- THIS IS A SPECIAL PASSION WEEK MESSAGE FROM PASTOR KYLE -

FOR PRINTABLE PDF OF THIS MESSAGE, CLICK HERE.

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Hello Church Family,
As Easter approaches, I want to veer off from the “one anothers” for this week. I am going to share a message every day from now through next Sunday, where each day we’ll look at a new passage that will build throughout the Passion week as it unfolds in Scripture. For example, today I’ll start with Palm Sunday, and next Sunday will obviously be the Resurrection.

Below is the first message, and I strongly encourage each of you to take the time to follow along with this.

Wishing we could all be together,
- Pastor Kyle

Passion Week: Jesus' Triumphal Entry

Palm Sunday

Read Matthew 21:1-11

When they had approached Jerusalem and had come to Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied there and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to Me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord has need of them,’ and immediately he will send them.” 4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
5 “Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold your King is coming to you,
Gentle, and mounted on a donkey,
Even on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’”
6 The disciples went and did just as Jesus had instructed them, 7 and brought the donkey and the colt, and laid their coats on them; and He sat on the coats. 8 Most of the crowd spread their coats in the road, and others were cutting branches from the trees and spreading them in the road. 9 The crowds going ahead of Him, and those who followed, were shouting,
“Hosanna to the Son of David;
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord;
Hosanna in the highest!”
10 When He had entered Jerusalem, all the city was stirred, saying, “Who is this?” 11 And the crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.”

At her coronation in 1838, Queen Victoria of England wore a crown that was adorned with giant rubies and sapphires that surrounded a 309 carat diamond. The scepter that she held had an even larger diamond on it, which was cut from the Star of Africa and weighed just over 516 carats. Contrast that with the most significant coronation the world has yet to see. The coronation of the true King.

Jesus’ triumphal entry had many significant purposes to it, and I don’t intend to cover them all here, as that would take too much time for this short devotional. However, I do want to cover a couple of them.

The first point I want to bring out is fulfillment of prophecy. The Old Testament is inundated with Messianic prophecies, and Matthew’s Gospel account helps us see that Jesus fulfilled all of the prophecies related to His first coming. The fulfillment of these prophecies is definitive evidence that Jesus of Nazareth is in fact the Son of God and the Messiah prophesied about in the Old Testament. Here Jesus is fulfilling with total accuracy a prophecy that was given by the prophet Zechariah 500 years earlier (Zechariah 9:9).

Though the fulfillment of so many complex prophecies may seem inconceivable for any human to achieve, for God this is perfectly consistent with His nature. Luke 1:37 says: “For nothing will be impossible with God” Here the angel Gabriel is not talking about climbing mountains or winning Olympic gold medals, but is talking about whatever God says will happen, will happen as He says. This is a promise that we can certainly be sure of, and are able to see displayed in the fulfillment of these Messianic prophecies.

The second point I want to bring out is how the King and Creator of the universe chose to have such a “seemingly” insignificant coronation. This may seem like an odd thing to focus on, but I see it as an essential theme throughout all of Scripture, and most significantly throughout the Gospels. From Jesus’ lowly birth, to His low budget coronation, and even His untimely (so His followers thought) death on the cross, Jesus’ life on this earth was hardly one of glitz and glamour, and in the eyes of man would’ve been seen as an utter failure. However, the life Jesus lived was the complete opposite of a failure, and everything went exactly how God planned it. Jesus completely fulfilled the will of the Father to perfection, and one of the key reasons He lived outside the spot light was to be an example to us of how we are to be servants to all, as He was. What the world deems as important, is rarely what’s important in the eyes of God.

I hope that you see through this week that the most important thing to God is saving His people and having an everlasting relationship with them.