What do you want from Jesus? Comfort? Peace? Prosperity? Political freedom? All those things were on the minds of the people who watched Him ride into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday. They did the ancient equivalent of rolling out the red carpet for Jesus because they thought He, as their Messiah, would bring them all these things and more.

But the elaborate preparations Jesus made for His grand entrance called all those expectations into question. Oh, the crowd was right to hail Him as their King. He continually demonstrated His authority over all the sicknesses He healed and the demons He cast out. His power was so great that He knew where a particular donkey’s colt was tied, and could command its use for His royal purposes. There was no doubt that He was in fact the Messiah His people had been awaiting for centuries.

But the fact that He chose a donkey’s colt for His mount should have given the people a clue as to what manner of Messiah He would be. For He was fulfilling the prophecy found in Zechariah 9:9 – “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, Humble, and mounted on a donkey, Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

In short, while Jesus was revealing His royal authority, He was emphasizing His humility, not His miraculous power. For He would fulfill the justice of God and bring salvation to His people not by driving the Romans out of Israel at the head of a victorious army, but by being their Passover Lamb, laying down His life people on a cross.

So, even if He doesn’t change the material circumstances of your life today, will you accept the sort of salvation He brings – freedom from sin and death? And will you follow Him, living the same sort of humble, self-sacrificial life so that others might come to know Him too?

Mark 11:1-11 (NASB)

And as they approached Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, He sent two of His disciples,
2 and said to them, “Go into the village opposite you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, on which no one yet has ever sat; untie it and bring it here.
3 “And if anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ you say, ‘The Lord has need of it’; and immediately he will send it back here.”
4 And they went away and found a colt tied at the door outside in the street; and they untied it.
5 And some of the bystanders were saying to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?”
6 And they spoke to them just as Jesus had told them, and they gave them permission.
7 And they brought the colt to Jesus and put their garments on it; and He sat upon it.
8 And many spread their garments in the road, and others spread leafy branches which they had cut from the fields.
9 And those who went before, and those who followed after, were crying out, “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!”
11 And He entered Jerusalem and came into the temple; and after looking all around, He departed for Bethany with the twelve, since it was already late.