Seeing Palm Sunday From Different Vantage Points

Palm Sunday Message

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

March 24, 2024

Seeing Palm Sunday From Different Vantage Points

¹² The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. ¹³ So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” ¹⁴ And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written,

¹⁵ “Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt!”

¹⁶ His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. ¹⁷ The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. ¹⁸ The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign. ¹⁹ So the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.” John 12:12

There was a movie called Vantage Point that came out several years ago and the plot revolved around an assassination attempt on the President. But to figure out what happened they kept rewinding and showing the same event again and again each time from a different vantage point.

Palm Sunday begins the Passion week that culminates with Jesus being executed on the cross on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday. As we celebrate the Triumphal Entry this morning I want us to consider it from what might be less familiar vantage points. Then I want to put them all together to get a unique picture of who Jesus is as we close. 

Vantage Point #1: Jesus is a King…but King of who and what and where?

If we were standing in the crowds on that Palm Sunday, I think the first thing we’d see is Jesus being welcomed as a king. This is clearly what the crowds saw on that day as they cried out “hosanna to the King of Israel!” They remembered Zech. 9:9 that John quotes a portion of:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! (Get loud!)
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. Zech. 9:9

We could spend the entire morning just celebrating Jesus the King! The Old Testament promises a king will come who will sit on David’s throne and rule over Israel forever. 

If we were standing in that crowd and heard the cries of Hosanna, here comes the King, we’d think of all the Old Testament promises of a King who would sit on David’s throne forever and rule over Israel. And we have a sense of who a king is and what a king does. So we could totally shout along with the crowd, “Hosanna!”

But if we look at this King riding a donkey into Jerusalem from a slightly different vantage point, the triumphal entry does raise some questions: why is this the only place in the gospels (that I can think of anyway) where Jesus encourages the crowds to declare him a King? They were ready to coronate him a while ago. In fact John writes in chapter 6 that the crowds were ready to make Jesus king by force. I find that a bit ironic but the point is they were ready to crown Jesus their king. He could’ve ridden that wave right to David’s throne just like the Old Testament promised. Why didn’t he?

Jesus never commanded people to submit to him as their King. He never used his authority to convince the crowds to make him their king. He commanded the winds and the waves and they obeyed him. He commanded demons and they did what he said. Even death obeyed Jesus and let go of their victims. 

So many great launching points to the greatest campaign to be king ever! And yet this one moment is the only time when Jesus seemed to say “it’s appropriate for the crowds to declare me king today”. In fact, if they didn’t, the rocks would cry out, he said. 

Let’s stand in yet another vantage point. As Jesus was on trial before Pilate, Pilate asked him, “are you a king?” and Jesus answered that his kingdom was not of this world. Is Jesus a king? From every vantage point the answer is clearly say, “yes”. But is he seeking to be the king of this world? Oddly, the answer would have to be “no”.

Vantage Point #2: the crowds love him…or do they?

If we were in the crowd that day I believe we’d see genuine joy and praise. Jesus affirmed the rightness of their praise when he said if they were silent the rocks would cry out. He’s saying this is right, this is good.

And this is also fleeting. If we move our vantage point to just a few days later we don’t see the love of the crowd, or hear the praise of the crowd, we see the duplicity of the heart of man as many (not all) in that same crowd would be crying out “crucify him!”

I was listening to a podcast and the host was talking about when her career was doing great there were a lot of people who wanted to get together with her and have lunch and hang out, but then she got fired and took a PR hit and many of those same people stopped calling and inviting her to lunch. And she said it was a blessing cause she saw who her real friends were and who weren’t real friends.

We don’t want to be fair weather followers of Jesus. We’re disciples when he’s popular, when it’s cool to be into him. Sadly I think there are many who confessed to follow Jesus when the current was going in that direction, but when the trends and ideologies of the day began to make it not cool, not trendy to follow Jesus they fell away. When his teachings didn’t track with the teachings of popular thinking (and Jesus’ teachings really never should track with the popular thinking of the day) or when people misrepresent what Jesus says to make him sound like a terrible person (as they did back then), instead of standing with him in that moment, many have denied him and are conforming to what’s acceptable and trendy today. 

Jesus affirmed the rightness of the crowd’s praise, while never trusting himself to their praise. Jesus knew what was in the heart of man – he knew the duplicity of man’s heart. Jesus didn’t end this day rejoicing in his triumph, he ended the day weeping over Jerusalem, for he knew he would be rejected by the very same people claiming they loved him. 

Vantage Point #3 – King, Savior and…Lamb?

As we rewind the triumphal entry scene we can see it from an unusual vantage point. There aren’t many people standing here so we’re going to see something the crowds don’t see. The arrival of the perfect Lamb of God to be offered up for the sins of the world.

Follow me now: Moses commanded the Jews to choose a lamb without blemish on the 10^th of Nissan and keep the lamb until the Passover meal on the 14^th when they were to slaughter the lamb and paint their doorposts with its blood, remembering that first Passover when the angel of death passed over any home that had the blood of the lamb on the doorposts. 

Jesus and his disciples celebrated Passover on Thursday night, the 14^th of Nissan, which means the 10^th of Nissan – the day the Jews were to choose the lamb without blemish – was Palm Sunday! As Jesus rode into Jerusalem on that Palm Sunday, he rode in as the Lamb that God had chosen to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29). From vantage point #3 we Jesus is the Perfect Lamb of God. 

When we put all these different perspectives together a fuller picture of our Savior comes clear.

• Jesus didn’t come the first time to set up his throne on earth, he came to set up his throne in willing hearts. He came to conquer, not with force, but with love.
• Jesus didn’t come to call pure hearts to follow him, but to make duplicitous hearts pure as we follow him. When Jesus was arrested, all his disciples fled and Peter denied knowing him. Jesus didn’t give up on them when they gave up on him, and by his Spirit they became men and women who would die before denying him. My heart is more than capable of being a fair-weather friend and so is yours.  But as his love and Spirit gets more and more of our hearts; the more we taste of his faithfulness to us, the stronger our faithfulness to him grows. 
• Because the King of heaven became the Lamb of God, giving his life as a sacrifice for us. His blood is sprinkled on the doorposts of our hearts when we believe so that the angel of death passes over us and we are saved.

The crowd that day cried out “hosanna!” which means “save!”. They thought they needed to be saved from the Roman rule, but really they needed to be saved from their own sinful hearts and the rule of Satan and we do too. We really are in that crowd – we don’t imagine it. Cause Jesus came to save people just like us. Duplicitous and fickle hearts. Unfaithful hearts. Sinful hearts. Struggling hearts. 

But thank God he doesn’t leave us there or our hearts in that broken state. When we let Jesus take up his throne in our hearts, he begins to give us a new heart and a new love and a new peace. Receive it by faith right now!

If you’re not a Christian. 

Let’s give King Jesus rule over our lives. let’s yield our lives to Jesus’ rule. Let’s welcome him as the rightful king over our lives. He promises to rule over our hearts with peace and he will take care of us. Jesus is the perfect Lamb – by faith his blood is sprinkled over the doorposts of our lives and we are safe from judgment. Eternal death will pass over us – we will never die (Easter Sunday!). Maybe you struggle with condemnation and guilt because you sin, you mess up, you’re broken, you’re flawed. You have a duplicitous heart. Join the club! Let’s look and see that Jesus is our perfect Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.