Palm Sunday
• There is hardly a clearer place in the Scriptures where we get an understanding of who Jesus truly is.
• Christ Communicates what is happening. He gives us a picture of what victory looks like in the way that He brings it.
• His arrival communicates the reality of what is happening.
Christ arrives as victorious to offer lasting peace
• As an icebreaker, tell the group about a time where an arrival in your life mattered.
Christ is the victorious King
Luke 19:30–35 ESV
saying, “Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ you shall say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.’ ” So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” And they said, “The Lord has need of it.” And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it.
• This is how a victorious king enters a city. After a king had gone to war with his army, to celebrate their victory, they would enter through the cities main gates, on a horse, in front of a crowd celebrating and shouting and laying down their cloaks and palm branches.
Luke 19:38 ESV
saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
• Christ is communicating victory and the people are declaring victory.
• This picture is an image of a spiritual reality
• We need images to help us to see what is really happening
• This image comes from the Roman idea of the Vir Triumphalis or the man of triumph.
• These were people, generals or representations of deities. Who would parade through the streets to celebrate the victory of a hard fought battle.
• Read Philippians 2:1-11 and talk about how Christ is shown as the “man of triumph”
• We will look at the kind of King Christ was. But we need to see at this point He is the victorious King. He is the king who won before he won. He is the king who won before it looked like He lost.
• This proclamation is not about boasting it is about fulfillment.
Psalm 118:26 ESV
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
We bless you from the house of the Lord.
• But they are linking it to who God has been, the difference being that His victory is while pre-determined, is no longer indefinite. He is there, present and on the move. And He is bringing peace
Christ is the King of Peace
• When a King proclaimed victory, he proclaimed it through strength.
• The man of triumph would either be on a horse or in a chariot to demonstrate strength and power. Higher than than crowd, looking down, necks in the crowd craning to see.
• So while Jesus comes into Jersualem proclaiming victory, He does so at eye level. He does so not as one who accumulates power and glory but rather one who will give it all away at the cross.
• Tell about a time when you experienced the peace that God offers
Zechariah 9:9 ESV
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
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.
• The donkey here is set against a backdrop of humility and salvation.
• He does so to communicate a binding of a new covenant, a new treaty, instead of the tearing apart of war.
• The war that will happen is with sin and death, not with our lives.
• Christ came to go to war with sin and death but did so at eye level with us. Christ came to enact a treaty with us, to restore what the battle of sin had broken down
• how has an offer for peace in lesser ways made promises in your life that it hasn’t kept?
Christ is the King you were not expecting but the one you need.
• For all the celebration, it is amazing how quickly Christ’s followers turn away.
• We expect a king on a horse conquering the Roman empire but Christ is a reigning King on a donkey bringing peace.
• how is Christ different than we expected when He moves in our lives?
• He is victorious in battling sin and death and only in doing so brings peace.
• We battle all the time but often battle things in order to find peace that doesn’t last.
• Philip Rieff the sociologist talks about the cultural fracturing of what he terms the meta-narrative. This is something that groups of people generally agree on.
• However because these meta-narratives (Christianity among them) is being pushed aside another way of being is taking place. He calls it “the primacy of possibility.” He says that we are now living in a culture where the most important thing we can live under is the concept of possibility.
• We live in a world with infinite options. Options that arrive into our lives offering meaning. We want to build an identity and we use things that arrive into our lives all the time.
• Christ does so in a way that isn’t part of a possibility, it isn’t a fad or a movement.
• We don’t think about the man of triumph entering into our lives to conquer an empire any more. But we do think about that which enters our lives to bring meaning. What arrives into our lives to bring meaning? To give us identity? To show us who we are and how to live? To help us to find a way toward peace in our lives?
• how is Christ personally the King you need?