Sunday, March 25, 2018

The Coming of the Servant-King - Mark 11:1-11


The Coming of the Servant-King
Mark 11:1-11
Introduction: We are jumping ahead a couple of chapters to look at Mark’s story of the Triumphal Entry. After Easter, we’ll go back to Mark 9. Contrast the scene that we see here in Mark 11, and the story as it unfolds, with the vision in Revelation 19:11-16,
11 Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.  12 His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself.  13 He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God.  14 And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses.  15 From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.  16 On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.
Of course, Revelation is a vision seen by John and full of symbolism, even so this is a messianic picture that is strikingly different than what we see in the Palm Sunday event: A white horse, a crown, white linen, a sharp sword, the armies of heaven! This “triumphal entry” is still future. His coming in our context in Mark reflects the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9, “humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” It is interesting the John, Matthew, and Luke all quote Zechariah and draw attention to the fulfilling of the prophecy. Mark simply tells the story, allowing his biblically literate readers to catch the allusion. Both Revelation and the Gospel account are true. Before the Kingdom is established the work He came to do needed to be accomplished. That brings us to…
The Maine* Idea: The King has come and the King is coming. He came first as the Servant-King, willingly laying down His life to make a way for fallen humans to become kingdom citizens. Is Jesus your King?
I. Jesus is the Promised King: He again showed His sovereignty as He guided the disciples to procure a donkey’s colt for His entrance into the city (1-6).
Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples  2 and said to them, "Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it.  3 If anyone says to you, 'Why are you doing this?' say, 'The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.'"  4 And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it.  5 And some of those standing there said to them, "What are you doing, untying the colt?"  6 And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go.    
       The villages of Bethphage and Bethany, on opposite sides of the Mount of Olives, about a mile across the Kidron Valley from the East Gate of Jerusalem were an area Jesus knew well. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus lived in Bethany and it seems Jesus stayed with them when He was passing through the area. John tells us the whole story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, apparently sometime just before this final entrance into the city. Remember that some describe Mark as a “narrative of the passion with an extended introduction.” The whole of the Gospel of Mark has been pointing ahead to the this final trip to Jerusalem, and this scene introduces the last third of the Gospel, giving us some highlights and an eyewitness perspective of The Passion week, from Palm Sunday to the Resurrection.
       As far as we know, Jesus had never ridden an animal before. He walked everywhere. It was necessary for the Scriptures to be fulfilled, and this would be one more detail that would essentially proclaim publicly that Jesus is the Messiah. But I want to focus on one other detail here. Notice how Jesus instructs his disciples, tells them exactly what will happen, tells them what to say, and what to do.  Some suggest that Jesus may have made prior arrangements to borrow someone’s donkey. Go to the village, you’ll see the donkey, the people will ask why you are taking it, and tell them the pre-arranged password, “the Lord has need of it.” Then they’ll let you take it.  Of course, it could have happened that way, Jesus had been through the area and was no doubt known to a lot of people. But nothing in Mark or the other gospels gives us any hint that Jesus had made some kind of behind the scenes arrangements. Mark wants us to see that Jesus is in control, that He is guiding the story, that He knows things that no mere man could possibly know. This is one more indication that He is the Sovereign King, the Lord of history.
       Read these details and recognize that Jesus is the Messiah: The King has come and the King is coming. He came first as the Servant-King, to willingly lay down His life to make a way for fallen humans to become kingdom citizens. The question for you this morning: Is Jesus your King?
II. He allowed the People to Proclaim His kingship: The reactions of the people spontaneously fulfilled Scripture and pointed to Jesus’ messianic identity, even though they only saw in part (7-10). Ironically, their actions this day would also announce His arrival to the leaders, and set in motion the opposition that leads  to the Cross. Up until now, Jesus had repeatedly told the disciples and those who He healed and set free from demons not to talk about His messianic identity. But the time for silence was past.  When the leaders complained about what the people were implying Jesus said if they were silenced the stones would cry out!
7 And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it.  8 And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields.  9 And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!  10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!"
      The donkey’s colt would carry Jesus into the city in fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9 and Genesis 49:10,11. As Jacob was near death and blessed His sons, he said of Judah,
10 The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from his descendants, until the coming of the one to whom it belongs, the one whom all nations will honor.  11 He ties his foal to a grapevine, the colt of his donkey to a choice vine. He washes his clothes in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes… (Genesis 49:10-11, NLT)
The coming of the promised King, a donkey’s colt, washing His clothes in the blood of grapes, could it be a veiled reference to Palm Sunday, and to Good Friday? He is the ideal descendant of Judah, the King who all nations will honor! Zechariah’s prophecy is likewise fulfilled in the triumphal entry…
9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! 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, on a colt, the foal of a donkey… (Zechariah 9:9).
The shouts of the people were also drawn from the Scriptures, from Psalm 118:25-26,
25 Save us, we pray, O LORD! O LORD, we pray, give us success!  26 Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD! We bless you from the house of the LORD.
What they were saying was true as they quoted the psalm, but ironically, they did not understand the full import of their words. The phrase, “save us” is from the Hebrew hoshiah nah, often transliterated “Hosanna.” He came to save, but not in the sense of a military deliverance. The salvation most needed was spiritual, and that is what Jesus came to provide.  He came to be our substitute, to be our Passover. The great irony in the shouts of the people is that in the immediate context of the Psalm the coming rejection and death of the Savior is alluded to. Just a couple of verses before we read in Psalm 118:22, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” We’ve seen throughout Mark the rejection of Jesus by the leaders. He was rejected in His hometown. Even the gentiles in Decapolis asked him to leave! As John said, “He came unto his own, and his own received Him not” (John 1:11). He was the Stone rejected by the builders. Immediately after the verses shouted by the crowd, the psalmist said in Psalm 118:27, “The LORD is God, and he has made his light to shine upon us. Bind the festal sacrifice with cords, up to the horns of the altar!” The final Sacrifice would be offered at this feast. Not a lamb, but the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world! This is why He came. Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us (I Cor 5:7b).
       The crowds did not yet understand. His own disciples still didn’t get it. But Jesus, as the Passover-King, guides this story into Jerusalem, through the upper-room, to Gethsemane, and right to the Cross. God demonstrated His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8). This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world so that we might live through Him (I John 4:9).  Jesus came to undo the Fall, to make a way for sinners to be reconciled to God—and through His resurrection to give us Easter hope, the hope of the restoration of all things. He came that we might have life, and that more abundantly. To borrow a motto: that is the way life should be!
       After the resurrection Jesus told His disciples, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” (Luke 24:44). In this passage we see reference to the three parts of the Hebrew Bible: the fulfillment of passages from the Law (Gen 49:10,11), the Prophets (Zech 9:9), and the Writings (Ps 118:25,26) as Jesus enters Jerusalem to the cheers of the crowd.  Of course, we have the whole story, so we know more than the crowds or even the disciples about what would soon happen.
       The King has come and the King is coming. He came first as the Servant-King, willingly laying down His life to make a way for fallen humans to become kingdom citizens. Is Jesus your King?
III. Jesus came as the Passover-King: He came for Passover, and entered the Temple, the building that signified the need for atonement and showed the separation between fallen humans and Holy God (11).
11 And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
       This verse seems almost anticlimactic in light of the excitement that led up to it. Jesus enters the city with the fanfare and excited shouts of the crowd, and then goes into the temple, looks around at everything, and since it was already late, went out with the disciples back to Bethany.  This is a detail in Mark that I had simply skimmed over through the years. Matthew goes right to the Temple cleansing the next day. Mark shows us that Jesus was contemplative, deliberate. Why did Jesus go the temple? What was He thinking as He looked around?
       First of all, let’s remember the context. It was Passover week. Jesus had been teaching the disciples during this journey to Jerusalem that it was necessary for the Son of man to be handed over to sinners and put to death, and that He would rise again the third day. They couldn’t understand, they couldn’t grasp the plain meaning of the words. Perhaps the triumphal entry itself stirred their messianic hopes. Would Jesus at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Jesus goes straight to the Temple, enters, and looks around. Preparations for the arrival of the pilgrims for the feast were surely already happening. People would be coming either with their own sacrifices, or with some kind of currency that they could use to buy an animal to sacrifice. The outer courts of the Temple had become a place of commerce. The near context will show us Jesus returning there and over-turning the tables of the money changers. The worship of Israel had lost its focus!
       Think about this: the Temple represented the place of God’s presence in the midst of the people.  When Solomon’s Temple was dedicated the Glory of God descended on the building. Now, God incarnate stood there, looking at the place that also represented the separation between sinful humans and Holy God. The sacrifices were offered there, underscoring the sin problem, the necessity of a substitute, the need for the shedding of blood for the remission of sins. Jesus is King, but He came as a Servant-King, the Passover-King, the Shepherd of Israel was also to be the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world! The final sacrifice would soon be offered, and the veil of the Temple would be torn in two, from top to bottom. In Christ alone, Hope is found!
What is God saying to me in this passage? The King has come and the King is coming. He came first as the Servant-King, willingly laying down His life to make a way for fallen humans to become kingdom citizens. Is Jesus your King?
What would God have me to do in response to this passage? Dates on the church calendar, like Palm Sunday, can be useful reminders of important moments in the unfolding of the Story of Redemption. But we need to guard against familiarity clouding our understanding of what God is saying to us. Open the eyes of our hearts Lord!  What did Jesus think as he entered the city, went to the Temple and looked around? We know from Luke’s Gospel that He wept over the city as He approached…
41 And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it,  42 saying, "Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.  43 For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side  44 and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation…" (Luke 19:41-44).
The Prince of Peace, the One for whom then nation had waited for centuries had come, and the leaders did not recognize Him, they did not receive Him. Consequently, judgement would come on Jerusalem. In AD 70 the Romans would raze the city and the Temple. And a blindness in part would continue for Israel, until the fulness of the gentiles comes in. As Jesus looked around, did He see the blindness of the leaders? Did He anticipate God’s chastening on the nation? Did He contemplate the judgement that He would bear in His own body on the Cross? What does He think as He looks around at our worship today?
       I hope He sees a grateful people, not perfect, but forgiven, clothed in His righteousness, repentant and believing, worshipping Him together in Spirit and in Truth. Desiring to walk as He walked, in holiness. Seeking to bring the message of His grace to the world. Is Jesus your King? Live then as a Kingdom citizen in this fallen world! Forgiving, extending grace, showing kindness, choosing to love. People will notice, and God will be glorified.  AMEN.

1 comment:

  1. By the way, the audio of the message as preached at Boothbay Baptist Church is available on the church website: https://boothbaybaptist.com/sermons/the-coming-of-the-servant-king-mark-111-11/

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