Only After Did They Realize | Tim Henderson

Alright. So it is always hard for me to teach the well-trodden passages because I get bored easily, and I assume that you get bored as well. I hate talking about things where everybody's like, "Yeah, yeah, we already know that." So when I realized that I was going to be teaching this passage that I assigned to myself, I was disappointed, to be honest, because this is the Palm Sunday passage. This is what we call the triumphal entry. And I have preached Palm Sunday like a thousand times because the head pastor always preaches on Easter, and then the other guy gets the week before Easter. So this is like my passage. I've done it a thousand times. We just talked about it a couple months ago. We talked about Julius Caesar, if you remember that whole conversation. And so when I saw this a couple weeks ago, I was like, "Oh, this is going to be boring."

And then I actually read it, and I realized that we almost always teach this out of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and not out of John. And what John does here is so like himself, because he's always adding insight. His account here of Palm Sunday, of the triumphal entry, it just has details that the other ones don't have. Matthew, Mark, and Luke don't cover them, and I had honestly never really noticed. So I have shifted from "this is going to be boring" to "Okay, actually, this is pretty cool." So if you're already bored, stay with me. I'll try to bring you along here. Because I really think that there are a couple of things in this passage that are worth noticing, that at least I had not seen before.

The Story Itself

Let's remind ourselves of the story. John 12, verses 12-15 say:

The next day, the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, so they took branches of palm trees and they went out to meet him crying out, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel." And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it just as it is written, "Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming sitting on a donkey's colt." — John 12:12-15

Honestly, that's all the standard fare. That's over and over again what we've heard. This passage here—that much—is a direct reflection of what Matthew, Mark, and Luke have already told us, or what you've heard countless times, right? Matthew, Mark, and Luke specifically mentioned the people lining the path. Matthew and Mark conclude with language about the branches. They all talk about the donkey, the colt, the foal of a donkey. They all cite Psalm 118. Matthew cites Zechariah 9:9. It's all very familiar stuff.

And as there often is within the synoptics—the synoptics are Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the ones that look the same, that's what synoptics means—there's remarkable consistency. And John is basically agreeing with them. He's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything they already told you, that's all true, okay?"

You've got to remember that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written early. John is written late. John is written maybe a couple of decades after Matthew, Mark, and Luke were already done. So their stories are already out there, circulated, people have read them. He's writing his gospel with the assumption that much of his audience are already familiar with it, knows their accounts. He's affirming their account, but then he's also going to augment it with his own details.

Where It Gets Interesting

And this is where it starts to get interesting to me: when John begins to comment on that. That starts in verse 16. Here's what he says:

His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him, and had been done to him. The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they had heard he had done this sign. So the Pharisees said to one another, "You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him." — John 12:16-19

I've been a Christian for a pretty long time, and I've been reading this book pretty attentively for most of it, but there are two things here that I had never really noticed.

We'll look at the second one first. I wonder if you notice the detail that John adds about what had catalyzed the adoring crowds. In the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, this triumphal entry seems more or less like just a spontaneous event, right?

Maybe people are in town early for Passover, they're getting there and they all kind of see Jesus, and the crowd just materializes out of nothing. That's the impression you get from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But John adds a crucial detail that the others don't even hint at. He goes, what was it that caused this crowd to gather that turns into the Palm Sunday celebration? What was it? It was Lazarus' resurrection.

You guys, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they never say a word about Lazarus. They don't talk about his resurrection from the dead. They don't talk about the fact that he exists. Not in relation to Palm Sunday, not ever. He's completely absent from their accounts, which is so interesting because John shows the resurrection of Lazarus as the defining event of Jesus' ministry. Prior to this last week of his life, which we're just about to begin, Lazarus is the most important thing that has happened. It is the last and the greatest of signs. Matthew doesn't mention it, Mark doesn't mention it, Luke doesn't mention it. And so you have to wonder, why is it that they don't even talk about it, when what John is telling us here is that the very reason that the whole Palm Sunday event took place was because the crowd went to meet him? Because they had heard he had done this sign. It specifically says this:

The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness.

The reason the crowd went to him is because they had heard he had done this sign. What becomes the triumphal entry, what becomes Palm Sunday, was in fact an overflow of the notoriety and surprise and wonder because Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. They knew. He was dead, dead, dead. And Jesus made him alive. And that is specifically what the people were bearing witness to. The fact that it turns into what we think of as a triumphal entry was really secondary to the primary thing. It's why the Pharisees are like, we've got to kill this guy.

So think about this with me. If Lazarus' resurrection precipitated this, and if in fact it was the most important thing that Jesus did leading up to this final week of his life, why doesn't Matthew mention it? Why doesn't Mark mention it? Why doesn't Luke mention it? I mean, it's a huge deal. And they say nothing.

Sloop and I were talking about this last week, and he came across a theory that I don't think would have occurred to me, but I think it's compelling. I think you're right. I think this is exactly what was going on here. It is probably the case that the synoptics were silent about Lazarus because they were written early, while Lazarus was still alive and still in grave danger. Remember that John had just told us that after they decided to kill Jesus, they said, "We've got to kill Lazarus too, because his life is very complicating for us."

I think probably Matthew, Mark, and Luke were downplaying this event, were ignoring this event, even though it glorified Jesus, to protect Lazarus, to maintain his anonymity, to downplay his role. And John, who wrote later, probably after Lazarus was already dead—there was dead again—and therefore there was nothing to protect, he was able to open the door on the fuller story. Isn't that fascinating? I think that is probably what happened.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke, when they wrote their stories, God allowed them to be selective in the stories that they told to protect this one that he loved. But once the danger had passed, or at least had become irrelevant, the full glory of Jesus raising him from the dead was revealed. And I just think that is such a fascinating little detail, and it speaks to the organic nature of this book. Every word is exactly what God wanted written. He is the author of Scripture, but he wrote it in a very organic way through people who loved Lazarus and who wished to treat him with discretion. This is a book written by real people that are giving a real record about people that they knew and loved. And so that detail was concealed for a little while, until John came and could tell us the whole thing.

And so next year, when Palm Sunday rolls around again, and I'm teaching on it again, and we're in Matthew, and Matthew doesn't say anything about Lazarus, remember, the reason we're there is because Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. It is what precipitated the event.

The Disciples' Understanding

So Luke 16, take a look at this. Here's the second thing—first thing, but second one I'm giving you. This is cool.

His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.

Now, I want you to imagine what life has been like for the disciples. Kind of turn up your empathy a notch. They're here following this guy. They're running around, following Jesus, and everywhere they go, it's a circus.

He's saying things that people are weeping over because it so touches their need. And they're also like losing their minds in anger and rage. He's healing people and everybody's like, I don't even know what to make of this. Then he raises this guy from the dead, and that's kind of category blowing. And they're figuring out that he's the Messiah. We've heard what Martha said. We know what Peter has said. They're figuring it all out, but that does not mean they had perfect knowledge, any more than any one of us in this room have perfect knowledge, right? It's all coming together. And in fact, it's happening so fast. With this last resurrection from Lazarus, everybody's gunning for him. They wanna kill him. Jesus is like, we gotta leave, we gotta go hide someplace. And everything's happening so quickly that they can't really keep up with it.

Jesus keeps poking the bear. Right? There's this plot to kill him, and then a crowd forms, and everybody's going crazy, and this is so popular. Right? This just skyrockets. The disciples are caught up in all of it, and they don't have time to process all that they're seeing, all that they're hearing. It's just one thing after another. But then, eventually, in a little while, after things calm down just a little bit, there are two things that John says that clicked for them. Number one, the things that were written about him. And number two, the things that were done to him. Okay?

Now, the things written about him, that's the Old Testament. They're beginning to realize this book is saying all these things, that he's the center of it all. And then there's the things that are done to him. These are the things they've seen with their own eyes. And what they're starting to piece together is, oh my gosh, these are the same thing. We're watching live right before us. We've seen it happen. All these things we've read about in the Psalms, we've read about in the books of Moses, we've read about in the Proverbs, we're like, oh my gosh, it's him. It's all him. Every bit of it is him.

And what they're coming to realize is this drama is being lived out before him, is that the Old Testament is all being fulfilled in their very presence. He is the fulfillment of all of it. Now, John, in this passage, he just gives us a sample. He cites two passages from the Old Testament as samples of this phenomenon that they're recognizing.

The first one, Psalm 118, is the passage that Matthew and Mark, and Luke and John all cite. It's the crowd exclaiming:

Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. — Psalm 118

That's the famous line. That is the Palm Sunday line, and they've all been shouting it spontaneously. Every one of the gospels records that.

The second one is Zechariah 9. That is not something that the crowd is saying. In fact, there's no hint that the crowd ever says that. That is what John is saying. That is John's additional commentary. He's like, hey, I saw it happen. They didn't say it, we just watched it play out. And as John quotes these, he's admitting that he didn't think of it at the time. He wasn't there that he'd go, hey, Zechariah 9's gone by. It didn't even cross his mind. It was only later, upon reflection, after things had calmed down a little bit, after Jesus was crucified, and after he was raised from the dead, that memory flooded back and John realized that what had happened was the living fulfillment of Zechariah 9.

Now, I only have time this morning to unpack one of those. I was gonna try to do both, and I think that would have been a bad idea. So we're just gonna do Psalm 118. Zechariah 9 is really sweet too, but we did do a whole series in Zechariah a couple years ago. And so I'm thinking we're gonna take a look at Psalm 118. And you'll notice the slides are about to get very boring and blank because I don't have any slides here. I don't want any slides here. I want you in a book, all right? So if you've got your Bible, go to Psalm 118. This would be too hard to do in slides, I want you to be able to see it, all right? If you don't have a book, you've got a phone, knock yourself out. That's great. But we're gonna look at Psalm 118. And I want you to really kind of open this thing up so you can see what it is that the crowd was saying, and what John was realizing. Okay?

Understanding Psalm 118

So Psalm 118, blitz primer of this. Probably the most single most helpful thing to do as you walk through Psalm 118 is to try to keep track of who is speaking. It's not just one voice throughout the thing. It's going to vary as we go. All right? You'll notice also that Psalm 118 is bookended with the exact same statement in the first verse and the last verse. If you just kind of glance at the top, go to the bottom. They both are gonna say this:

Give thanks to the Lord for he is good. His love, his steadfast love endures forever. — Psalm 118:1, 29

The very end of it.

His steadfast love endures forever. That is what the psalm is about. That's the claim that it is making, that we should give thanks to the Lord because he's good. His steadfast love endures forever. And the psalm itself in the middle unpacks how that love is manifest, and what specifically we should be thankful for.

Now in the beginning, in verses two, three and four, we have crowds speaking, right? Lots of voices are here. So in verse two, it says:

Let Israel say his steadfast love endures forever. — Psalm 118:2

That's the entirety of the nation. Next verse:

Let the house of Aaron, that's the priests, let the house of Aaron say that his steadfast love endures forever. — Psalm 118:3

And then finally:

Let all those who fear the Lord, that would include Gentiles, like most of us. Let all those who fear the Lord say that his steadfast love endures forever. — Psalm 118:4

This is a liturgical call and response. There's a lot of participants. And this multiplicity of speakers comes to an end, at least temporarily, in verse four. And then in verse five, one individual will begin to speak. This is a change. That was like an opening call and response, now somebody else shows up.

This individual is suffering terribly. Take a look at verse five:

Out of my distress, I called on the Lord. — Psalm 118:5

Verse six:

The Lord is on my side, I will not fear. — Psalm 118:6

Verse eight:

It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. — Psalm 118:8

He is in grief, he is consoling himself, talking to himself. You might be familiar with this strategy when you're hurting and you're trying to gin up the courage to stick with it. And he's talking to himself. But by verse 10, the intensity is increased.

In verse 10 he says:

All nations surround me. — Psalm 118:10

Verse 11:

They surround me, surround me on every side. — Psalm 118:11

Verse 12:

They surround me like bees. — Psalm 118:12

Verse 13:

I was pushed hard so that I was falling. — Psalm 118:13

This single individual is beset by enemies, surrounded, surrounded on every side, surrounded like bees. And so he rallies himself with the memory that God is his strength. And he says in verse 14:

The Lord is my strength and my song. He has become my salvation. — Psalm 118:14

You might know what that's like when you're like, there's no way out of this unless he does it. And then in verse 17, he makes a declaration that looks to his ultimate vindication. He's maybe getting weary of his own weepiness. And he says:

I shall not die, but I shall live and recount the deeds of the Lord. — Psalm 118:17

We're gonna get through this, we're going to win. Victory is coming, I just have to wait on it. And when it comes, I'm gonna sing his praise.

You with me so far? This is the story of Psalm 118, right? And verse 19 is going to get more revealing. If I were reading Psalm 118 up till now, I don't think I would have caught on to what is happening yet. But at verse 19 is when the lights start to get a little bit brighter. Because in verse 19, this single individual is going to move from expressing his distress, consoling himself in his distress, expressing his faith in God's goodness, to making a demand. It's a change. This is the Psalm like, wait, what just happened here?

Because it's kind of a crazy demand. So crazy that for me, as I go through this, I'm like, okay, hang on. There's more going on here than meets the eye. Because he says in verse 19:

Open to me the gates of righteousness that I may enter through them. — Psalm 118:19

Verse 20:

This is the gate of the Lord, the righteous shall enter through it. — Psalm 118:20

Taken by itself, that might not seem meaningful, but perhaps there's a chance that it reminds you of Psalm 24. Psalm 24 is a messianic psalm. And if you flip back there, because Psalm 24 asks a question. The question's in verse three:

Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? — Psalm 24:3

And the answer comes back in verse four:

He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false. — Psalm 24:4

At which point, any one of us who is hoping that he might be allowed to ascend that hill, that she might be allowed to stand in that place, should be looking at our feet kicking the dirt. For none of us can ascend that hill. None of us have clean hands. None of us have a pure heart. Stand in his presence? Are you kidding me? You would fall to the ground as though dead.

Nevertheless, in Psalm 24, the cry goes out:

Lift up your head, oh you gates. Be lifted up, you ancient doors that the king of glory may come in. — Psalm 24:7

Because, you guys, there is one and only one who can ascend the hill of the Lord, who can go through the gate. And just like in Psalm 118, he is demanding entrance. Because this is just like there is one and only one who can pull Excalibur from the stone.

In Revelation five, this question is framed only slightly differently. The question is, who can open the scroll? And do you remember the answer? There's no one.

John weeps and he weeps for there is no one who is found who can open the scroll. Until one of the elders says, do not weep. See, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals. And then John looks and he sees a lamb as though it would have been slain, who is able to break the seal and open the scroll.

You guys, one man can open the scroll. One man can break the seals. One man can ascend the hill of the Lord in Psalm 24. And in Psalm 118, one man can say:

Open to me the gates of righteousness that I may enter through them. — Psalm 118

And honestly guys, that is the moment that Psalm 118 begins to reveal its secret. For this too is a messianic Psalm. This one person who is beset by enemies all around, but who trusts in the Lord, and who is so righteous that he alone can enter through the gate, is none other than the Christ.

Now, in case you think that's subtle, perhaps it is. But I promise you I'm not making this up. Look at verse 22:

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. — Psalm 118:22-24

You guys, that line right there, "the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone," it is quoted and ascribed to Christ in Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and Acts, and First Peter. Paul utilizes it in Romans and Ephesians in a slightly expanded way as he's chasing the theme that Christ is the rock.

In this day, sometimes you may have heard this phrase here from Psalm 118: "This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." Sometimes we take that to mean like, today is the day the Lord has made, and so is tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and every day we should rejoice in the Lord's gifts of a day. That's true secondarily, but what it means right here is this particular day. The day that the stone is rejected and set on a trajectory to be made the cornerstone—that is the day the Lord has made for his redemptive purposes have come to pass.

You guys, essential to the Messiah's mission is to be opposed, mocked, ridiculed, rejected, crucified and killed. Because he drinks the scorn of the very ones he came to save. Because he is so long suffering, to be hated by the ones that he loves. He is made king and he becomes the cornerstone.

And now, back in Psalm 118, the speaker shifts. Notice the pronouns. It's been a single individual but now it shifts to plural because the crowd who opened us with songs of praise is now responding to this one. They realize who he is, they see him. And they say in verse 25:

Save us, we pray, oh Lord. Oh Lord, we pray, give us success. — Psalm 118:25

That phrase, "save us," in Hebrew is Hosanna, is what the crowd has been saying. Verse 26:

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. — Psalm 118:26

And those two verses right there, 25 and 26, together, finally, this is the cry of the crowd on Palm Sunday. This is what they are saying: Hosanna, save us. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. This is what they're saying back in John 12. This is what they are shouting when he comes a week before Passover. And what they are saying is, you are the fulfillment of Psalm 118. You are the one who can climb the hill and enter the gate. You alone. So, save us, for we have no hope apart from you.

Now, I honestly don't know if they understood the full extent of it or not. On the one hand, they were more steeped in their own scriptures, in the Hebrew scriptures, than I was as a child, certainly. But then we have the advantage of two thousand years of church history and seeing the way the story plays out. So, I don't know how much of it they fully understood, maybe all of it, maybe more than I do. But if not, just like Caiaphas had said something that was truer than he realized a couple weeks ago, the ultimate import of their words is, you are the one.

And after it was all over, after that stone had been rejected and had been made the cornerstone, John and the 12 realized at a deeper level than they initially realized, that it was all about him. All of it. All of Psalm 118 is about him. More than they had realized. Zechariah 9 was about him. He is the king on the donkey. That whole thing was about him too.

Now, we know this. We know for sure. I don't know what the crowd understood, but John was on point. John had an unusual, extraordinarily unusually rich, wide, and deep understanding of the Old Testament. Do you know how we know this? That John in particular was a genius at the Hebrew scriptures? It's because he wrote Revelation. People that try to make sense of Revelation and find the whole thing absolutely bewildering and puzzling, which is pretty much everybody—what you have to understand about Revelation is that there are almost as many Old Testament citations and allusions as there are verses.

It's almost one to one. What John is just doing in Revelation is stringing together hundreds and hundreds of Old Testament passages. This dude had a rich command of the Hebrew scriptures. And so John, for sure, understood what Zechariah was about. He knew. Zechariah was written at the end of this long rebellion and this terrible punishment, and the nation of Israel had one question. Are we done? Did we blow it? Is it over? Has God abandoned us? Okay, that's like six questions. Is the Messiah still coming? And John knew that the answer is yes, for certain. He is still coming. And in fact, he's come. This is him. He has come and he has fulfilled, not just the picture of the king on a donkey, but countless images that Zechariah sprinkles throughout his book.

Alright, I really want you to understand and appreciate the richness of what's going on here. What John is telling us in twelve sixteen is that after the resurrection, but only after the resurrection, did he have this mind storm of how particularly and absolutely Jesus had fulfilled the scriptures. At some point, subsequent to this moment, he remembered Zechariah nine and he's like, oh my gosh, that actually happened and I was there.

At some point after this happened, he really came to a deeper understanding of Psalm 118. I get it, I get it, I get it. Jesus is the hill climber, he's the gate enterer, he's the rejected stone that becomes the cornerstone. And he's not only that rock, he's also the rock from which the Israelites drank in the wilderness. Paul makes that clear in First Corinthians 10, and John remembered Numbers 21, and he realized that Jesus is the snake that is lifted up on a pole. He has the right to judge, but he has not come to judge, but to save the guilty.

He knows that Jesus is the ultimate Isaac. He is the son, the beloved son who was offered on a hill as a sacrifice. He knows that Jesus is the ultimate Joshua. The one who has come to lead his people, but who must roll back the waters of judgment all the way to Adam so that the people could safely cross into the promised land.

He knows that Jesus is the ultimate Job. He is the innocent sufferer who after his suffering will be vindicated and will then intervene on behalf of his faithless friends. He knows that Jesus is the better priest who entered a better temple to offer a better sacrifice. And indeed, he is the temple itself that will be destroyed and rebuilt in three days. And he's the sacrifice too, for the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sin.

Jesus is the mysterious child of Isaiah 7 to 9 and he is the suffering servant of Isaiah 40 to 53. He is the kingly priest and he is the priestly king of Psalm 110. He is the one who embodies the law and he is the one who fulfills the law. He is also the one who suffers the consequence of our failure to keep it. He is Abraham's seed, the lion of Judah, the true son of David and the one to whom God would give the crown for to him it rightfully belongs. And he is the last Adam.

But friends, don't miss this. All of this only became clear to John in retrospect. And that should give us hope. All of this is not immediately clear to us the moment we come to trust Christ. It's not all clear to us the moment we begin to understand that it's all about him. But over time, the more time that we spend in the scriptures and the more time that we spend with him, the more and more and more we come to see, he is the fulfillment of all of it. He is the fulfillment, not just of the scriptures, but of our own deepest hopes. He is the satisfaction of our deepest longings. He is the hero of every story, and the protagonist of our own lives. You don't even get to be the hero of your own little mini drama. Even there, he reigns supreme.

So, I invite you with John to come further up and further in to his inexorable greatness. For he is the prize. This entire book and all of human history and your very life find their culmination in him. He is the great one and life is a journey to figure that out. And we would love to figure it out deeper and deeper with you wherever you're at on that journey, however early or late you are in this process, no worries. But come deeper, come further, come taste his beauty and his brilliance and his greatness.

Lord, we give you thanks for you are good and your steadfast love endures forever. Lord Jesus, you alone can ascend that hill, to you alone are the gates opened. And so, we ask you, save us. We have no hope apart from you. We love you. Amen.