The Door Was Always Open

Before we go any further, try something difficult.

Set aside everything you know about Jesus. You can keep His name. But outside of that, just for a few minutes, try to hear the story as if it is the first time.

Because if you are like most people who have grown up around church, you have probably heard the Palm Sunday story so many times that you start thinking ahead before it finishes. You already know what is coming. And in doing that, you miss what is actually happening.

What is happening is bigger than most of us have let ourselves believe.

The Story Starts at the Beginning

In the beginning, God creates the heavens and the earth. Heaven is God's realm. Earth is ours. And from the start, God's desire is for those two things to occupy the same space. He wants to dwell with His people.

So He creates Eden. At the center of the garden, He places the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is where God walks with Adam and Eve. Heaven and earth overlapping. His kingdom present.

Then comes the fall. Adam and Eve decide they can determine what is right and wrong for themselves. They are cast out of the garden, and the overlap is broken.

But God does not give up on the plan. He still wants to dwell with His people.

After the Exodus, He tells the Israelites to build a tabernacle that would travel with them. It has an outer court for the people, an inner court for the priests, and at the center, a Holy of Holies where God's presence would dwell. Anyone who was blind could come. Anyone who was lame. Anyone who had become unclean. At the tabernacle, they could be made whole. Because that is what happens where heaven and earth overlap.

Later, Solomon builds the temple in Jerusalem with the same design. The same structure. The same purpose. Heaven and earth, meeting in one place.

That is exactly where we find ourselves on Palm Sunday. Jesus and His disciples are heading to Jerusalem. To the temple. To the place where heaven and earth overlap.

He Stopped at the Edge

Before entering the city, Jesus stops at a place called Bethphage, on the east side of Jerusalem near the Mount of Olives. This is not a small detail. Matthew wants his Jewish readers to recognize that Jesus did this correctly.

There was a boundary wire that ran around the city, called an arov, marking the Sabbath limits. Jesus stops at that boundary and sends His disciples in with one instruction: find the donkey that is tied there and bring it to Him.

Now, how did He know it would be there?

It is Passover. Every year, the Jewish people celebrated God bringing them out from under the yoke of Egypt, and they longed for Him to do it again. They knew from Zechariah that when the Messiah came, he would enter Jerusalem on a donkey. And so they left one out. Every year. Just in case today was the day.

Jesus had probably walked past it before and noticed. He knew they were prepared.

If you want to experience God showing up in your life, you have to prepare. You have to leave out the donkey.

What if He has walked to the edge of your life and is simply waiting for you to bring Him in? What are you doing so that when God shows up, He is welcome?

The War Cry They Did Not Mean to Use

The crowd that gathered as Jesus rode into Jerusalem did something with tremendous historical weight. They cut palm branches, shook them, and cried out, "Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna to the son of David!"

Most people hearing this assume the crowd is simply proclaiming Jesus as king. They were, but not entirely in the way it sounds.

A few generations earlier, when a Jewish revolt called the Maccabean Revolt drove the Seleucids out of Jerusalem and the people reclaimed the temple, the crowd welcomed the victorious army with palm branches and those same words. The chant became a symbol of Jewish liberation, of violent revolution, of throwing off foreign oppressors.

On Palm Sunday, the crowd was using a war cry.

They wanted a Messiah who would get rid of the Romans. They were oppressed. They were desperate. They would follow anyone who might deliver them, even a prophet from Nazareth, a town no one expected anything from. But they were thinking too small.

They wanted freedom from Rome. Jesus came to overthrow something far greater.

When Luke records this moment, he notes that Jesus looked out over Jerusalem and wept. "If only you had known what would bring you peace," He said. They could not see it. The liberation they were celebrating pointed toward something they were not prepared to receive.

Good Question, Better Question

As Jesus entered the city, the crowd was asking each other, "Who is this?" It is a good question.

But the sermon offers a better one.

As Christians, we often ask people, "Do you have faith in Jesus?" That is an important question. But the better question is this: do you have the faith of Jesus?

If you have faith in Jesus, you may not yet have the faith of Jesus. But if you have the faith of Jesus, you will certainly have faith in Him.

There is a difference between Martha and Mary when Jesus comes to their home. Martha is busy doing all the right things. The work is good. The hospitality is real. But Mary sat at Jesus' feet. Martha chose something good. Mary chose something better.

The same contrast shows up in Jerusalem. The crowd had good theology. They knew the Messiah was supposed to enter on a donkey. They knew the words to shout. But they were settling for less than the full picture because they had stopped believing God could pull off what He had actually promised.

They wanted Israel back. They had given up on the full overlap of heaven and earth.

We do the same thing. "God, how can you restore my marriage? How can you fix what is broken in my family? I just do not see how you can put this back together." And we begin to negotiate down. Not because God redirected us to something different, but because we stopped believing He could actually do it.

The question is not just who we think Jesus is. The better question is who Jesus thinks He is. Because if Jesus and I disagree about that, I am the one who is wrong.

He Is the New Temple

When Jesus arrived at the temple, He drove out the moneychangers. He overturned the tables. He cleared out the court.

The people thought He was cleansing the temple for them, the start of the revolution they had been waiting for. But Jesus was doing something else entirely.

He then sat down and began to teach. And the blind received sight. The lame walked. The unclean became clean.

Do those sound familiar? They should. They are exactly what the temple was supposed to do.

Jesus was not just cleansing the temple. He was replacing it.

He is the new place where heaven and earth overlap. He is the new Holy of Holies. And the anger He showed toward the moneychangers had a deeper reason. The temple had a Court of the Gentiles, an outer court built so that anyone who was not Jewish could still come and meet with God. Israel had one job: to make a place for the nations in God's house. Instead, they had filled that space with commerce. The place set aside for outsiders to find God had become a marketplace.

Jesus cleared it because the door was supposed to be open.

You Are a Living Stone

Here is where it lands.

Jesus is the new temple. But we are the stones.

First Peter describes believers as living stones being built into a spiritual house. That means wherever you go, the kingdom of heaven can go with you. The overlap is not confined to a building on a hill in Jerusalem. It is not locked behind a door in a mall that is never open.

It lives in you.

Jesus did not just come to fix your circumstances. He came to restore your soul. He did not come to give Israel back to the Jews. He came to break the bondage of sin and death at the deepest level. He came so that heaven and earth could overlap again, and this time, the place where that happens is inside His people.

That is what He was trying to tell everyone watching on Palm Sunday. The disciples did not understand it yet. They came with swords, expecting a battle. Peter would cut off a man's ear before the week was over. They could not yet imagine their king on a cross saying, "Father, forgive them."

But Jesus knew what He was riding toward. He rode in peace on a donkey while a crowd waved liberation flags, and He wept over a city that could not see that the thing they were crying out for had already arrived.

Life Application

This week, think about how you are preparing to experience God in your daily life.

Leave Out the Donkey
The people of Jerusalem prepared for God to show up by leaving out what He needed to come in. What does it look like for you to practically prepare space for God to move in your life this week?

Stop Settling
Where have you scaled back what you are trusting God for, not because He redirected you, but because you stopped believing He could do it? Bring that back to Him fully.

Carry the Kingdom
If Jesus is the new temple and you are a living stone, you take the kingdom with you wherever you go. Who in your life needs you to bring it to them this week?

Questions for Reflection:

Jesus came into Jerusalem knowing exactly what the week ahead held. He rode in on a donkey, in peace, to a crowd waving revolution flags, and He wept because they could not see that the very thing they had been crying out for was already in their midst.

He has not changed. He is still trying to come in. The door was always open. The question is whether we are walking through it.