Your King is Coming to You

Palm Sunday commemorates the beginning of the last week of Jesus’ earthly life.  He enters Jerusalem humble, mounted on a donkey in fulfillment of prophecy, and his disciples hail him the King of Israel, but the religious leaders will have none of it.  Jesus receives the praises of the crowd but as he has “set his face to go to Jerusalem” (9:51), he will accomplish what he came to do.  The misguided expectations of many would not dissuade him. He did not come to overthrow the Romans, but to confront his own people and to defeat sin and death, through his own death.  A suffering messiah is not what the people had envisioned.  Even the disciples do not understand until after his resurrection.  Jesus is in full command of everything, even his own death.  The humble shepherd-king, the sovereign Lord of all, is the promised messiah and the lamb of God.