Locations & Times

What did Jesus ride into the big city? (a baby donkey)

What did the people shout as they waved their palm branches in the air? ("Hosanna, Hosanna, Jesus has come to save us.")

Why did God send Jesus? (God sent Jesus to save the world.)

Read: Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-10

Matthew 21:10 says that all of Jerusalem was stirred when Jesus entered the city. A parade so grand, loud, and celebratory would stir hearts. Jesus was nearing the end of a radical three years of ministry, and he certainly had a reputation. But perhaps the people were also stirred because something didn’t quite fit. Jesus was not charging into Jerusalem on a stallion fit for a king about to win a war. Instead, he sat on a colt – a baby donkey – humbly, quietly, gently.

Jesus on a colt fulfilled the prophecy in Zechariah 9:9: “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 foal of a donkey.”

This was another way that Jesus revealed his identity as the long-awaited Messiah. No Jew should’ve missed this confirmation of who Jesus was. He had come to deliver them from something much worse than government corruption, and his triumph would be over something much darker than human oppression. He came to set all people free from a problem so deep no one but the God of the universe could fix—our sin.

He came to accomplish total redemption.

But the Jewish people wanted and expected Jesus to be a political savior – someone who would deliver them from Roman oppression and overthrow the Roman government. They wanted a king that matched the triumph of the parade.

Sometimes what we want skews the reality of what we need.

Have you ever missed out on getting what you need because your judgement was clouded by what you wanted in the moment?

Jesus came into the world humbly, as an infant, and he began his journey out of the world humbly, too, on a donkey. What significance do you think that holds?