All right, as I said before the prayer, this is lesson 33, the Paschal Mystery is part one, which really is gonna be focusing here on the Passion of our Lord, the suffering, the Crucifixion and Death of our Lord. And as an introduction, we can only cover the highlights here that goes without saying, and that's really unfortunate, because there's just so much beautiful things going on, mysteries to meditate upon, to pray upon. But we will go over the highlights and continue to theme, I think, of the kingdom. We talked about this theme a lot in the past few lectures, how Jesus comes to reestablish, to renew the kingdom of David, the kingdom of heaven.
All right, so let's dive in here with Roman numeral one on your notes, if you have notes in front of you, we're gonna talk first about the triumphal entry to Jerusalem, this is Palm Sunday, this is really the public proclamation of Jesus's kingship. So it's interesting, because I don't know if you read the scripture, we haven't had a chance to talk about this in the past few lectures at all, but in the public ministry, when Jesus is ministering to the Jewish people, he'll heal somebody, after he heals them, he says, shh, right, be quiet, don't tell anyone, keep it on the down low. And that's very strange to a lot of folks, especially because when he goes to the Gentiles and he heals Gentile individuals like into the capitalist, he doesn't tell anybody to keep it under their hats. Only those that are in Jews in Jerusalem or rather in Israel.
Why does he do this? Well, people call this the messianic secrets, there's all kinds of theories about why this might be the case. I think quite simply it's that Jesus wants to reveal his identity as the son of David, which is an incredibly charged thing to do to come out and say, I'm the son of David, and not only the son of David, but I'm the divine son of man of Daniel chapters that we'll talk about this in a little bit. This is like huge, right?
It's going to cause a stir among the people. And so he really tries to keep things under control until the right time. And that's what's happening here. When he goes into Jerusalem, the time the place is now.
And so he makes it crystal clear who he is. Now let's read a little bit of this. We're in Matthew chapter 21, we can't always read every section that I'd like to talk about. I think I want to read this here.
In chapter 21 of Matthew verse one, they drew near to Jerusalem, they came to Beth Vage to the Mount of Olives, and then Jesus and two disciples saying, basically go and get a donkey and occult with her, untie them and bring them here. And then in verse four, Matthew says, this was to fulfill what was spoken of by the prophet. He's actually combining a couple of prophecies here. Tell the daughter of Zion, behold your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey on a cult the full of a donkey.
And then he stops. And it goes on. The disciples did it as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey and the cult put on their garments, and he sat on them.
And most of the crowds spread their garments on the road. Others cut branches from the trees that went before him and that followed him, shouted, Hozana to the son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hozana in the highest. And when he entered Jerusalem, all the city was stirred saying, who is this? And they said, it's Jesus, the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee.
All right. This is a, this is a huge shift in the public ministry of our Lord as it, it's like a hindrally between the public ministry and the passion. This begins Holy Week, right? Holy Week is that most special, sacred of all weeks of the, of the, of the year leading up to our Lord's passion and death and crucifixion on Good Friday.
But there's all these things going on the whole week of Holy Week, which we can't get into. God willing will provide, I would love to teach a whole Bible study going day by day, what happened during Holy Week, but it all begins here with a triumphal entry. Okay. So there's a lot to say, what are the highlights here?
Now let's look at this first instance here in your notes, that Jesus is a new Solomon. What Jesus does here when he enters into Jerusalem looks very, very similar, like it's like deja vu, right, for how Solomon entered into the city of Jerusalem at his coordination. And we look at this back in lesson 20, if you want to go and review that, but for a little bit of review, I put first Kings chapter one here in your notes, it says, Zadakapri, it's the Nathan, the prophet and a bunch of others went down and that's not in the scripture and just summarizing that for you. And they went down and caught Solomon to ride on King David's mule and brought him to Guihon.
That's a little spring, the river, the small river that flows out of Jerusalem. There Zadakapri took the horn of oil from the tent and anointed Solomon. And then they blew the trumpet and all the people said, Long live King Solomon. And all the people went up after him, playing on pipes or joicing with great joy, so that the earth was split by their noise.
So you can see very clearly the parallels here, right? Jesus is echoing the story of Solomon in his coordination because Jesus is the new son of David. He's the new Solomon. He's bringing the kingdom back, right?
He's upgrading and restoring it. The kingdom of heaven is at hand as he's been preaching from day one. So as in the time of Solomon and everybody's flipping out and they're so excited and so celebratory and they got great joy, the earth was split by their noise. That's what's going on here in Matthew chapter 21.
He goes in and everyone's yelling, "'Hosanna, the son of David.'" Right? You're a new Solomon. We get what you're doing here. Hosanna, by the way, means save us, right?
We can't get into this, but here's a little bonus. It's not in your notes. And this is what they're saying here. Hosanna, the son of David, blessed is he who comes to the name of the Lord.
This is all echoing Psalm 118, which is one of the famous great Psalms of praise. It's called the Hell El Psalm. It's a pilgrimage chant that they have. I would like you to, in fact, if you want to consult the Ignatius Study Bible and you get a lot of great details here about how they are proclaiming the Psalm in light of the Lord's entry into Jerusalem.
It's very powerful. Well, my point for you here now is that they are so happy that the son of David, the new Solomon is here. Now, Jesus is not just echoing the story of Solomon. He's also fulfilling prophecy, prophecy about the arrival of the Messianic king.
Okay, so think back a little bit. If you remember, exile, we talked about the whole exile of Jerusalem in lesson 23. During this time Babylon comes in, squishes Jerusalem like a bug, destroys the city, the temple, all of that bad stuff, bringing a crisis of faith for the Jews, because the Davidic king was cut off, right? The stump of Jesse we talked about before, Nazareth being that play on words that Matthew brought to us, netser.
There would be a righteous branch that's going to come out of this trot down Davidic kingdom. There were hundreds of years, intense purposes, while appearances, it looks like the king is not going to come back. But God is faithful to his covenant. He told David back in 2 Samuel 7, the kingdom will last forever, and there will always be one of his descendants on the throne.
Okay, so time passes, and then towards the end of salvation history, some rough 400 years more or less, 450 years before Christ, Zechariah gives a prophecy. And it's here in your notes, chapter 9, verse 9 and 10. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king comes to you triumphant and victorious as he humble and riding on a donkey on a colt the full of a donkey.
This is the passage that Matthew is quoting here. Jesus is coming in on this humble beast of burden, by the way, that's the important symbolism here. Donkey is the beast of burden, it's an animal of service here. The king doesn't come into Jerusalem on this magnificent war horse, symbolizing his dominance over the people.
No, keep in mind, the king is the bridegroom of the people. So as the bridegroom, he is meant to serve her, to protect her, and that symbolized here by this animal, the humility of the donkey. Okay, all right, so, but you got to go look at all the context because Zechariah, Matthew doesn't quote this, but Zechariah goes on to say, he shall come in peace to the nations, his dominion shall be from sea to sea. So not only is he, my friends, going to be the king of the Jews and the king of Jerusalem in Israel, but he is going to be according to Zechariah, the king of all the nations.
And that brings everything together, all the way back, we're looking at the story of Abraham and that threefold promise back in lesson seven. I'll make a few, a great nation, a great name and worldwide blessing. This is what Zechariah says, the king of David, the new Solomon, right? The king of Israel will be king of all nations.
And that's going to be a huge theme in this lecture. Jesus is going to bring about the kingdom through his passion and his death. He will bring about the kingdom on the cross. Okay, he's going to be crowned as a king, he will be enthroned on the cross.
There's all these little parallels where I'm getting ahead of myself big time here, but as people mock him and mock his kingship, what they don't realize is that his kingship and his kingdom is really coming to existence because he offers himself as a victim, right? So, anyways, I'll have to say, I don't want to get ahead of myself here. But you can see here that Zechariah is echoing back to the story of Solomon and both of these passages together. First Kings chapter one and Zechariah chapter nine are pointing forward to the arrival of the messianic king who will rule all nations, okay, in justice and peace.
So even more so, when you look at the triumphal entry, you realize, wow, you know, Jesus is really dropping the mic, so to speak, right? Look who is speaking, it's a mic drop. He is saying, once and for all, I am the son of David and I am bringing the kingdom. And that's why everyone is saying, Hosanna, save us, save us, Lord, you know, bless it as he who comes in the name of the Lord.
So, that's just some of the highlights here, the triumphal entry and what he's doing as the new Solomon, as the new king of Israel, and fulfilling the prophecies. Now, this begins all of Holy Week, as I was saying before, but we got to skip way ahead to Holy Thursday and look at the last supper. This is the messiah's new Passover. This is the Passover of the restored kingdom of the kingdom of heaven, okay.
Now, back in lesson 13, we went through the Passover of the 10th Plague and we've touched upon and looked ahead at this moment. In various instances, I want to just review a couple of quick things here. In case it's been a while since you've looked at lesson 13, we have covered a lot of ground in that time. So, let's just follow the notes here and look at the highlights and refresh our memory and draw some quick highlights and some quick conclusions here of what Jesus is doing in this messianic new Passover.