesus to be. And it's no different in religion
today. People have an idea of what they
want Jesus to be, and they think that that's because that's what
they want Him to be, that's what He is. And in fact, He is not. He is opposite of what our expectations
are in our natural condition. And he demonstrated time and
time again his sovereign reign and control over all things.
And previously he had demonstrated his almighty power over death,
over wind, over storms, over the sea, over fish of the sea,
over devils, over devastating disease like leprosy. over blindness,
Luke 18, 44, where he was coming out of Jericho and healed the
blind beggar there, and over animals. In this case, we have
a colt over which never had man sat. Well, anybody that's been
around livestock pretty much knows that if you get on an animal
that has never been sat on, they're going to immediately try to dislodge
you. They're not into that. By nature, that would be a very
rare case where you could just go climb up on some strange beast
and not get ejected. But this colt did what he was
foreordained to do. We have his example of him being
sovereign over plants. Remember the fig tree in our
previous lesson where he expected to find fruit there and it was
just leaves. And he said, from henceforth nothing shall grow
on thee. And it withered right before their eyes. And they were
all kind of shocked when that happened. And he was sovereign
over the persons whom the Lord did call. He said, follow me.
And none of them said, why? Or what for? Or I don't feel
like it. Or not going to. They all said,
Well, we're willing in the day of thy power. That's what happened.
He was sovereign over salvation. He said, Zacchaeus, today salvation
has come to thy house, in particular there. And in this text, the
people by divine decree would cry out the title and nature
of Christ, even though most of them didn't really understand
or realize His true nature or purpose. in spite of the many
works which many of them had witnessed. They'd either saw
it with their own eyes or heard about it from somebody that they
had confidence in. Oh, I saw him still the seer. I saw him cast out devils. I saw him raise a young man to
life. I saw him heal some lepers. I
saw him cause a blind man to see. I saw. So, they're all there being witnesses
of many of the things that he did, even though some of them
didn't maybe believe them, or they didn't see them themselves,
and maybe some of them did see them. So, you know, these gospel
works, as it says in Hebrews chapter 4, these gospel works
didn't profit the majority of them, not being mixed with faith
in them that heard them. And that's just the case even
today. It's interesting, you know, we
each think, well, we're doing what we're motivated to do based
on our own circumstances and situations, and we react to those
things. And then sometimes the Lord reveals
to us, well, He caused all that. He causes it all whether we realize
it or not, but sometimes he's pleased to reveal it to us and
say, you know, I caused that to happen to accomplish what
I wanted to do. Paul said, after he listed all
these myriad of things that went wrong, oh, I was shipwrecked,
stoned, whipped, and cast in jail, and beaten, and left for
dead. He says, but all these things
turned out to be for the furtherance of the gospel. Boy, what a blessing
to be able to look back and see that. So we're all here in this
very building because God has worked all things
for good for us to draw us together here at this very point in time. And these people in Jerusalem
are there for the very same purpose. They each did what seemed to
be motivated to do within themselves, although their very words and
actions were before determined to be done by God Almighty, because
the Scripture says that. Even the very donkey was chosen
and foreordained for God's purpose, chosen in eternity, declared
in the Gospel of Zechariah, chapter 9, some 550 years before the
very act The donkey was set apart for
the service of the Lord. Luke 19.30 in our text today
says, Go ye into the village over against you, in which at
your entering you shall find a colt tied whereon yet never
man set. Loose him and bring him thither.
Well, he caused that to be written 550 years before. And since he
was the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world,
It was in His determinate counsel from the same eternity. So, all
these things according to His purpose. And you know that donkey
didn't resist the call and service of the Creator, the Master, the
Messiah. And then we have the people saying,
Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord. Peace
in heaven and glory in the highest. Well, that comes from a psalm.
That was a coronation song from Psalms 118, I believe, where
the people said those very same things in a picture of what was
going to happen at this time. And in Isaiah chapter 12 verse
6 says, And there he was in the midst of them. in His very person, and yet the
vast majority of them didn't see Him as the King. They didn't see Him as the Messiah.
They didn't see Him as the Lord, the Savior. You know, it tells
us in Acts 4.27 that, "...for a truth against Thy holy child
Jesus, whom Thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate,
with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together."
to do what thy counsel before determined to be done." And so
it was written in Zechariah, it was determined in eternity,
and at this point in time that God had foreordained, they actually
did those things, they said those things. And you know, there were
There were people that were foreordained to shout the hosannas of the
king. And there were people that were
foreordained to a few chapters later, they're going to say,
crucify him, crucify him. Release unto us Barabbas, the
murderer. They were foreordained to that.
And you know, it's interesting that Up until this point, the
Lord had kind of insisted that His notoriety really not be spread
to the point that it's being spread here where He's having
a coronation, even if it is on a colt, coming into Jerusalem
with thousands of people shouting hosannas and praise to the King. Now is the time for that to have
the effect that was determined to happen from all time. For the elders, the Jews, the
religious folks to say, They were distressed by this, and
we read that in the next block of Scripture where they said,
Master, rebuke thy disciple. The Pharisees, I think it's the
last time that the Pharisees are mentioned in this Gospel
here. And what they say is not, Hallelujah,
the Messiah is coming. It's stop him from accepting
all this tribute as king and Lord. Stop that. Stop it. We don't want that. So they were gathered to do what
was before ordained. And when the enemy heard that,
they demanded that he rebuke the disciples. The response of
Jesus was, you know, I tell you that if these should hold their
peace, the stones would immediately cry out. Isn't that interesting? He says, God has determined it
and caused it to be, and you can't stop it. What He before
determined to be done, shall be done. And you know, I read
that there's possibly a reference to Habakkuk chapter 2 verse 11,
and he's crying out against the city. Habakkuk is, according
to the word of the Lord, in chapter 2, verse 11, and the city that he's crying
out against was established. The scripture says it was established
in iniquity. established in iniquity. It was
not a city that was founded on anything good. Habakkuk 2.11
says, For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam
out of the timber shall answer it. Woe to him that buildeth
a town with blood and establishes a city by iniquity. What a What
a condemnation, and you know when he comes up to Jerusalem
and he's standing there on the Mount of Olives, and he's looking
down at a city that should have been something, but was not. And he goes right to the temple
and casts out the money changers, because they're violating what's
written in the Scriptures. It was supposed to be a house
of prayer, and he said, you made it a den of thieves. The Jews
would only allow shekels, Jewish shekels, to be used to pay your
tithes. Remember in one of our previous
lessons, In the temple they had the columns, and they had 13
columns and 13 boxes. And they had these brass funnel
things that kind of stood up so people would come and cast
their money into the box. And there was one for each tribe,
and then there was one for the unaffiliated. And they could
only cast shekels in there. And so the industrious Jewish
people had these little tables set up out in the outer courtyard. And if you had a drachma or a
Roman coin or a Greek coin or some other kind of monetary thing,
they'd say, well, we'll trade you eight of those for one of
these. And they would make a lot of
money by by trading the foreign coins, the unacceptable coins,
for the coin that was acceptable. And what a spiritual picture
with that. They were trying to create an acceptable coin, just
like people do in religion today. We try to come up with our own
works, in our own nature, and that's not acceptable coinage
with the Lord. He only accepts one thing, and
that's the blood of His Son. And He says, you turned this
into a den of thieves, and it's not the purpose. He says, this
should have been a house of prayer, and that's what it tells us in
the Old Testament. My house is a house of prayer."
So it just shows that he looked down at Jerusalem and wept. Just wept. just thinking about
the effects of the fall, and the far-reaching consequences
of it, and how it morphs into different aspects, and this causes
one thing, and then the fall morphs that into another evil
consequence, and that morphs into another evil consequence.
And, you know, we see that in our everyday life. Things that
were not tolerable when we were young people, I won't say how
many years ago, Now they're commonplace. They've
gone from being not acceptable to, this is what is the expected. This is the norm. This is what
we should strive for. And it's not going to improve. So as these people are crying
out for the Lord and shouting His hosannas, you know, there
wasn't anybody that was going to be able to say the King was
not there. Rejoice, rejoice so greatly, O daughter of Zion.
Shout, daughter of Jerusalem, thy king cometh unto thee. He
is just and having salvation. Lowly and riding upon an ass,
upon the colt, the foal of an ass." How many people were probably
familiar with that Old Testament prophecy from Zechariah? You know, he is and always was
King of kings and Lord of lords, and he is just. He is, as sovereign
king, he's here dispensing judgment and mercy. He's absolutely just,
absolutely righteous. He's going to be cut off, but
not for himself, because he is absolutely pure, absolutely sinless,
absolutely just. He's immutable in all of his
attributes, so he can't change. He said, I change not. I am the Lord. I change not.
Therefore, your sons of Jacob aren't consumed. We depend on
that. We depend on His immutability
in His attributes, His nature, and His work. I change not. He kept the law, which we could
never do, even though the Jews said, whatever you say, we will
do. And so then he gave them more
stuff to do that they couldn't do and would never do. Think
not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I'm
not come to destroy, but to fulfill. That's an interesting verse there.
I'm not come to destroy the law or the prophets. I've come to
fulfill exactly because he said Moses wrote of me. Everything
that Moses wrote, had to do with Christ. Everything he wrote had
to do with the redemption of the church. Not one jot or one tittle shall
in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. Tittle,
that little punctuation mark above a vowel or something that
you see in the writing, that's what that is. It's there for a purpose. Even
a little thing like that is not going to be fulfilled. In Romans 8, verse 3, it says,
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak to the flesh,
God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and
for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness
of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the
flesh, but after the Spirit. He is just. He is totally righteous and having salvation. He's satisfied the justice, being
just. He's satisfied the justice of
God the Father by taking our punishment on Himself in our
place. thereby being able to impute
his righteousness to the people God gave him to redeem from the
foundation of the world. Having salvation, he's the possessor
of it. He's the dispenser of it. You could go back and read Isaiah
53.10. It tells us that very thing,
that he's satisfied. God looked down and saw the travail
of his soul and was satisfied, and by his knowledge shall my righteous
servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities."
He's having salvation. He's the sovereign and soul possessor. He's the author and finisher
of our faith, the scriptures tell us. The sovereign dispenser
in John 5, verse 21 says, raises up the dead and quicken
them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will." And in this, He's
one with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. They don't have
different agendas. They have one agenda. They are
one and they are together. In the Scripture, in Acts 4.12,
it says, neither is there salvation in any other. There's none other
name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. He's lowly, he is just, and he
has salvation. Jonah 2.9 says, I will sacrifice
unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving. I'll pay that I avowed. Salvation
is of the Lord. that pay what I have vowed."
And that's just giving praise to God for his having salvation
and being sovereign. The salvation of the righteous
is of the Lord. He is the possessor of it, the
dispenser of it. Psalm 37, 39. He that is our
God is the God of salvation, and unto God the Lord belong
the issues from death, or the deliverance from death. You know, our King, He did come. He's delivered salvation through
the offering of himself on the cross. He was that lamb. He's
going to celebrate the Passover with his disciples, and then
he is going to become the Passover lamb at the conclusion of this
gospel. And at the same time, He's going
to deliver salvation, He's going to deliver justice, and He's
going to deliver righteousness to His people by imputation through
His perfect offering. Our King, He came. Our King is coming again. So,
be free in that. Thank you for your attention.
And next time, as we mentioned earlier, Jesus weeps over the
city as He looks down on Jerusalem. He said, how oft would I have
gathered you together, and you would not. How terrible are the
effects of the fall. So thank you for your attention
and be free till the next message.