The Triumphal Re-Entry!
This Sunday is Palm Sunday! It’s that day typically described in our bibles with a heading added by the editors of your translation that reads something like “The Triumphal Entry”! And with the shouts of praise from the crowds as Jesus approached Jerusalem on that day, it would seem that the crowds agreed with our headings! But why? What fueled their expectations of Triumph? Perhaps it was the remarkable way in which Jesus was fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy “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). Jesus completely fulfilled this prophecy on Palm Sunday, but Zechariah had more to say on the matter. “I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth” (Zechariah 9:10). Wow! This King riding on a donkey is going to rule the whole earth and bring peace to all of it! Two prophetic verses back-to-back in Zechariah. And if the first was fulfilled on Palm Sunday, one certainly couldn’t blame the crowds for their joyful expectation that the other would be coming true very soon. But it didn’t and it still hasn’t. Not yet. So, was Palm Sunday really a triumphal entry? Did Jesus come to Jerusalem with a real offer of an everlasting kingdom to the ends of the earth, or did He come to die on a cross for the sake of Israel’s salvation and the salvation of the world? Unable as I am to resolve the either-or tension in this question, I’m just going to say “yes.” Palm Sunday was a triumphal entry, yet their remains a future return of the King to bring Palm Sunday’s triumph to its full fruition. There yet remains a time for a Triumphal Re-entry!
We invite you to come join us this Sunday morning for our in-person worship service at Leptondale Bible Church in Newburgh, starting at 10:55 AM. For those unable to attend, our service can be viewed live on the church’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/leptondalebiblechurch. This Sunday will be our Palm Sunday service with a message from Jeremiah 23:1-8 titled “The Triumphal Re-entry!”
God bless!
Pastor Mike
