PALM SUNDAY: Two Kingdoms, One Decision
Nicholas Anderson
Introduction
Today is Palm Sunday, and it’s the day that is a celebration of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, traditionally celebrated at the beginning of Holy Week. But even though we celebrate it as a happy occasion, it is a day in which Jesus wept. To understand this apparent disconnect, we need to travel back to the first book of the Bible, Genesis (I love going there). This morning we will be looking at the fall of spiritual beings and how it connects to Palm Sunday and Easter.
The Tower of Babel & The Divine Council
So let’s jump back to the beginning in Genesis 1, 2, and 3. We see that God creates a beautiful and plentiful world and gave the humans a chance to rule it and reign it with him, with God himself. But then, we see a talking snake (which is just weird), or rather a spiritual being to deceive them, and they decide that they will know good and evil based on their terms rather than trusting in God’s. And God finds out and punishes them. And here is a first mention of the Gospel found in Genesis 3: Someone will crush the head of the serpent, but not before the serpent will bite their heal.
From then on, we see human after human fail. Individuals and societies become more and more corrupt. God decides at this point to flood the earth due to the uncontrolled evil and human violence that humans have given themselves to. And afterwards, God puts a bow in the clouds to covenant and to promise that he’s going to find a different way to fix the world. And that bow is pointing up into heaven, not back down at earth, possibly another hint towards a Savior.
After the Flood, God commands humans to “be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth.” And humans continue to grow and invent technology—the brick! God doesn’t condemn humans for this invention, indicating that God is actually for it. Use it to build something that can help humans flourish! But in Genesis 11:4, they say:
“Let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.”
They are disobeying God’s commands to spread out and multiply. Perhaps God knows something about human nature and the inclination towards sin. So in love, he scatters them and redirects their creativity.
But in Deuteronomy 32, verses 8 and 9, it reveals something interesting to us about this moment. And there is some really nerdy textual variants here, meaning that among the manuscripts that scholars use to translate the Bible, there are some slight differences. And most translations say:
When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, he divided all mankind and set up boundaries for the people according to the number of the sons of Israel.
And I have no idea what that means. But according to the Dead Sea Scrolls (which is an older manuscript than most) and the Greek Septuagint (which is possibly a version of the Old Testament or Tanakh that Jesus read if he read Greek), the ending of verse 8 can be translated like this: “…according to the sons of God,” or the Septuagint says “…angels of God,” implying that God set spiritual rulers over the nations that were scattered at the Tower of Babel at the same time that he scattered the humans.
So this is known as the Divine Council Theory, which scholar Micheal Heiser brought to greater attention. There is a council of heavenly beings that preside over Job when the satan, or the accuser, tests his integrity. Isaiah sees many spiritual beings in his vision in chapter 6 of his prophetic warning scroll. In 1 Kings 22, we have the prophet Micaiah see a vision of the Lord asking for a plan, and there were many suggestions. Possibly the “Let us create man in our own image” or “Let us go down and confuse their language,” that can also be pointed to this. And even in Psalm 82, it speaks of God presiding over the heavenly court, asking someone, possibly, you know, the Divine Council, how long are they going to favor the wicked.
Apparently, God wants to rule and reign with—with the Divine Council, with humans in the Garden. He is all powerful, and of course he can do it himself, but we can see he chooses to rule with.
And a quick side note: The Divine Council Theory is just that—it’s a theory. It’s not completely agreed-upon secondary theology. I’m not gonna die on this hill of interpretation, but I do believe it gives us a greater window into what’s going on.
And so at the Tower of Babel, according to the Divine Council Theory, evil spirits were placed in charge of the nations, and oftentimes that shows themself in the form of worship of money, sex, and political or military power. There are even hints of this in Ezekiel 28 and Daniel 10, and this might even explain why Pharaoh decides to kill all of the Hebrew babies—he was influenced by evil spiritual forces.
And the title of “Babylon” has its roots here. It’s a symbol of human rebellion. “Babylon” becomes shorthand for any nation, system, or culture that exalts itself above God, oppresses people, and propagates evil. “Babel” literally means “confusion.” The place becomes a lasting symbol of human pride, self-exaltation, and rebellion.
So put a mental bookmark here, and we’ll come back to this idea.
The History of Israel
So just the history of Israel. After the Tower of Babel, God decides that in order to bring reconciliation between God and man, he would work with one nation, and so he chooses a man named Abram to build that nation with. God even promises that that nation will be blessed through his seed. And eventually the nation starts to multiply, but due to a famine they go down to Egypt, and of course they are enslaved for about four hundred years.
But after that time, after hearing the cries of His nation, God sent Moses to free them. And after confronting Pharaoh, God sent the Angel of Death to kill every firstborn son in Egypt. But God made a way of escape, as of course He normally does. Put the blood of a lamb on the doorpost of your home, and God would protect that house from the Angel of Death. The Jewish people were then let go from slavery and freed from Egypt, and they celebrate this moment each year with a celebration called Passover. So put another mental bookmark right there as well.
Eventually they came back to the land God promised Abram, and the people of Israel kept on choosing what they thought was good and evil on their own terms, and the nation continued, of course, in a downward spiral. God sent judges to rule the people, then prophets, then kings, and eventually the kings got so corrupt that God used other nations to then judge his own nation. Israel was exiled to Babylon and Assyria. Before, during, and after the exile, God sent prophets to his nation to warn them that if they didn’t repent and follow God, His words, then judgment would come. But they also prophesied of a coming Messiah who would make things right.
So in Zechariah 9 and 14 there is a prophecy of a coming Messiah, a Savior riding into Jerusalem on a donkey from the Mount of Olives.
In Psalm 118 it talks of a time when His nation will say “Please, Lord, Please save us! Please give us success.”
And after a generation or so, the Jews were let back into their land, but were always under the form of some type of control, some other foreign nation. During the years in between the Old and New Testaments, they were ruled by the Greeks; they found brief freedom after the Maccabean revolt, but eventually were conquered again by Rome in 63 B.C. by Roman General Pompey the Great.
And Rome was a very cruel master, ruling with an iron fist. Crucifixions were common in Rome as a way of telling its oppressed people, “Don’t mess with us, or this will be your fate.” And I just recently heard a testimony of a young man who was in a motorcycle gang at the age of ten, and was forced to witness the gang burn two men alive in a car for the sake of teaching that boy a lesson: “This is what happens to thieves.” So Rome is a cruel master. Our ways can be a cruel master. Babylon is a cruel master.
So by the time Jesus enters the scene, the nation of Israel were an oppressed people hoping and looking for some freedom, trusting that their scripture foretold of a time when someone would come to give them that freedom.
So then John the Baptist starts baptizing people in the iconic Jordan river as a symbol of reentering the Promised Land fresh and new. And then Jesus goes around as a new prophet, healing people and teaching people the simple way of following God. And for three years there is this hope and expectation building up—whispers of a new prophet on the scene, making the blind see, making the lame walk, and the dead rise again. He rose up Lazarus from the grave, likely only a week or two before Palm Sunday, and that very much angered the religious rulers. They decide that Jesus must be killed. They can’t have someone taking all their fame and influence, their ways of good and evil. And so all of this leads to Palm Sunday.
The Two Kingdoms that Entered Jerusalem
So let’s open up our Bible if you have one—your physical Bible, your digital Bible, whatever it might be—to Matthew 21. Matthew 21. This is Matthew’s version of the Triumphal Entry. And I am reading from the NLT, the New Living Translation. Alright, here we go.
As Jesus and the disciples approached Jerusalem, they came to the town of Bethphage on the Mount of Olives. Jesus sent two of them on ahead. “Go into the village over there,” he said. “As soon as you enter it, you will see a donkey tied there, with its colt beside it. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone asks what you are doing, just say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and he will immediately let you take them.”
This took place to fulfill the prophecy that said,
“Tell the people of Jerusalem,
‘Look, your King is coming to you.
He is humble, riding on a donkey—
riding on a donkey’s colt.’”The two disciples did as Jesus commanded. They brought the donkey and the colt to him and threw their garments over the colt, and he sat on it.
Most of the crowd spread their garments on the road ahead of him, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. Jesus was in the center of the procession, and the people all around him were shouting,
“Praise God for the Son of David!
Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Praise God in highest heaven!”The entire city of Jerusalem was in an uproar as he entered. “Who is this?” they asked.
And the crowds replied, “It’s Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”
So at the time of Passover, the city of Jerusalem swelled in population, probably three to five times its normal size. So anywhere from 150,000 to half a million people, scholars say, were coming to celebrate Passover, the holiday in which the entire nation remembers the time they were freed from oppressive rulers—and perhaps, maybe Yahweh would do it again. I mean, there is a new prophet on the scene who seems to be making quite a ruckus.
But Rome can’t let any type of uprising happen. The area and the land of Israel was known as “The Crossroads of the Earth.” It was too valuable to let slip out of the hands of the Roman Empire. So Pontius Pilate, the ruler of that region, he makes his way to Jerusalem from his home of Caesarea Maritima, by the Mediterranean Sea. And that means he would have to travel west [ed. correction: “from the west”] to get to Jerusalem. He would be traveling on a white horse to symbolize Rome’s power, authority, and military oppression, and he would travel with a legion of soldiers in order to strike fear into those who saw it.
But from the east, we’ve got Jesus, and he’s making His way into Jerusalem with a ragtag bunch of poor, commonwealth followers. He was on the Mount of Olives, and He asked His disciples to go ahead of Him and get a donkey, and both of those things are foretold by the Tanakh/Old Testament prophet Zechariah.
Ok, now, we’re gonna get into some pretty nerdy Jewish Bible study techniques. Yeah, alright, thank you! Whoo!
There is symbolic meaning in east and west. So which direction is Egypt? West, right? And so Egypt—oppressive, power, slavery, military. Right? Which direction is the Mediterranean Sea? West, right? So Mediterranean Sea—chaos waters, uncontrollable, death. Right? And then we have Jesus coming in from the east. East has the symbolic meanings in that time as well. So like, Abraham, the beginning of a nation. So we have beginnings, the direction of God’s Glory, and the place from which divine activity comes from.
So from the west we have Pilate entering Jerusalem, and from the east we have Jesus entering Jerusalem, and probably during the same week, maybe the same day, maybe the same hour, maybe the exact same time. I don’t know. But one of those kingdoms is bringing war and oppression, and the other brining peace and freedom.
The crowd see this, and they put two and two together. Jesus is fulfilling the hopes of the prophets, the hopes of centuries of waiting, and they take off their cloaks as a symbol of putting oneself under the authority of another, because a person’s outer cloak at that time was their security. It was a status of wealth; it was a person’s Identity. And they were placing all these things down at the feet of Jesus, and they spread their cloaks over the ground.
But they took also palm fronds, which was the symbol of a revolutionary group known as… anybody? The Zealots. Yes, the Zealots, who wanted overthrow Rome with violence and purge Jerusalem of their occupiers. The Zealots thought a warrior-messiah was coming to overthrow Rome. The common people just wanted the heavy yoke off of their back, and they both looked to Jesus to free them from their physical oppression.
But as Jesus rides into Jerusalem, He sees more than just that. He sees that Jerusalem has become a Babylon of oppression from Rome and the nation’s religious leaders. He sees some of the Divine Council gone rogue. And He sees the captivity of the nation that He’s been patient with for hundreds and hundreds of years. And in riding into Jerusalem, He’s coming to do more than just set Israel free, but to take His people back and His world back from the evil spiritual powers that have corrupted it since the Tower of Babel (and beforehand). This is a rescue mission foretold about. He is the snake crusher. He is the one at which the rainbow is pointing at. He is the seed of Abraham through which many nations will be blessed. He is the suffering servant, the new covenant, the rejected cornerstone. But the people thought he was coming to give them what they wanted, but He came to give life, freedom from the corrupt way that our thinking, my thinking, is the right way.
And in the Gospel of Luke chapter 19, it says that Jesus began to weep. The people don’t recognize that God was visiting them. And Jesus sees that what they wanted—they wanted to give Him freedom, and it hurt Jesus enough to make him weep.
The Twos of Matthew
And there’s another thing hidden that we westerners often gloss over that I want to point out.
So when we read the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew was a Jew who wrote to a Jewish audience. And in doing so, we have to respect the book of Matthew as such. It was not written to us, but it was written for us. Do we all understand kind of that difference? It wasn’t written to us, but it was written for us. There’s gonna be some things in there that we might not understand because it was written to someone else even though it’s still for us.
So Matthew uses an ancient Jewish storytelling technique throughout his gospel. They didn’t have commentaries, lexicons, dictionaries the way that we have to study. They primarily were an oral society, and they often used different literary devices to help the reader listen and to pay attention to something. So Matthew often uses the number two in his gospel to help people recognize things. So, two blind men, two demoniacs, two sons in a parable, two men crucified with Jesus, two donkeys. And sometimes this confuses us when we read the other gospels and we see that there’s possible conflict, but just view it as creative liberty. Because the Bible doesn’t claim to be video tape footage. Possibly Luke and Acts kind of sort of claim that, but the Bible is not video tape footage. It’s a beautiful piece of ancient Jewish mediation literature that compels us to examine ourselves, not necessarily show us exactly what happened.
So, Matthew’s use of twos is something we readers are supposed to pick up on, and it’s a pattern of a spiritual call to action that many Jewish people would’ve been familiar with. And by using two characters, or two paths, two responses, Matthew draws us into a moment of personal reflection and decision. Matthew is asking us to see ourselves in the story and to consider which character or which path we will choose—whether it’s obedience or rebellion, wisdom or foolishness, the narrow way or the wide road. It serves as moment of decision.
The Decision
So as Jesus rides into Jerusalem, Matthew inserts the detail of both the colt and the donkey into this story to invite us to make a decision. Pretend that a tearful Jesus looks back at the second donkey, and you are right next to it. Will you get on and ride with Jesus into His kingdom? Will you take off your cloak and throw yourself under the authority of He who knows what’s best for you, or will you pick up a palm frond, and thinking you’re getting freedom, but in fact you’re following a version of Babylon all over again? And after following your version of good and evil and your life is a mess, will you pick up your palm frond and try a new version of self help? Or in four years will you pick up your palm frond for a political outcome that you think will bring freedom and peace, and in four years have to do it again, and then in four years have to do it again and again? Are you picking up the palm fronds of wealth, control, reputation, gifts, power, whatever it might be? Is that the kingdom that you want? Do you want the kingdom of Babylon, ruled by the evil spiritual forces that only steal, kill, and destroy? Ruthless, power-hungry, oppressive, liars. Have you experienced that type of kingdom in your life? Or will you choose the kingdom of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control?
Jesus’ sacrifice created a better way to live. And in a week, He will have died on a cross for your sins that you committed when you were living according to your way—you choosing between good and evil. But He didn’t stay dead. He rose again to prove that He has power over death, power over Babylon, and He freely gives that to you.
So as the worship band comes up and leads us in our final song, I invite you choose Jesus’ kingdom. Decide to ride on that second donkey with Jesus into His everlasting kingdom of love, because all you need to do is admit that you need him. Admit that you’ve made wrong choices. Admit that you’ve lived the way of Babylon and you want another kingdom. It is a free gift, and all you need to do is accept it. So take this time to make that decision. And whether it’s for the first time accepting Jesus or a decision to once again put down Babylon and ride with Jesus into a new kingdom.
