The Humble King

My name is Matthew Capone, and I'm the pastor here at Cheyenne Mountain Presbyterian Church,

and it's my joy to bring God's Word to you today.

A special welcome if you're new or visiting with us.

We're glad that you're here, and we're glad that you're here not because we're trying to fill seats,

but because we're following Jesus together.

And as we follow Jesus together, we become convinced there's no one so good.

They don't need God's grace, and no one so bad that they can't have it,

which is why we come back week after week to hear what God has to say to us in His Word.

We're continuing our series in the Gospel of Mark.

You'll remember that the Gospels tell the story of Jesus and His life and His death and His resurrection,

and we have kind of two movements to the Gospel.

Chapters 1 through 8, we were asking this question of who is Jesus,

which we saw definitively answered by Peter in the middle of chapter 8 when he said that you are the Christ.

And now we're in the second half, chapters 8 through 16,

which answer this question of what it actually looks like to follow after Jesus.

And so that's what we've been talking about over the last several weeks,

that following Him looks like this upside-down nature of the kingdom.

And I don't need to tell you that it's been a little bit intense.

We've had some hard topics as we've tackled marriage and sex and children and money and power and success and glory and fame,

how all of those things are different in the kingdom of God than they are in the kingdom of the world.

And then last week, we topped it off with this topic of desire.

Jesus asks this question,

What is it that you want me to do for you?

And so this week, we're going to pause for a moment all of those questions

and just look at, meditate on together who Jesus is.

Because we can talk about the upside-down nature of the kingdom all day,

but it must have some sort of motivation.

There has to be something great enough and glorious enough for us to want to live in a way that goes against our culture.

We actually have to see Jesus' beauty.

And so the song that we just sang set us up perfectly.

We sang,

Captivated by His beauty, worthy tribute, haste to bring.

Crown Him now, unrivaled King.

It's in seeing Jesus' beauty that we're able to live in His kingdom.

And we also sang,

It's not a sense of right or duty, but the sight of peerless worth.

And that's why I'm so passionate about this song,

because it reminds us that we have to see Jesus before anything else.

And so we're just going to look at that this morning,

the type of king that Jesus is,

the fact that He has a greater beauty, a greater love than any earthly king.

Unless we put our eyes on Jesus,

we're going to be tempted to put them on other saviors and rulers,

saviors and rulers that will destroy us rather than save us.

And so that's why it's incredibly important for us to pause and look at Jesus this morning,

the great and greater king.

It's with that that I invite you to turn with me in your Bible.

You can turn in your worship guide.

You can turn on your phone.

You can turn in your Bible.

No matter where you turn, remember that this is God's word.

And in Proverbs chapter 30, verse 5,

Proverbs 30:5

we read that every word of God proves true.

He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him.

And so that's why we're going to read now Mark chapter 11, starting at verse 1.

Mark 11 · chapter mention

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethpage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives,

Jesus sent two of His disciples 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.

Verse 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.

And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street,

and they untied it.

Verse 5.

And some of those standing there said to them,

What are you doing untying the colt?

And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go.

And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it,

and he sat on it.

And many spread their cloaks on the road,

and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields.

And those who went before and those who followed were shouting,

Hosanna!

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David.

Hosanna in the highest.

Verse 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.

I invite you to pray with me as we come to this portion of God's word.

Father in heaven, we thank you again for giving us your word,

and we ask that you would speak to us again.

We ask that as we look at the challenging nature of your kingdom,

more than anything else,

you would help us to have a clear and precise vision of Jesus,

that you would show us his holiness and his love and his beauty

and his glory this morning,

that we would be captured by it more than anything else.

We thank you,

that we don't have to worry about whether we've been good enough,

whether we've done enough,

whether we've earned enough,

because we know that we haven't.

But instead, we simply ask for these things

in the mighty name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

I've been telling you for a while now

that Jesus is heading on his path to Jerusalem,

and that continues in this passage.

In fact, we see that he's practically arrived in verse 1.

We're told they drew near to Jerusalem.

If I told you that someone was driving,

and first they passed by Briargate,

and then they were in downtown Colorado Springs,

and shortly thereafter,

they were getting close to Shine Mountain,

you would know that they're headed in what direction?

You know that they're headed south.

The Gospel writer is telling us here,

in the order of locations,

that Jesus is heading directly west.

He is on a collision course with the city of Jerusalem.

That's what he's telling us here with Bethpage,

and Bethany, and the Mount of Olives.

Bethany is actually this suburb that's east of Jerusalem,

and it appears to be where Jesus stays for a few days

before Passion Week,

and at the very beginning of Passion Week.

That's why at verse 11, we see him return there.

Now, in the past, remember it was important

for Jesus to keep his kingship a secret.

We talked before about the fact that he told various people

who received healings not to tell too many people about him,

not to spread the word, to keep what he knew under wraps.

The time for that has passed.

Jesus is no longer interested in keeping his kingship a secret.

In fact, he does the opposite in this passage.

He starts to do king kind of things.

He does the sort of things that the people of Israel are looking for.

He's playing in, in some ways, to their expectations,

their hopes that this Messiah is going to come once and for all

and set things right.

Remember, that's why James and John were so eager

to sit at his left and his right hand,

because they knew that the moment of Jesus' kingship

was drawing near as they approached Jerusalem.

In verses 2 through 6 here,

as Jesus sends for this donkey to ride,

he is commanding what belongs to him.

The whole world, in fact, is his kingdom.

And what he's doing here is an ancient tradition called Royal Angaria,

which is where kings would be able to command whatever they needed.

In sending for this donkey, this colt,

and just saying, the Lord has need of it,

Jesus is saying clearly to everyone,

I am behaving just like a king.

Even more than that, though, in verses 7 through 9,

Jesus comes in riding on this colt,

doing what we would not expect him to do

when he left in our previous passage.

Remember, he healed Bartimaeus.

He was leaving with this crowd,

and this would have been a crowd that was heading to Jerusalem

for a pilgrimage.

Well, what is it that pilgrims do as they enter Jerusalem?

Jerusalem.

They walk on their feet.

As one of my friends might say,

they used their Lamberfittis to get into Jerusalem.

And Jesus, in fact, does the opposite.

Who is it that's supposed to ride into Jerusalem?

Well, it's supposed to be a king who is returning

from a conquering,

from a successful military campaign.

In fact, that's what would have happened over and over.

There's a reason this is called the triumphal entry,

which is that Roman generals would have a triumph.

They would come in riding a war horse

to show that they had been victorious.

They were the ones in charge.

Even more than that, verse 8,

what is it that these people do in response?

Most likely, they've been traveling with Jesus this entire time.

They're the ones who were with him

when he healed blind Bartimaeus,

and they begin to throw their cloaks on the ground,

which is a sign of submission to the king.

And so Jesus is doing everything we would expect

a conquering king to do

as he's approaching this city,

except for one thing.

Jesus should not be riding a donkey.

If he is a great and conquering king,

he needs to be returning from war on a war horse.

And yet Jesus here is being incredibly subversive.

We read earlier this morning,

Zechariah chapter 9,

Zechariah 9 · chapter mention

which I'm going to refer to as well.

And what we read there is that

there is going to be this king.

You can turn back with me,

page 3 of your worship guide.

Your king is coming to you,

humble and mounted on a donkey,

on a colt,

the foal of a donkey.

Jesus is telling them,

yes, I'm entering as a king,

but heads up,

I'm the Zechariah 9-9 king.

I am not the king you expect.

We see two things about this king

as Jesus makes this reference

from what we learn from Zechariah 9.

The first one is that this king

is a humble king.

That's what we're told.

Behold, your king is coming to you,

righteous and having salvation,

as he humble and mounted on a donkey,

on a colt,

the foal of a donkey.

In other words, he's so humble,

he's not just coming in on a donkey.

He's coming in on a baby donkey.

That is how humble and lowly he is.

Instead of experiencing comforts

and pleasure in this life,

he is going to experience

suffering and poverty.

He is going to be born in a manger.

He's going to be working class.

He's going to be on the move.

He's going to be going to people

rather than demanding that they come to him.

That's why Jesus says in Matthew 8,

foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests,

but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head

because he is the humble king.

He is the king who comes in riding a donkey.

He's the king that we were told about in Isaiah 53,

despised and rejected by men,

a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

He's not greeted with praise and love

and admiration throughout his story,

but he's greeted with opposition,

hatred,

and those who wish to kill him.

The king on the donkey

is the king who's going to bring salvation

through humility.

The story is told of Dan Cathy,

who's the president and CEO of Chick-fil-A,

and at one point he was in California

visiting a construction site for a new franchise,

and he became hungry,

and of course the franchise wasn't open.

They weren't able to serve him any Christian chicken,

and so he had to go and visit the Taco Bell next door.

The man who was with him reported

that he and Dan had to go to the bathroom together afterwards,

and he saw something very strange.

After Dan had finished washing his hands,

he pulled out some extra paper towels

and began also cleaning the sinks

of the Taco Bell bathroom.

Now, maybe Dan Cathy is that much of a neat freak,

but there's a certain humility,

there's a certain service

that characterizes him in that moment, right?

He is so humble,

he's cleaning the bathroom of his competitors.

Jesus cleans the bathroom,

not of his competitors,

but of his enemies.

Jesus came to clean up the mess

left by you and me.

He is not characterized by one moment of service

in a life filled with wealth and power and privilege,

he's characterized by an entire existence.

Dan Cathy for a moment,

Jesus for his life.

When Jesus rides in on the donkey,

he is telling us he is the king who is with us.

He knows the pains of life like we do,

and I would say in some ways even more.

Jesus experienced a standard of living,

a type of poverty

that I would imagine most of us here today

have no concept of.

Jesus knows more of suffering than we do.

Most kings are insulated from the pains of life.

Jesus instead runs into them.

Many earthly rulers lack integrity.

They say one thing and do another.

And even the best earthly rulers

are imperfect and flawed.

And Jesus is the king,

the ruler who has lived differently than us

because he lived worse than us.

He's the king who takes on more suffering than us.

He is the humble king.

That's why Hebrews chapter 4 tells us

Hebrews 4 · chapter mention

we don't have a high priest

who's unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,

but one who in every respect

has been tempted as we are yet without sin.

captivated by his beauty,

tribute to him bring.

Not right or duty,

but the sight of peerless worth.

Why do we follow Jesus?

Because he is the great

but also humble king.

He is worth following much more

than Dan, Kathy,

or any other inspirational human leader.

Compared to Jesus,

they are selfish idiots.

Jesus is greater

and more glorious

and more loving.

Jesus is more sacrificial

than any other king

we could follow.

He is the humble king.

And so look at him.

Meditate on him.

See his beauty.

Let it captivate your heart

more than any other beauty.

Because that's the kind of king he is.

We don't just find out

in Zechariah chapter 9

Zechariah 9 · chapter mention

that he is going to be

the humble king,

but we also find out

that Jesus is going to be

the peaceful king.

The donkey is not just

a sign of Jesus' humility,

but also a sign of peace.

If you look again

at Zechariah chapter 9,

Zechariah 9 · chapter mention

page 3 of your worship guide,

we see in verse 10

he is going to end war

and bring peace.

I will cut off the chariot

from Ephraim

and the war horse

from Jerusalem.

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.

Jesus will rule

the entire world.

That's what the king

on the donkey

is going to do.

Verse 9,

we're told

he is righteous

and having salvation.

If he's righteous,

it means he's going

to right every wrong.

There is going to be

complete and total

world peace

and those who need

to be brought to justice

will be.

There are all types

of visions

that people have today

for how the world

is going to be

made right.

We live by the values

of the kingdom.

We embrace the upside down

nature of the kingdom

because we believe

in the future

of the kingdom.

Because we believe

that Jesus is

the Zechariah 9,

9 through 10 king

who is actually

going to speak peace

to all the nations.

The one who is going

to rule over

the entire world.

The one who is righteous

and has salvation

and so he's going

to be able

to right every wrong

and wipe away

every tear.

It's because we know

and embrace

and believe

in that future

that future kingdom

that's coming

because of this Jesus here

that we see in this passage

riding in on the donkey

that we live

according to the kingdom

right now.

He is the peaceful kingdom.

The peaceful king.

Imagine for a second

if this vision

were not true.

It would not simply

be zeroed out.

In fact,

the human heart

has this longing

within it

to see the world

made right.

The option

is not Jesus

returning or nothing.

The option

is not Jesus

bringing peace

to the nations

or nothing.

The option

is Jesus

bringing peace

or someone else

bringing peace.

We cannot escape

visions of a world

with restored justice.

We cannot escape

narratives that tell us

if we do X, Y, or Z

finally everything

will be made right.

The only question

for us

is which vision

we will choose.

There are politicians

and activists

who would present you

with all sorts of paths

as their vision

to the way

to heal the world.

The only problem

is this

that outside of Jesus

justice is up to us

goodness is within us.

justice is up to us

goodness

is within us.

If Jesus

is not going to

speak peace

to the nations

then we will

and must.

In other words

if we lose

this vision

of Jesus

we will

replace it

with a vision

that leaves

bodies in its wake.

because the visions

that the world

gives us

are visions

in which

we are

the good guys.

And so these

world views

always lead

to injustice

and oppression.

They have to

because if you believe

the problem

is always outside

of you

then there is

a culprit

that you have

to deal with

and you never

face your own

failings

and sin.

So Jesus

here presents

a vision

that is more

realistic

more just

more peaceful

of all of these

visions.

Jesus is the only

one who sacrifices

himself

to save his

enemies.

He is the only

one who

cleans the

bathrooms

of the people

who hate him.

Jesus is the only

one who is going

to be able

to take us

back to Eden.

The only one

that allows us

to be human

and recognize

we're not

strong enough

we're not

good enough

we're not

powerful enough

to make this

world right.

That's why

Jesus tells us

his yoke is easy

and his burden

is light.

Because he

takes responsibility

for healing

the world.

And so

what do we do?

if this

vision of

Jesus is true

if he is

the donkey

king who is

coming to

bring peace

to the nations

we can wait

with patience.

We can wait

with longing.

Our hope

does not hang

on the thread

of one

political

party

or person

or leader

or technology

or success

of a movement.

We can choose

peace

over violence.

We can turn

the other cheek

because we know

that Jesus

one day

will make

all things

right.

It is

only

the king

on a donkey

who allows us

to love

our enemies.

We know

that he

will make

all things

right

so that we

don't

have to.

Jesus

is the

great

king

for which

our hearts

long.

We see

him coming

into Jerusalem.

We look

forward to him

coming

again

to this

earth.

finally

this

humility

and this

peace

that

Jesus

shows

us

are

humility

and

peace

that

come

ultimately

through

his

death

on the

cross.

I had a

conversation

recently

with a

woman

whose

husband

is

exploring

Christianity.

He is

reading

mere

Christianity.

She

considers

herself

spiritual

but not

religious.

I was

explaining

to her

what it

is

that

Christianity

believes

and I

told her

every

religion

every

worldview

believes

there is

something

wrong

with

the

world.

Everyone

agrees

the

world

is

sick.

You

can't

find

someone

who

would

deny

that.

So

Christianity

is not

unique

actually

in that

claim.

It

agrees

with

every

other

worldview

and

saying

something

is

wrong.

It

disagrees

though

on

two

things.

What's

the

problem

and

what's

the

solution?

Christianity

disagrees

with other

worldviews

because

it

says

the

problem

includes

us.

the

problem

is not

just

people

out

there.

The

problem

is

the

person

in

here.

The

problem

is so

deep

and so

great

and so

severe

that we

cannot

fix

ourselves.

The

gospel

is the

news

to us

that we

must

radically

change

and we

are

incapable

of

changing

ourselves.

the

second

thing

the

gospel

has

that's

unique

comes

from

the

first

one.

The

problem

is so

great

that we

can't

fix

it.

A

politician

is not

going to

be able

to heal

the

world.

A

movement

is not

going to

be able

to heal

the

world.

We

need

someone

much

greater,

much

more

powerful.

Now

we

could

long

for,

we

could

want

a

king

on

a

war

horse.

There's

only

one

problem

with

that.

If

a

king

came

on

a

war

horse,

he

would

bring

peace,

he

would

fix

the

world,

but

he

would

crush

us

because

we

are

part

of

the

problem.

And

so we

need,

we

must

have

the

king

on

the

donkey,

the

king

who

brings

peace

by

taking

the

punishment

that

we

deserve.

We

need

the

king

who

comes

and

dies

the

death

that

we

deserve

to

take

the

punishment

that

should

have

fallen

on

us.

That's

the

only

way

we

get

to

have

healing

on

the

one

hand

and

still

be

breathing

and

alive

on

the

other.

It

is

the

king

who

rides

in

with

humility

in

order

to

bring

peace

by

bringing

justice

and

taking

it

on

to

himself.

In

other

words,

Jesus

needed

to be

both

God

and

on

a

donkey

to

bring

justice

by

receiving

punishment

rather

than

doling

it

out.

Righteous

in having

salvation

is he,

the

humble

king

dies

for his

people

so that

his

death

can bring

peace.

Now,

I told you

we would not

be able to

handle a

king on a

war horse

because he

would bring

peace but

crush us.

the reality

is that

since Jesus

has come

as the

king on

a donkey,

he will

one day

come as

the king

on the

war horse.

Revelation

Revelation 19 · chapter mention

chapter 19

gives us

this image

of Jesus

second coming

to the

earth when

he returns

on a

horse and

tramples

his enemies

under him.

the king

who receives

punishment,

who brings

justice by

suffering for

us,

will one

day bring

full and

final justice

to this

earth.

And so

that while

they don't

know the

timetable,

they don't

understand the

details,

we can agree

with the

people in

this passage,

verse 10,

verse 9,

Hosanna,

blessed is

he who

comes in

the name

of the

Lord.

Blessed is

the coming

kingdom of

our father

David.

Hosanna in

the highest.

What's the

vision that

we need

for Jesus

to be more

beautiful and

more glorious

than everything

else?

What is the

upside down

kingdom with

the upside

down king?

It is the

king who is

with us.

And the

king who

brings peace.

And so we

look to him

for healing

and justice

rather than

looking to

ourselves.

That's why we

serve him,

worship him,

love him,

follow him,

obey him.

Let's pray.

Our father

in heaven,

we praise

you and

thank you

that in

Jesus'

first coming,

he didn't

come on

a war

horse.

Because we

know that

if he

did,

we would

be crushed.

We thank

you instead

that he

came to

receive the

punishment that

we deserve.

We ask

that you

would grow

our vision

of Jesus,

our love

for him,

and our

longing for

his kingdom,

that we

would be

moved,

not by

right or

duty,

but by a

vision of

his peerless

worth.

We ask

these things

in the mighty

name of

Jesus Christ.

Amen.