Matthew 21:1-11 - Arrival of the King

Our longest book study to date was the Gospel of Luke, which we did several years ago, and we finished that in exactly two years.

So we've still got a ways to go yet in Matthew.

This morning also brings us not only into a new era as a church over the past 11 years, but also into a new section of Matthew's gospel.

We commence our study this morning on the Passion Week of Christ.

That word passion comes from a Latin word, which means to suffer or to bear or to endure.

And so when we talk about Christ's passions, we're not talking about passion in the frame that we think of in our use of the term, but of his sufferings, of his sufferings, the week of sufferings.

It includes this triumphal entry, it includes uh his cleansing of the temple, it includes his anointing, it includes things like the Last Supper, his agony at Gethsemane, his arrest, his trial, his crucifixion, his death, his burial.

And all of the Gospels, as they weave that story together this last week, we call those the passion narratives.

And so we're going to look at Matthew's passion narrative, beginning with this triumphal entry.

As we look at this passage of scripture, we see that Matthew has designed this so that we could recognize from where we're at the distinct features of who Jesus is, so that we could recognize and respond to him as the promised King, that we would know that he is the one who's come in the name of the Lord.

So let me read this passage and then we'll look through it.

There's three things I want to do with this passage.

First of all, to give us very quickly the setting and the substance of the passage, and then to talk at length a little more length of its um significance.

So let's read it and then we'll look at the setting and the substance very quickly.

When they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage at the Mount of Olives, Jesus then sent two disciples, telling them, Go into the village ahead of you.

At once you will find a donkey tied there with her colt.

Untie them and bring them to me.

If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them and he will send them at once.

This took place so that what was spoken through the prophet might be fulfilled.

Tell daughter Zion, see, your king is coming to you, gentle, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the full of a donkey.

The disciples went and did just as Jesus directed them.

They brought the donkey and the colt, and then they laid their clothes on them, and he sat on them.

Very large crowd spread their clothes on the road.

Others were cutting branches from the trees and spreading them on the road.

And then the crowd who went ahead of him and those who followed shouted, Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven.

And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in an uproar, saying, Who is this?

The crowds were saying, This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.

Well, let's look at the setting very quickly here.

Ever since Matthew chapter 16, five chapters ago, when Peter and the disciples declared Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, Jesus has been explaining to his disciples that they were going to go to Jerusalem and something significant was going to happen there.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

Matthew 16, 21, he says this.

He said, It's necessary for him to go to Jerusalem and to suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes to be killed and be raised on the third day.

This is something Jesus repeated again in chapter 17.

As they were gathering together in Galilee, Jesus told them, The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men.

They will kill him, and on the third day he'll be raised up.

And then he tells them that again in Matthew chapter 20 and verse 17.

Matthew 20 · chapter mention

While they were going up to Jerusalem, Jesus took the twelve disciples aside privately and said to them, See, we're going up to Jerusalem.

The Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death.

They will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked, flogged, and crucified, and on the third day he will be raised.

Now they are at the very outskirts of Jerusalem.

They're finally at the place Jesus has been talking about.

They're finally there.

But not only is the place significant as we get to this passage, the timing is significant.

The timing of the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem coincides with the Passover festival, which is a very significant part of the life of the Jewish people.

It's one of the great festivals of the nation.

And at this time, the population of Jerusalem would swell to a far larger size than it would normally be.

Every Jewish adult from about 20 miles around was called to come in, and many, many, many others from around there would make their journey into Jerusalem as well.

One scholar estimated the population of Jerusalem to be about 30,000 on a normal day, but with the festival, it would have increased fivefold up to 150,000 people.

You can imagine just increasing the population of a place that large.

William Barclay puts it at over a million people.

It was a lot of people.

The city was heaving with people.

And in this moment, there is in all of this ingathering of people from all over, this rising expectancy, this messianic hope, that fervor of religion that kind of bolstered up.

I got to feel a little bit of that last year in May when I was in Jerusalem for their independence day, the 75th year of their independence.

And people came from all over.

And as I was walking around the old city of Jerusalem, there are families walking together, young people walking together, older folks walking together, many of them carrying flags and waving them around.

And in the evening, they would all gather near the western wall.

And a friend of my roommate and I decided we'd go there on our own.

So we did.

We made our way all the way down there.

And it was a heave of people dancing and singing and joyful and jubilant.

It was quite an exciting moment.

Jerusalem was filled with that kind of people, with that kind of mindset.

But the Passover is also a foreshadowing of the death of Christ.

When John the Baptist introduced Jesus to the world, he said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

The significance of the Passover wasn't passed over John.

He understood exactly what was happening here.

He knew the relationship of Jesus to that lamb that would be killed on the behalf of the people.

And so that's the setting that we come into this passage with: a bursting city, an expectant city, an anticipated arrival by the disciples, with a puzzling statement that it wasn't going to be all grand and glorious for Jesus, but rather very difficult.

Let's get into the substance of this.

And I just want to highlight a few things as we go through this part of it, and then we'll retrace our steps in a moment and go back to it.

But in verses one to three, we see, first of all, a major feature in this passage, Jesus' commandments.

In fact, a full third of this passage is filled with Jesus making very precise statements about what the disciples are to do and what they'll encounter as they go about that.

Two of them are to go into a village, and immediately they're going to find a mother donkey and her foal or colt, the male, the male donkey.

Those animals are going to find them tied up.

The men are to untie those donkeys and then bring them to Jesus.

And if anyone asks them, like, hey, what are you doing?

Or why are you taking those animals?

Or are they yours or whatever?

You're to simply reply, he tells them exactly what to say.

The Lord has need of them.

And then the person you say that to is going to make sure that you get them where you need to bring them.

A lot of detail there, right?

What's going on here?

Did Jesus prearrange all of that?

Did he sort of have a message kind of go out the back door and got it all prepared?

And the disciples just needed to know what the instructions were?

Did the owner of the animals understand what was happening?

Was it some sort of supernatural thing where all of a sudden people would awaken?

Was the word Lord some sort of like uh key word?

And once it was said, the guy would go, Aha, I know who you're talking about.

We don't know.

All we know is that Jesus laid this out very precisely, and they did exactly what he told them to do, and what that he said would happen happened exactly as he said it would.

Hold on to that because we'll get back to that in a moment.

The next thing that we see in verses four and five is Jesus' fulfillment, not just Jesus' command, but Jesus' fulfillment.

In verses four and five, this took place so that what was spoken through the prophet might be fulfilled.

Tell daughter Zion, see your king is coming to you, gentle and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

It's been a long time since we've heard Matthew use these words.

This took place so that this might be fulfilled.

In fact, it was back in chapter 13, was the last time he said that.

This is the ninth of ten of these statements that Matthew puts in his gospel.

It's been a long time since he said any of those.

And this way that it's written is written exactly like it's written at the announcement of Christ's birth in chapter 1 and verse 22.

And the sequence is the same.

You've got the statement of fulfillment that comes along with a command of which the following of which will be the fulfillment of what's stated.

It's not looking back, but rather looking forward.

Just as the angel announced the birth of Christ was to come in fulfillment of scripture, so this too is about to happen in fulfillment of scripture.

Hang on to that a little bit because we'll go back to that in a moment, too.

Then we get to the reception of Jesus, Jesus' command, Jesus' fulfillment, and Jesus' reception.

And we see that some people are praising.

As he makes his journey into Jerusalem, a very large crowd is gathered.

They spread their clothes in front of him.

Some of them are cutting down branches and laying them down on the road, and they're shouting out that Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, quoting Psalm 118.

This psalm, Psalm 118, is one of those psalms that would be sung at every Passover, a song that would have been sung at every feast of the tabernacles, a song that would have been sung perhaps even at the dedication or even Pentecost.

This was a common song.

This was a song they sang a lot.

And it was a way of welcoming one another as they came from all of their places to the one place of Jerusalem.

Listen to it in that context.

He who comes in the name of the Lord is blessed.

It's kind of a statement about all of us as pilgrims coming from our places to Jerusalem to come to this religious festival.

Blessed are all us who come in the name of the Lord.

They may not have thought it of anything more than just that.

From the house of the Lord we bless you.

The Lord is God and has given us light.

Bind the festival sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar.

Let the sacrifice be made so that our sins might be forgiven.

So they sang when Jesus came.

Some of them, however, questioned.

We see that in verses 10 and 11.

When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in an uproar saying, Who is this?

Crowds were saying, This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.

Matthew uses a very specific word here to talk about the effect and the stir of the city of Jerusalem.

He adds a word that's more appropriate for an earthquake, seismo.

We get the word seismograph from it to measure earthquakes when they happen.

The city was indeed in an uproar.

The city was shaken, like it was shaken by an earthquake.

Matthew's used this term before, and he'll use it again.

He used it in chapter 8 when Jesus said to the sea, be still, and it was.

The answer is given.

This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.

Well, yes.

But is that all?

Do you have anything more to say about him?

Matthew just lets it hang there.

So that's the setting and the substance of this passage.

Matthew is crafting this in order that we might understand the identity of the king and the identity of the kingdom, the character of the king, and the character of the kingdom.

And he lays it out with all kinds of overt statements and hidden little nuggets that speak to anyone who has an ear of the Old Testament to realize just who this Jesus is and what he's about to accomplish.

They're pointers in there.

And like I said, some of them are like nuggets hidden in the ground that have to be dug out and looked for.

And then there's others that are just boldly staring you right in the face.

Well, the first one's just a little bit of an illusion of something that's about to happen, a whisper of ironic insight about what kind of reception Jesus is going to receive in Jerusalem.

Look at verse one.

Verse one, we find that Jesus embarks on his journey from a place that is still difficult for us to mark on a map.

Bethphase.

Bethphase.

It's on the Mount of Olives.

There's some idea of possibly where it might be, but there's still question marks about exactly what it was.

Why did Jesus take this obscure, unknown place and mark it out as the place from which he begins the journey?

Why didn't he just say the Mount of Olives?

We all know where that is.

Why did he have to mark out this spot?

Well, this little spot, Bethphage, is a Greek transliteration of an Aramaic phrase which means the house of the unripened fig.

The house of the unripened fig.

And it refers to a type of fig that would grow and appear to be fruitful, but never actually came to fruition in its ripeness.

It looked like it had life, it looked like it could be plucked and enjoyed, but it never got there.

It was more ornamental fig than an edible fig.

Well, when you drop down to verse 18 of this very same chapter, early in the morning it says, as Jesus was returning to the city, he was hungry, and seeing a lone fig tree by the road, he went up to it and found nothing on it except leaves.

And he said to it, May no fruit ever come from you again.

And at once the fig tree withered.

Jesus embarks his journey into Jerusalem from a place that's going to be a signification of the reception he's about to have.

It's a little nuanced whisper of what to expect.

The second thing I want us to notice here by way of significance is this sort of detailed, almost excruciatingly detailed and minute discussion about getting these animals.

All the details are there.

Who's to go, where they're to go, what they're to find, what to do if they're questioned, where to bring the animal, what kind of animals they're going to find?

All of that's there in the detail.

And if anyone asked them the question, what are you doing?

They're to say the Lord needs these animals.

Well, that's a strange question, isn't it?

It's a strange response.

Does the Lord need a female donkey and its its male colt?

What's happened to Jesus' legs?

I mean, he's been walking up and down Galilee.

He's been walking all over the place.

He's been walking miles.

He's walked up from Jericho, which is like 2,500 feet of elevation gain.

Why does he need it?

Is he worn out?

No, no, it's not because he's got an extra load to carry, or he's got weakened legs, or he's just feeling tired, or any of that sort of thing.

He's asking for these two animals because he's got something to show.

He's got a prophecy to fulfill in every single little detail.

We're even told that these animals are going to be tied up.

They're not inside maybe a a pen loose and walking about.

They're tied up.

Why are we told that?

Why these details about the donkey and its full?

Well, when you look back in the Old Testament, you realize that Matthew is pulling in a couple passages from the Old Testament.

And he's reaching to two very different places.

And he's bringing them together to show us something.

Here he's bringing us Genesis chapter 49 and verse 11.

Genesis 49 · chapter mention

And he's bringing in Zechariah chapter 9 and verse 9.

Zechariah 9 · chapter mention

And he's saying, You see the connection with these two, and you see the connection with what's happening?

Let me tell you what I mean.

In Genesis chapter 49, right before he dies, before as he's leaving the promised land, Jacob gives a blessing to all of his sons.

Genesis 49 · chapter mention

It's a blessingslash prophecy.

And when he gets to Judah, his son, he makes this proclamation about him in chapter 49, verses 10 to 12.

The scepter will not depart out of Judah.

Now Judah was not the firstborn, or the secondborn, or the thirdborn.

He was the fourthborn, but yet he's the ruler, and the scepter will not depart from there, or the staff from between his feet, until he whose right it is comes, and the obedience of the people belongs to him.

Verse 11 What's going to happen with that one who comes?

He ties his donkey to a vine and the cult of his donkey to the choice vine.

Well, that's interesting.

Matthew just said that Jesus needed a donkey and a and a foal.

The prophecy about a coming king talks about a donkey and a foal.

But this one's tied up.

Jesus asked for his to be untied.

Then you get to Zechariah chapter 9 and verse 9.

Zechariah 9 · chapter mention

Rejoice greatly, daughter Zion.

Shout in triumph, daughter Jerusalem.

Look, your Lord is coming to you.

He is righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey.

On a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Matthew 49 and Zechariah 9 tie together.

They both talk about a donkey and the colt.

And that's also mentioned in Matthew.

The three are interconnected.

And then Genesis 49 and Matthew 21 speak about the tethering of these two animals.

What's the significance of all this sort of rope, this macrame of messages in these different passages?

We're getting an echo out of the Old Testament of something about the life, the identity of Jesus, the identity of his kingdom, the character of Jesus, the character of his kingdom.

Not only is this connected, Jesus coming, riding the very animals that the king who holds the scepter of Judah would have.

But there's also a dramatic contrast.

Genesis talks about a royal figure who is just like a king would do, full of royal surplus and royal bounty, ties his animals to the vine and fills himself, satiates himself with all the fruitfulness that he deserves as king, so much so that even his garments are stained.

There's such a bounty of food.

But this figure, this Matthew figure, no less royal, but instead of tying his ropes to the vine to take his fill, asks for his mounts to be untied so that he could suffer, so that others might be full.

Again, just a whisper, but a whisper of something that is about to happen.

And then not only do we have all these details about these two animals and where they're tied and where they're at and how to get them and where to bring them and all of that, we also hear these words about his disciples uh taking taking their clothes off and laying them on the animals.

And Jesus sitting on the clothes.

And then people taking their cloaks off and laying them on the ground, people cutting down branches and laying them down.

We're talking about the eternal God come to earth and Matthew stuck on clothes and where they're at.

Why?

You have to ask why.

Again, Old Testament echoes, little things that come flying out of the Old Testament.

Second Kings chapter 9.

2 Kings 9 · chapter mention

Jehu is inaugurated as king.

And he speaks to all of his men.

And they're asking him what's been said to him.

And Jehu says, Well, he talked to me about this and that.

And this is what he said.

The Lord says, I anoint you as king over Israel.

He's gone from being the military commander to being king.

And then it says in verse 13 of 2 Kings chapter 9, each man quickly took off his garment and they put it under Jehu on the bare steps.

2 Kings 9 · chapter mention

And then they blew a trumpet and proclaimed, Jehu is king.

The king doesn't sit on the dirt.

The king sits on the clothes.

My clothes sit on the dirt.

These men take their clothes off, their coats, and they lay them on the beasts, because Jesus is about to be proclaimed King.

King.

And then we have these clothes laid in front of Jesus.

All these pilgrims taking off their cloaks and laying them on the road, and people cutting down branches and laying them down.

Let me repeat what Bob read from Isaiah chapter 62.

Isaiah 62 · chapter mention

Build up, build up, clear, clear away, clear away all the stones.

Well, if you've ever been to Jerusalem, it's a little hard to clear away all the stones.

I mean, they're literally everywhere.

But the one thing you can do is you can cover them up.

It's as good as clearing them away.

Build up, build up, build up, clear away the stones, raise a banner.

Look, your salvation comes.

Another echo.

Another statement out of the Old Testament that's literally being fulfilled before the very eyes of all the people that are watching this happen.

Some of them perhaps not even really aware that they're living out with these whispers of the Old Testament that speak of the identity of Jesus, the identity of his kingdom, the character of Jesus, the character of his kingdom.

The palm branches would have been a great remembrance for people who knew their Jewish history in that triumphal celebration when Simon Maccabeas was brought into the city of Jerusalem with great fanfare, with people waving palm branches as he was victorious in the overthrow of Antiochus Epiphanes and the cleansing of the temple and the restoration of the worship.

But what Matthew is laying out in these small details is like Jehu, he's a king.

And like Maccabees, he's a rescuer.

But he's not a military general like Jehu.

And he's not a revolutionary like Maccabeas.

He's a different kind of king.

He's a different kind of king.

And then there's the cries of welcome.

All these things are pointing us a direction to Jesus.

This loud proclamation, Lord, save.

Like I said, comes from Psalm 118.

And it was kind of a greeting to one another.

Just like we might say goodbye to each other, God be with you.

And we don't really think about saying, God be with you, we just say goodbye.

So this could have been a hello, with the same sort of lack of really full understanding of what's actually been said, and yet enough of the saying for it to be true.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, and especially when you tie it with the Son of David, it they may not have known what they were speaking, but what they were saying was very, very true.

Their salvation was coming.

The one who is coming in the name of the Lord is here, and they should shout with joy because their deliverance is here.

Doesn't identify the figure, but in Psalm 118 and verse 10 to 14, we find that he's the destroyer of nations in the name of the Lord.

He faces death and yet is delivered by the Lord's hand in verses 17 and 18.

That he's righteous in verses 19 and 20.

And then in verse 22, a puzzling statement.

Jesus, just a few verses later, in verse 42 of the same chapter, will take up Psalm 118 and that part of it, and talk about himself.

So all these things, the town, Bethphage, the command that Jesus gives, the animals that are there, the clothes that are in this context, the welcome that he receives, brings us to the largest part, the prophecy that's fulfilled.

As I said, there's expectancy in the air.

This whole stream of people lining the way leading up to Jerusalem, and Jesus with his animals stepping over the cloves and the branches.

All in, as Matthew says, in fulfillment of a passage that comes out of Zechariah chapter nine.

Rejoice greatly, daughter Zion.

Shout in triumph, daughter Jerusalem.

Look, your king is coming to you.

He is righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the full of a donkey.

Even before the time of Christ, Jewish interpreters saw this as a messianic passage.

But Zechariah is talking about more than just an earthly deliverer, more than just a Davidic king, even a great Davidic king.

Because that phrase, the king of Zion, is a statement that was very rarely, if ever, used about earthly kings.

Psalm 48 praises Yahweh as the king of Zion.

Psalm 149 and verse 2 identifies the king of the children of Zion as Israel's Maker.

Isaiah 42 and verse 23 says that the Lord of hosts, the Lord of armies, will reign as king on Mount Zion.

Jeremiah 8 asks the question: Is the Lord no longer in Zion?

Her king, not within her?

In Zechariah 9, when you look around Zechariah 9, you see exactly what this phrase is talking about, because in verse 16, he talks about a diadem that belongs to the Lord himself, the crown.

In verses 9 to 17, he describes this king of Zion as a great warrior who defends his people, leads them into battle.

Zechariah 14 and verse 9, he says very directly, on that day Yahweh will become king over the earth.

Yahweh alone, his name alone.

What is Matthew telling us here?

Matthew is saying, look, your king is God.

You're looking at a man on a donkey.

Looks a little silly.

Because he's not on the female donkey, he's on the colt.

But he's God.

And he's your deliverer.

He's your king.

So by this prophecy being fulfilled, it not only signifies the identity of Jesus, it signifies the character of Christ in his kingdom.

Zechariah speaks about it, and he says that he's righteous and he has salvation.

He's victorious.

He's come to deliver.

Zechariah envisions this king not riding on some glorious steed, but on the fold of a donkey.

Humble, mounted on a donkey.

I don't know about you, but uh I like watching Braveheart, you know?

I like watching those sort of rallying, sort of victorious triumphs that it coming out of despair, where all of a sudden the strength of a small group wins over the day.

There's nothing like this in Zechariah.

I mean, this ought to be you're behold, rejoice, daughter Zion, your king is coming on a war horse, on a glorious steed.

No.

Not even on not even on the mom.

He's on the little one.

This is no misprint.

This is no mistake.

This is the prophet telling us what our king is like.

And when he says he's humble, it's not just talking about his humility, even though he's full of his humility.

The word humility carries with it the idea of being lowly or bowed or suffering.

In contrast to arrogance, strength, might, vigor.

He comes poor and afflicted.

Yes, he's the sovereign Lord.

He's Yahweh.

But he's also the suffering savior.

The world's never seen the like of it.

The world couldn't dream of this.

Let's go back to that little donkey.

From the time of Solomon on, when they started to breed these animals for use of the horses or use of the kings.

There's no example anywhere in the Old Testament of some royal figure riding around on a donkey.

You could read ancient Near East literature and not find any king riding on a donkey.

The only place you'll find it in any of the Old Testament era literature at all is Genesis 49, where the king ties up his donkey.

It's laughable.

Straddling some slow, dirty, undignified beast of burden.

When the king comes to town, the king should look proud.

The king should have an animal befitting to his station.

The king should be at the head of the parade.

The king should be with all of his decorated troops, and they should have their best on.

Just like Alexander the Great did when he marched into Jerusalem about 300 years earlier.

Not going to happen.

All of this nationalistic hope for freedom and redemption is not going to come from might and strength and power and vigor.

It's not going to come through the weapons of warfare.

I'm sure the people of Israel would have loved for their Messiah to have a beast like that, but not like this.

He's going to be meek.

He's going to be suffering.

He's going to be untying his donkey so that others might be full.

Rather than tying his donkey to a vine so that he himself could eat.

Hundreds of years passed from the time of Zachariah's writing.

Hundreds of years passed since that writing of promise.

Hundreds of years passed until we get to the life of Jesus.

And Jesus asked for two animals.

And he gets exactly what he asked for, exactly the way he wanted it done.

And he comes into Jerusalem in such a humble, lowly way.

Let's bring this all together.

Jesus has arranged, and it's obvious from the way Matthew's writing this, Jesus has arranged every single detail of all of this.

He's determined every step along the way.

He's decided to ride this slight beast into Jerusalem.

He's mounted that animal to make a bold statement about himself.

Jesus rides into Jerusalem on that very first Palm Sunday, announcing that he's the Messiah, just as like Zachariah said, their Messiah would come.

And by announcing this, he is saying, if you want to know who the prophet is talking about, it's me, Jesus is saying.

Always looking out for the poor and the blind and the people that are in places of weakness and neglect.

But one thing they don't realize is just how absolutely arrogant this sounds if it isn't actually true that Jesus is the very fulfillment of Old Testament scripture in every little detail.

If somebody walked in here and said that, there's a half a dozen of you that would be on him before I could even say, go.

And you would have that person out the door and to a place of help.

But here's Jesus coming into a city and shaking it.

Shaking it.

Claiming to be the Messiah, claiming to be the fulfillment of Zachariah's promises.

And when people in Jerusalem are feeling the reverberation of the waves of excitement and energy coming their way, they start to ask who is this?

Who is this unsettling presence?

Does anybody know who this actually is?

If they'd thought about it, they would have said something far different than just, oh, he's the prophet Jesus from Nazareth, the Galilee.

If they'd been able to pay attention to Scripture, they would have realized he wasn't just a prophet of God, he was the God of the prophets.

And that his name is going to tell them what he would do.

Yahweh saves.

That he is Emmanuel, that he is the light that is dawned in the world.

And that light was going to shine upon those people who would see him as he is and believe on him.

And that he would be a light to the dawning of the Gentiles, too.

Something we're celebrating even today.

And as Matthew brings this little account to a climax, he brings it to a climax with a question.

Who is this?

Who is this?

Some people think they have an answer.

Some people that just have a question.

But once you see what Matthew has to say, would you say more than what the people did on that day?

He's the prophet Jesus from Nazareth, Galilee.

Or would you say what the scriptures say?

He's Emmanuel.

He's God with us.

He's the one who's come to save.

He's our king.

Would you be willing to call him your king?

Would you be willing to bow to him as your Lord and your Savior?

Would you be willing to say, I'm going to identify not with the strength and might and vigor of this world, I'm going to identify with the lowliness and the death of the Son of God.

I'm going to go to the foot of the cross because that's the only place I can go.

I'm going to beg for mercy.

Because I find there the Lamb of God who's taken away the sins of the world.

And I'm going to lay my sin there in the hope that he might forgive me of mine, like he's forgiven others.

This is what Matthew's saying to us.

All of these details, some of them very overt, strong statements, some of them little nuggets, like I said, even buried, little whispers, but all of them pointing to Jesus, the identity and the character of the king, and the identity and the character of his kingdom, his rule.

Let's pray.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for our Savior.

We thank you, Father, that he removes from any of us any sense of righteousness, strikes down pride and arrogance at its root, lays us all in the dust where we belong, because it was to that very dust that he came.

Not to judge us, to belittle us, to shame us, but to save us.

He was willing to let go of all the prerogatives of glory in heaven, the worship of the angels, the reception of all that praise, the declaration of his sovereignty without any any sense of it not being deserved.

In order to come to this earth, to take on dirt for people who are made of dirt, to walk on dirt because we do, to be humble and lowly, to come in his inauguratory entrance on a beast that had never been ridden before, too young to carry a person.

What a wonder it is, Father, that you would grant us a savior like this, that you would give us a life through the death of your son, that you would make him the means by which we are delivered and forgiven.

That you would show us that all of our self-effort and all of our sense of worth really means nothing in the eternal day in light of what Christ has done for us.

I pray, Father, that we might understand just who Jesus is, and we might display him better in our own lives as you bring us into a greater degree of likeness of him, as we behold his glory and the glory of your word, and we're changed and transformed by the Spirit into that very same image from glory to glory.

And we pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.