The Triumphal Entry

On April 6, 32 A.D., or what we have come to call Palm Sunday, Jesus was sitting with his disciples on the Mount of Olives. He turned to two of them and said in Luke 19:30-31, “…Go ye into the village over against you; in the which at your entering ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither. And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him.” Of course, the disciples did exactly what they were told and brought to colt to the Lord. The Bible further tells us in Luke 19:35 that, “they cast their garments upon the colt, and they set Jesus thereon.”

Another interesting aspect of the story is the Lord’s response on the way down the mountain. The Bible says that He began to cry and say, “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation” (Luke 19:42-44). The Lord knew before He even reached the city that He would be rejected. He knew that He was just going through the motions by this time. His fate was sealed.

As He approaches the city and enters the Eastern Gate, the people began to cry out in Luke 19:38, “Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.” I’m sure that these cries rang hollow in our Lord’s ears. You see, they were looking for a political leader, not a Savior. They had there eyes on the temporal and not the eternal. Jesus was simply a means to an end for them. Sounds like much of Christianity today. They are in it for what they can get and not what they can give.

Upon entering the Eastern Gate, our Lord goes straight to the temple and finds exactly what He expected and began to “cast out them that sold therein, and then that bought” (Luke 19:45). And he said to them, “In is written, My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves” (Luke 19:46). From that point forward, it was over. He had really pushed the right buttons. It says in Luke 19:47, “the chief priests and the scribes and the chief of the people sought to destroy him.” They were busted. He called them into the light and revealed to everyone just what hypocrites that truly were and how they were truly manipulating and extorting the people. In there little self-righteous minds, the only way to stop Him now, before He put them all out of business, was to kill Him. It’s amazing what religious people can do when they are confronted with the truth. There seems to be no better way to make an enemy than to simply tell him the truth. I’ve received some responses to these articles that will absolutely blow your mind. It’s no wonder, the Bible says in Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” You see, God doesn’t just know what you do, He also knows why you do it! Sometimes that can be hard to admit for all of us.

In closing, “Why did Jesus go straight to the Temple?” He had come to restore the Glory to Israel. He had come to fulfill the Davidic and the Abrahamic Covenants. He had come to fulfill all of the Old Testament promises made about it