Mark - Who Is That Man?

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, [2] saying to them, "Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. [3] If anyone asks you, 'Why are you doing this?' tell him, 'The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.' "

[4] They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, [5] some people standing there asked, "What are you doing, untying that colt?" [6] They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. [7] When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. [8] Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. [9] Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,

"Hosanna!" "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" [10] "Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!" "Hosanna in the highest!"

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples!" [40] "I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, "Who is this?"

“Who is this?” I find it very interesting that still today, 2,000 years after His death, the identity of Jesus Christ is still a topic of conversation, and the subject of many books, movies, scholarly articles (and some not so scholarly articles!) Some think He is a good teacher, the founder of one of the world’s great religions. Some think He is a spiritual figure who can be anything they want Him to be. Some think He is theirs in the sense that no one else really understands Him the way they do, and He is more pleased with them and their little religious group than anybody else on earth. There’s a lot of debate about Jesus. Nobody is debating about the identity and nature of Mohammed, or the Buddha, or Zoroaster, or Joseph Smith, but the question of who Jesus is just keeps coming back year after year, century after century. It’s almost like God won’t let us forget it until we get it right.

And that’s a good thing. Because who Jesus is has enormous implications! Particularly who we believe He is. One day Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do people say I am?” and they said, they think maybe you are one of the Old Testament prophets or John the Baptist come back to life. Then Jesus looked them in the eye and drilled them with this question: “Who do you say that I am?” That is the question that has engaged everyone who has ever heard of Jesus for 2,000 years. Who do you say that He is?

Today is Palm Sunday, and our Scripture reading gave us the account of the events of that day. It’s called Palm Sunday because the people put palm branches in the road for Jesus to ride over, as a way of honoring Him. There were a number of different groups of people there that day, and each group had a different view of who this was who was riding into the city on a colt. It reminds me a lot of the 2008 presidential race that we are (regrettably) already in. The candidates ride into town in a motorcade, the advance men drum up a crowd, he makes a speech and shakes a few hands, kisses a few babies, and then the commentators get their turn. “He’s a great man.” “He’s a jerk.” “He’s too soft on the war.” “He’s got no international experience.” etc. etc. Everyone has their opinion. Just like they did that day in Jerusalem.

To the crowd who stood alongside the road that day and spread palm branches and their cloaks on the ground for Jesus to ride on, He was a king.

They shouted, Mark 11:10, "Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!" King David had ruled in Israel a thousand years before, but he was by far the best king the Jews had ever had. During David’s lifetime, God had said to him through the prophet Nathan, 2 Samuel 7:12, 16, “When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, …and I will establish his kingdom…16 Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’” In the centuries that followed, other prophets kept referring to this one who was coming, David’s greater son, the Anointed One, who would sit on David’s throne and rule forever. This thought crystallized into the concept of the Messiah, a great king like David, who would rule over Israel.

But at the time of Jesus, Israel had no king at all. They were a conquered and subjugated people, living under the rule of the Roman Emperor. This only fanned the fires of hope for the Messiah even more, as the people desperately prayed for deliverance and independence for their nation.

So when Jesus started making a splash on the public scene, with huge crowds following Him everywhere He went, and preaching about the kingdom of God, people began to wonder, is He the one? Could He be the King we have been waiting for?

Then in the week before Passover, the greatest feast of the year, the time when the most Jews from all over Palestine and surrounding countries would be in Jerusalem, here comes Jesus, riding into the city on a colt. To us, riding on a donkey’s colt doesn’t appear to be very kingly, but the Jews were steeped in the Old Testament and were especially keen on all the passages that referred in any way to the Messiah. They remembered Zech. 9:9, “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Jesus riding into Jerusalem that day looked a lot like the fulfillment of this prophecy, and they concluded, here is our king! They had high hopes that Jesus would be the king who would lead them to independence from the Romans and set up their own Jewish state there in Palestine for the first time in almost 600 years.[1]

Mark 11:9, Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted, "Hosanna!" “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" [10] "Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!" "Hosanna in the highest!"

The word “hosanna” is a Hebrew expression that means “save”. It came to be used as an exclamation of praise. In other words, they were saying that they believed Jesus was able to save them, and they were praising Him for that. We might paraphrase it as “Savior!”

But what did they mean when they called Him that? We hear the word “savior” and it has all sorts of religious and spiritual overtones. But in that context, when they shouted “Hosanna!” they weren’t thinking of their need to be saved from the consequences of their sins; they were thinking of the Roman garrison down the street. They were thinking of the Roman soldiers patrolling the streets of Jerusalem, the holy city. They were fuming about the harsh rule of these polytheistic pagans. When the crowd praised Jesus as savior that day, they were thinking primarily of being saved from political oppression.

The disciples who had lived with Jesus for the better part of three years were also there that day, walking along beside and behind him like the president’s Secret Service bodyguard. What did they think of this man? For three years, these men had lived with Jesus. They had walked hundreds of miles all over Palestine with Him; they had eaten hundreds of meals together; they had heard perhaps hundreds of sermons; they had sat around in homes in the evenings, and watched Him care for people. What did the men who were closest to Him think of Him?

Just before they had departed Galilee in the north for Jerusalem in the south, Jesus had asked His disciples this pointed question: Matt 16:15,16, "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" [16] Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." There it was, finally out in front of them all. They had wondered among themselves who this man was when He calmed a storm (Mark 4:41), and when He warned them about the yeast of the Pharisees (Matt 16:7), and when He had predicted His death and resurrection on the Mount of Transfiguration (Mk 9:32). But now, finally, someone—Peter, naturally—had blurted it out. They had watched Him perform miracles; they had heard Him teach with authority; they had seen demons cast of people who were then returned to their right mind; they had heard Him preach that the Kingdom of God was at hand. And now they were able to give voice to the suspicions and hope that had been growing in them for a couple of years. This was, after all, the Christ, the Messiah, the prophesied and long-awaited Anointed One of God. That’s who the disciples thought He was.

There were also some Pharisees in the crowd that day; what did they think about all the hoopla? Who did they say Jesus was?

The notion that Jesus was a king was politically incorrect in a big way! The Romans put up with the Jews and their religion, and made some exceptions to the way they normally treated conquered peoples, because the Jews were so fanatical about their faith. But there was no way in the world the Roman authorities were going to tolerate talk of a Jewish king. That was dangerous talk. So when the Jewish leaders there that day heard the crowd hail Him as king, they said to Jesus, Luke 19:39, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples!" We can’t have this! If Rome gets wind of a King of the Jews, we’ll all be in for it. They’ll send in the troops and tighten security, and our limited religious freedoms will get even smaller.

They called Him “teacher”, but to them, Jesus was a very troublesome teacher. He stirred up trouble by “working” on the Sabbath. At least that’s what they called it when He healed people on that day, or when He allowed His disciples to pick grain in the fields on the Sabbath. He stirred up trouble when He threw the money changers out of the temple. He stirred up trouble with the Sadducees, a Jewish sect that had control of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of the Jews, when He insisted that there will be a resurrection (they didn’t believe in the resurrection.) He stirred up trouble when He told parables that implied the religious leaders of the day were corrupt keepers of God’s vineyard. He caused a stir when He forgave the sins of the paralyzed man and the prostitute, and the leaders thought it was blasphemy because only God can forgive sins (Luke 5:21; 7:49). And He certainly didn’t win any friends among the Pharisees when He pronounced seven “woes” on them for their hypocrisy (Matt 23:13ff.) To the religious leaders of all stripes, Jesus was just trouble.

So we have all these different interpretations and understandings of who Jesus was, just as we do today. But ultimately, there are only two people whose understanding of Jesus matters: His and yours. Who did Jesus say He was, and who do you say He is? Let’s look first at who Jesus said He was. And as we do, we’ll find that Jesus radically reinterpreted the labels that people of that day stuck on Him.

He did say He was a king. He talked a lot about the kingdom of God, and many of His parables inferred that He was a king. And He said that the kingdom was here because He was here.

When the Jews hauled Him off to the Roman governor in hopes of getting a death sentence against Him, Pilate asked him, John 18:33-37, "Are you the king of the Jews?"… [36] Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place." [37] "You are a king, then!" said Pilate. Jesus answered, "You are right in saying I am a king.”

So yes, Jesus says, I am a king, but not the kind of king you are afraid of, and not the kind of king that the crowd thinks I am. They are looking for a strong national political and military leader, but my kingdom is not of this world. My kingdom is a spiritual kingdom, not an earthly one. My kingdom does not have geographical boundaries; it consists of all those who bow their knee to my authority.

In those days, the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government were all combined in the person of the king. He made the rules, governed the country, and acted as final judge in important cases. In Matthew 25, Jesus told a story about the judgment at the end of the world, in which the Son of Man (His favorite name for Himself) will sit on a throne as the King of all mankind, and separate them into sheep who will live forever with Him, and goats who will be punished forever. Jesus claimed to be the King who will judge the world.

After His death and resurrection, Jesus’ followers understood more fully what kind of king He was, and they often referred to Him that way. Paul wrote, 1 Tim. 1:17, “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

And John saw in his vision that at the end of time there will be a great battle between the forces of God and the forces of evil, Rev. 17:14, “but the Lamb will overcome them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings..."

Jesus is the King because one day, every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. He is the One who even now governs everything that happens on earth from His throne in glory. And He is the One who deserves to be King of your life.

The people lining the road praised also Jesus as savior, but they were thinking of a political savior.

Jesus accepted the title of Savior, but again, He had a different definition of what that meant. He told the Pharisee Nicodemus, John 3:16,17, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” When the tax collector, Zacchaeus, changed his heart so much that he promised to pay back everybody he had cheated four-fold, Jesus pronounced him a true son of Abraham, and said of Himself, Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”

The salvation Jesus came to bring was not political, but spiritual: He came to save us from the consequences of our sins. Our sin separates us from God, and if we don’t do something about that while we are alive, we will spend eternity apart from God. Many people today don’t seem too concerned about that prospect, but that’s only because they don’t realize what it will mean. It means to be cut off from everything that is good, everything that is true, and right and beautiful. It means to suffer eternal torment that Jesus described as fire that burns forever and worms that continually devour our flesh (Mark 9:43, 48). Jesus came to save us from that, and therefore He is indeed the great Savior.

Peter, as spokesman for the disciples, rightly identified Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, but we have seen that they thought of this as a political, military title. Jesus accepted the title; He said that God the Father had revealed that truth to Peter. But Jesus had a very different take on what it meant to be the Messiah. Immediately after Peter said He was the Messiah, Jesus began to teach the disciples that He was going to have to go up to Jerusalem, where He would be arrested, beaten, and killed. Well, you can imagine how well that went over, given their concept of the Messiah! Peter, typically, opened his mouth before putting his mind in gear, and blurted out, “No way, Lord!” He just couldn’t fathom the idea that the Messiah (and Jesus had just accepted that title) would suffer and die. It didn’t make sense. But Jesus was adamant about it. In order for Him to be the kind of Savior and Messiah that He was, He had to die; there was no other way.

After His resurrection, Jesus appeared alongside two of His disciples who were walking down the road to a town called Emmaus. They didn’t recognize Him, and they were talking about Jesus and His recent death, and the rumors they had heard about Him coming back to life. When they got to the house they were going to, they invited Jesus in for a meal. There He opened their eyes so they could recognize Him, and He said to them, Luke 24:44-47, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms." … [46] He told them, "This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, [47] and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”

Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, had to suffer and die, because He was the sacrifice that would make atonement for the sins of the world. All those Old Testament sacrifices were just pictures of Jesus and His death on the cross, but He was the real thing. The blood of bulls and goats can’t take away sins; it was His death that paid the penalty for the sins of everyone who ever lived. He was our substitute at the bar of God’s justice; He took the punishment that we deserve for our rebellion against God. But because He did that, we can now enjoy a love relationship with the Creator of the universe, and spend eternity in His presence when we die. Jesus died in order to give us life—abundant life now, and eternal life later.

Then there were the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. They thought He was trouble.

What did Jesus have to say about that? He was trouble for them. In some sense, Jesus came to comfort the troubled and to trouble the comfortable, and the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the Pharisees were all too comfortable in their religiosity. They mistakenly thought that by being really scrupulous about keeping the Old Testament laws, they would be acceptable to God. And they looked down with superior scorn on those riff-raff who didn’t “do it right”. They imagined that because they were descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the founding fathers of the Jews, they were therefore OK in God’s sight.

But Jesus came to upset that applecart. He taught that God didn’t help those who help themselves by working hard to please Him; rather, God helps those who cannot help themselves, who see themselves as sinners, not saints, and who cast themselves on God for mercy. Jesus castigated the leaders for their hypocrisy, in pretending to be so spiritual when their inner lives were corrupt like a grave full of dead men’s bones. He accused them of being blind guides, who not only didn’t know they way of salvation themselves, but who led others astray. He criticized them for their pride in wanting the most prominent seats, and always wanting to be recognized for their piety. He condemned them for tithing even the herbs they grew in their garden, but failing to obey God in the much bigger matters of justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

Trouble? Oh yes, my friends, we’ve got trouble, right here in River City, and it starts with T, and that rhymes with C, and that stands for Christ. I can’t help but wonder how much trouble Jesus would be for religious leaders of our day. The papers are full of it, almost every day bringing new revelations and charges of leaders guilty of child abuse, and pornography, and embezzlement, and homosexual affairs. It is a moral disaster much like Jesus’ day, and I am quite sure He would be as much trouble for us if He were here as He was for the leaders of His day.

So Jesus reinterpreted the titles and labels the people of Palm Sunday put on Him. But He also added one other description that day. He said He was

When Jesus was giving the disciples instructions on where to find the colt He was going to ride into the city on, He anticipated that there might be some bystanders who would question why they were, in effect, stealing the colt tied in front of somebody’s house. He said, Mark 11:3, “If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’” “The Lord”? It’s the same word Jesus used when He said that the greatest of all the commandments was to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” (Mark 12:30). But here, Jesus uses the title to refer to Himself. There is no other way to understand that than that He intended to equate Himself with the God of the Old Testament.

A little later in the day, when He was riding into the city, and the religious leaders called on Him to shush the people who were hailing Him as King and Messiah and Savior, Jesus said, Luke 19:40, "I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out." Because Jesus is all those things. He is the King. He is the Savior. He is the Messiah. And He is the Creator. And if people do not give Him the credit for being who He is, the inanimate creation will!

Will you recognize Him for who He is? Oh, I know it’s not easy. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day didn’t get it. Even the disciples didn’t get it at first. It wasn’t until after the resurrection that they fully realized who Jesus was, and what all these titles meant. But we live on this side of the resurrection now. We can see, as they could not, that He would not stay in the grave. And it is the resurrection, which we will celebrate in glory next Sunday, that proves that Jesus is all these things. He is the King of the world, who has defeated death, and now reigns in heaven. He is the Savior who rose again to prove that He was who He said He was. He is the Messiah, the One who had to suffer in the place of sinners, so that we could live in relationship with Him forever.

Who do you say Jesus is? Is He more than just a good man, a good teacher of nice moral and religious thoughts? He came to be not just a Savior, but your Savior. Will you accept His death as payment for your sins? Will you call on Him to save you from a horrible eternity, to put you in a right relationship with God Almighty that starts now and lasts through death? He came into this world to be not just a King, but your King. He wants to be Lord of your life, the supreme authority in your life. Will you let Him be that?

Folks, I guarantee that if you’ve never done that, and you do it today, next Sunday will be unlike any Easter you have ever experienced. Because it won’t just be a nice religious celebration with great music and pretty flowers. It will be a time of joy and victory that will thrill your soul.

Come. Come to Jesus now. He’s right here, by His Spirit, calling and waiting for you to look up, to recognize Him for who He is, and to ask Him to save you. I invite you to do that as we pray.

[1] Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 B.C., and even though the Jews returned under Ezra and Nehemiah after their 40 years of captivity in Babylon, they were never again a truly independent nation with a king of their own.