Luke 19:28-38
Palm Sunday
April 4, 2004
   
  After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached 
Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, 
saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt 
tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 
‘Why are you untying it?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it.’” 
  Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were 
untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 
  They replied, “The Lord needs it.” 
  They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went 
along, people spread their cloaks on the road. 
When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the 
whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the 
miracles they had seen: 
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”  
“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (NIV)
 
	We know next to nothing about them. In fact, nobody even knows their names. 
And yet I find them more than a little interesting. I wish I knew more about them. I wish I 
knew more about what went through their heads. I wish I knew more about why they did 
what they did. I wish Scripture had chosen to record the attitude with which they did it.
	I’m talking about the owners of that colt. It would appear that they were minding 
their own business one Sunday afternoon when these two men walk up and begin untying 
their colt—a colt that had never been ridden before, a colt that was perhaps brand new to 
them.
	I picture them looking at one another for a moment to make sure they’re seeing 
what they think they’re seeing. I picture them pausing for a moment, wondering if 
perhaps the men will realize their mistake—kind of like when you’re putting your key in 
a car in the parking garage and you suddenly realize that you’ve approached the wrong 
car. And then, when they realize that the men really are planning on taking this colt, I 
picture them jumping up and saying something like, “Yo! Wattayadoin?!?”
	The answer comes back, “The Lord needs it.”
	And that answer appears to have been good enough for them. And I’m left 
wondering what went through their mind when they were given that answer, and why 
they responded as they did.
	They could have said, “Oh yeah? Well, does he need it more than we do? Does he 
need it to make a living, to put food on his table?” They could have said, “This colt? This 
colt has never been ridden before. This colt is brand-new. Come on—it’s still got that 
‘new colt smell’! Can’t he borrow another colt? How about this one? This colt’s got 
170,000 kilometers on it, but it’s basic transportation, and we don’t really use it anymore 
anyway.” They could have said, “Tell him to buy his own colt!” At the very least they 
could have said, “OK, but tell him to be careful with it—I don’t want to find any dings or 
scratches in it when it comes back—and it had better come back.” Or they could have 
said, “OK, but we’re going to need to see two forms of I.D. and we’re going to have to 
charge the full value of the colt on your credit card so we’re covered in the event that the 
Lord doesn’t bring it back.”
	Now as I say, I don’t know why they didn’t say or do any of these things. I don’t 
know why they let the colt go. But couldn’t it be as simple as this—that is, couldn’t it be 
that “The Lord needs it” was a good enough reason for them to give up something even 
as valuable as their colt? Couldn’t it be that they knew who this “Lord” was, that they 
believed him to be exactly who he said he was, that they believed him to be the very Son 
of God, and that if he needed something, all other considerations became secondary?
	I will admit that there is a part of me that doesn’t want to believe so. I’ll admit 
that there is a part of me that wants to believe that in some mysterious, supernatural way 
Jesus managed to exert his will on this men so that they assented to a peculiar, cryptic 
request without really having any understanding of what they were doing or why they 
were doing it. 
	Oh, I could say that I want to believe that because that would once again show 
Jesus’ omnipotence, his power over all things. But that’s not really it. He’s shown his 
omnipotence repeatedly in the Gospels—whether it’s in his power over nature as he 
stands up in a fierce storm and “rebukes” the winds and the waves in the way that a 
parent might rebuke their 4-year old, in essence saying to the wind and waves “Knock it 
off!”—or whether it’s in his power over the laws of nature as he changes water into wine 
at the wedding at Cana—or whether it’s in his power over sickness and disease as he 
heals the blind, the deaf, the paralyzed, and the lame—or whether it’s in his power over 
death itself as he raises the widow’s son at Nain, Jairus’s daughter, and Lazarus. (In fact, 
it may have been that last miracle—one done very shortly before Palm Sunday—that 
convinced the colt’s owners beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was truly the Lord of 
all creation, that Jesus was truly God.)
	So no, I don’t really need Jesus to prove his omnipotence here by exerting his will 
on the men in a mysterious way. I don’t need him to do so for my benefit, for I already 
believe it—and I don’t need him to do so for the benefit of others, for there is abundant 
proof of it elsewhere.
	No, the part of me that doesn’t want to believe that their acceptance of the answer 
“The Lord needs it” was motivated simply because they felt that to be an entirely 
sufficient motivation for turning over the keys to the new colt—the part of me that 
doesn’t want to believe that is the part of me that does not want to have to do the same 
with my new colt—whatever form that new colt may take for me.
	And now we’ve found a problem, haven’t we? Regardless of whether or not we 
have hit on the reason for the response of the owners, we have most certainly hit on the 
attitude that Jesus expects us to have towards him—an attitude that says, “My colt is your 
colt. Mi casa es su casa. My money is your money. My life belongs to you. Take 
whatever you need.” 
 	That’s the attitude that Jesus expects, but it’s not the attitude that Jesus gets from 
us, is it? Someone tells us that the Lord needs us to stop committing a particular sin, and 
we respond by basically saying, “No, I’ll tell you what the Lord needs—or at least what I 
need. I need you to mind your own business.” Someone tells us the Lord needs a fair 
amount more offerings than we have given in previous years, and our response is, 
“Maybe what the Lord needs is to figure out a way to balance his budget, and he needs to 
start by making some cuts.” The Bible tells us that the Lord needs to come first in every 
area of our lives, and our attitude is, “Well, I’ll see what I can do.” God tells us that he 
needs and expects our very best, our first fruits, and our response is to come up with our 
leftovers—junk for Jesus. 
	Such unwillingness on our part to give up our colts, our sins, our time, our 
treasures, our lives because Jesus needs them is a vile selfishness on our part, and it’s one 
for which we deserve Jesus to come as the king of pain and suffering and hell—pain and 
suffering and hell for us, that is. 
	And yet it is because of such unwillingness on our part to give the Lord whatever 
he needs that we need the Lord Jesus. We need the Lord Jesus as he revealed himself on 
Palm Sunday. We need the Lord Jesus, a Savior who came in humility. Even on Palm 
Sunday as he accepted the people’s praises as his rightful due, he still rode in humility—
not on a white steed, not in a gleaming chariot, but on the foal of a donkey. Such 
humility—all too often lacking in our own lives, and damnably so—was always found in 
Jesus’ life. As he himself said, he had not come to be served, but to serve. 
	Yes, he rode that Sunday in what the hymnwriter descriptively refers to as “lowly 
pomp.” (Christian Worship: 133, verse 5) Even more importantly, he rode on in lowly 
pomp “to die.” Anyone who knows the story of Holy Week finds it impossible to view 
the procession into the city on Palm Sunday without seeing in the near future the 
procession that led out of the city just five days later—only this time Jesus wouldn’t be 
riding on, but would instead be burdened under a cross—and the shouts of acclamation 
would be replaced by shouts of hatred. 
	Why did the Lord do this? Not because he needed it, but because we needed it. 
We needed it like we need oxygen. We needed him to suffer and die in order to make a 
payment for our sins. 
	So he resisted the temptation to make the rest of the week—yes, the rest of his 
life—a series of Palm Sundays—the temptation to in fact make Palm Sunday look like a 
mere colt-and-donkey show compared to the greater triumphs, greater displays, greater 
acclamations that surely could have followed. Don’t think that the temptation wasn’t 
there. As the devil saw this prizefight nearing its conclusion, he knew that he wasn’t 
merely behind on points, but that he was being shut out entirely—and yet that he needed 
to connect with just one knockout punch, just one temptation to sinful pride, just one 
temptation to abandon his mission, just one temptation to ride on in majestic, proud 
pomp, just one temptation to think about what he needed instead of thinking about what 
we needed.
	But the devil never connected. The glory of Palm Sunday was followed—as 
indeed it had to be—by the humiliation of Good Friday—which was then in turn 
followed by the vindication, the victory, the glory of Easter Sunday as Jesus rose from 
the dead as our victorious, majestic king.
	And that means that the Palm Sunday parade continues. Jesus lives today as our 
king and is still worthy of the sort of praise he received on that first Palm Sunday. 
	He is certainly worthy of our words, our shouts, our hymns of praise. On that first 
Palm Sunday the people declared him to be the one who comes in the name of the Lord. 
Mark adds that some of their shouts declared that he was David’s son—that is, the 
promised Messiah, while John tells us that they called him the king of Israel—that is, the 
one who was going to deliver Israel from its greatest enemies—the devil, sin, and death. 
And then the people added, “Hosanna!”—an exultant shout of praise.
	In a few minutes many of us will have the opportunity to sing those very words as 
we prepare to participate in a different sort of procession—a procession to the Lord’s 
table to receive the body and blood by which Jesus has saved all of us. Sing them with 
the volume of the crowd on that day. That is, sing them loudly. Sing them with the spirit 
of the crowd on that day—that is, sing them joyfully. He was worthy of praise on that 
first Palm Sunday. How much more so now that he has completed the work of Holy 
Week!
	On Palm Sunday the people took palm branches and placed them on the road 
before Jesus—rolling out the green carpet, as it were, so that even the colt on which he 
was riding would not have to touch the dust of the road. More than that, the people took 
that which was near and dear to them—their cloaks—and also laid those on the road. 
	This wasn’t the equivalent of laying one of the 30 T-shirts from their dresser 
before Jesus. No, cloaks weren’t something people had in abundance. That was one of the 
reasons people were forbidden by OT law from taking someone’s cloak as collateral until 
a debt was repaid. Placing their cloaks in the road for Jesus’ colt to walk over was the 
equivalent of placing your three-piece suit—your only suit—in the road for a colt to walk 
on. Or maybe we would compare it to a woman taking her wedding dress and placing it 
on the road.
	Why’d they do it? Because he was the king. He was their king. They existed to 
praise him and serve him. That was all that mattered.
	What can you lay down? Your life. No, I don’t mean that in the sense that we 
normally think of that phrase. You probably won’t have the opportunity to praise Jesus 
by dying for him. But you can lay down your life in service to him, giving the Lord 
whatever he needs—giving him, in fact, every bit of yourself in a long, lasting 
“Hosanna!” Amen.