To Jesus' enemies, Palm Sunday seemed like a day of defeat. As Jesus enters Jerusalem on this day, all the Jewish people there are thinking that their deliverance from Roman rule is at hand. This is Messiah and He will overthrow the Roman government and set up His earthly Kingdom.
However, by the end of the week, His enemies would feel like they have won the final victory over this carpenter's Son from Nazareth. Jesus would die a cruel death on a Roman cross and be sealed in a grave with Roman soldiers standing guard to make sure no one could steal His body and claim that He had risen from the dead. (Mt. 27:62-66)
The people who were being healed and fed by Jesus, believed that He was a great prophet of some kind. The enemies of Jesus, the religious leaders, would have arrested or killed Him many times, but the people would not allow it. Think about how frustrated they must have been.
Matthew 21 records events in the last week of Jesus' life. He is doing a lot of teaching and healing, and the religious leaders come to Him and challenge His authority to teach the people.
Matthew 21:23-27 (NASB)
[23] When He entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to Him while He was teaching, and said, "By what authority are You doing these things, and who gave You this authority?"
[24] Jesus said to them, "I will also ask you one thing, which if you tell Me, I will also tell you by what authority I do these things.
[25] "The baptism of John was from what source, from heaven or from men?" And they began reasoning among themselves, saying, "If we say, 'From heaven,' He will say to us, 'Then why did you not believe him?'
[26] "But if we say, 'From men,' we fear the people; for they all regard John as a prophet."
[27] And answering Jesus, they said, "We do not know." He also said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things."
The religious leaders were trying to trick Jesus. They asked Him a question that He promises to answer if they will first answer His question. They soon realize that they cannot answer Jesus' question without incriminating themselves.
The key phrase in this verse includes the words, "we fear the people". On another occasion, Jesus is trying to get through to the Pharisees by using parables to send them a message.
Matthew 21:45-46 (NASB)
[45] When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them.
[46] When they sought to seize Him, they feared the people, because they considered Him to be a prophet.
Then on Palm Sunday Jesus is ushered into the city being hailed as a king.
Matthew 21:6-10 (NASB)
[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?"
By the end of this day and on into the next week, the religious leaders must have been very frustrated about what seemed to be a season of victory for Jesus and His followers.
This frustration drove the religious leaders even harder in their determination to destroy Jesus and His following. By the end of the week, they had the upper hand.
Matthew 27:13-26 (NASB)
[13] Then Pilate said to Him (Jesus), "Do You not hear how many things they testify against You?"
[14] And He did not answer him with regard to even a single charge, so the governor was quite amazed.
[15] Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the people any one prisoner whom they wanted.
[16] At that time they were holding a notorious prisoner, called Barabbas.
[17] So when the people gathered together, Pilate said to them, "Whom do you want me to release for you? Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?"
[18] For he knew that because of envy they had handed Him over.
[19] While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent him a message, saying, "Have nothing to do with that righteous Man; for last night I suffered greatly in a dream because of Him."
[20] But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to put Jesus to death.
[21] But the governor said to them, "Which of the two do you want me to release for you?" And they said, "Barabbas."
[22] Pilate said to them, "Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?" They all said, "Crucify Him!"
Notice that Pilate keeps referring to Jesus as Christ, the Greek title for Messiah. This is what made the religious leaders so angry. They did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah.
[23] And he(Pilate) said, "Why, what evil has He done?" But they kept shouting all the more, saying, "Crucify Him!"
The religious leaders and people would not answer Pilate's question. There were no valid charges they could bring before Pilate that would show any guilt on Jesus' actions.
[24] When Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing, but rather that a riot was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd, saying, "I am innocent of this Man's blood; see to that yourselves."
Instead of handing out justice, Pilate makes a political decision to save his career. He hands Jesus over to be crucified.
[25] And all the people said, "His blood shall be on us and on our children!"
[26] Then he released Barabbas for them; but after having Jesus scourged, he handed Him over to be crucified.
From proclaiming Jesus to be a King, to shouting for His torture and death, in one week the religious leaders have manipulated the people to gain, what seemed to be, a great religious victory.
Soon Jesus would be tortured, crucified, and sealed in a grave. HE WAS DEAD!!! With Jesus out of their way, the religious leaders could get back to business as usual. Jesus had confronted their institution, and in their minds, they had won the battle.
We will see what happens next week, but there are a few questions we need to answer about this cruelty that God allowed His Son to go through.
One of the tough things that we deal with on our Christian Journey is suffering and pain. In fact, the topic of suffering and pain is often an obstacle to the Christian Faith.
There are so many things about God's plan of salvation that we will not understand until it is complete, but there are a few things we can be assured of.
However, there is an emotional answer that speaks to the heart of every man and woman who will listen. It is the fact that God loves us without restrictions. There is only one thing God will not do to show His love for any member of mankind. He will not force us to love Him back.
We often hear people question all the suffering in the world as if to accuse God of not loving those who go through suffering and pain. Theologian Peter Kreeft speaks to that issue in an interview he gave for a book.
"How could God bear all that suffering? 'He did!' Kreeft declared. 'God's answer to the problem of suffering is that he came right down into it. Many Christians try to get God off the hook for suffering; God put himself on the hook, so to speak -- on the cross. And therefore the practical conclusion is that if we want to be with God, we have to be with suffering, we have to not avoid the cross, either in, thought or in fact. We must go where he is and the cross is one of the places where he is. And when he sends us the sunrises, we thank him for the sunrises; when he sends us sunsets and deaths and sufferings and crosses, we thank him for that.'" [Strobel]
"Prominent British pastor John R. W. Stott, who acknowledged that suffering is 'the single greatest challenge to the Christian faith,' has reached his own conclusion: 'I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross... In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering. ' The cross of Christ... is God's only self-justification in such a world as ours." [Strobel; "John R.W. Stott, The Cross of Christ, 335-36, the last sentence quoting P. T. Forsyth, Justification of God (London: Duckworth, 1916), 32.]
I'm not sure we will ever be perfectly satisfied with any answers given to the tough questions we have pondered this morning. But, I can identify with what Kreeft and Stott have said, not because I need a full answer, because that would do away with my need for faith.
I can also speak from decades of experience. There have been times in my life when I thought Satan had won a final victory over me. And this is not always because of sin or mistake in my life, but sometime because of the despair of my circumstances. In every case, when I let God have control of my situation, it has worked out for my good.
That good comes out of the agony and torture of the cross that God went through for me. The cross, everywhere we see it, should be a reminder to us, that God stepped out of His comfort, down from His throne, setting aside His divinity, and joined us here on earth in our pain. God's extreme love poured out on sinful mankind.
We are going to close this service this morning by taking communion together. When we participate in communion, we take the symbols of His pain for us, so we can remember His great act of love for us. It is in these symbols of His broken body and shed blood that we remember how much the Creator loves the creatures He created.
Communion service.
NASB - New American Standard Bible (NASB). Cedar Rapids: Laridian, 2002.
Strobel, Lee. The Case for Faith, (Palm Reader edition). Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000.
I want to thank my research assistants, Debi Peck and Robyn Harper (HARPER), who do hours of research to provide some of my study resources. I also want to thank Vonda Watson-Bostick and Robyn Harper, who help me with editing.