Mark 11:1-11

Bringing the sermon home:

The first ten chapters of Mark’s Gospel have all been leading up to Jesus’ final arrival in Jerusalem on that first “Palm Sunday”. In order to fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9, Jesus rides in to the city mounted on a donkey. As a relatively poor, itinerant preacher, He must borrow the donkey from someone else, but He does so by declaring that “the Lord has need of it”.

Abraham Kuyper, a minister in the Netherlands over a hundred years ago, once wrote this: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’" Does the way that you live your life demonstrate that the King of kings lays claim to all things?

Jesus traveled a great deal during His earthly ministry, but this is the only occasion on which He is recorded as having ridden an animal, showing that He is sending a message: He is the Messiah promised throughout the Old Testament (e.g., Zechariah 9:9; Genesis 49:9-11). The crowd of pilgrims entering the city with Jesus roll out the red carpet, in a sense, which includes spreading palm branches before Jesus – a symbol of Jewish nationalism.

The crowd thought He had come to liberate the nation of Israel from the oppression of the Romans, when He had actually come to liberate believers from the oppression of their sin. The king they want is not the king they need. Like them, we often desire other gifts more than we desire the gift of eternal life with our King, and we must recognize the incomparable worth of what we receive in Him.