The crowds see a king; Matthew invites the reader to recognize that the King is far more than they yet perceive.
We may not fully grasp the idea of a monarchy nowadays, but in Ancient times, monarchies were the foundational and dominant form of government, and kings provided essential stability and leadership to society. This is why the entry of Jesus to Jerusalem was so crucial. We can only speculate what could have happened had Jesus accepted a political kingship, but we should be grateful that he didn’t.
The Palm Sunday narrative clearly portrays Jesus as a king but it also reinterprets the significance of His kingship. Jesus had emphasized several times that his kingdom was not a worldly one, and he constantly undermined the worldly understanding of kingship and suggested that his reign was of a different order.
Matthew 21:1-11 shows us three truths of the kingship of Christ.
The King Who Owns Everything
As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me.
In the context of ancient Israel, the extent to which the king could own something was unique because it was held against the idea that Yahweh was the ultimate owner and King of the land. In contrast, the Roman emperor had the power of the Imperium, which means his word was law.
Prior to his entry to Jerusalem, Jesus demonstrated that he owned everything, particularly those that belong to his disciples. When they arrived at Bethphage, a suburb of Jerusalem across the Kidron Valley, Jesus exercised a prerogative of authority suggesting royalty. He commanded two of his disciples to fetch him two donkeys, the mother and its colt. Such a strange instruction, but with great significance, considering that what would take place next alluded to Zechariah 9:9.
Whether or not the owner of the donkey was a disciple of Jesus, and whether or not Jesus simply foreknew his response is not important. What’s important is that the borrowing testifies of the status of Jesus, that he was respected as any important figure would be. In those times, rulers, officials, and Jewish teachers could borrow animals among those who deem them respectable.
Jesus is not merely borrowing what belongs to another—he is exercising the rightful authority of the true King. The One who instructs the disciples to untie the animals is the same Lord through whom all things were made and to whom all things belong.
The King Who Saves
8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
Jesus had carefully selected the prophecy he would enact. Inevitably, the idea of a Messianic kingship was aroused with the people shouting ‘Hosanna,’ a Greek form of the Hebrew words that mean ‘Save us.’ This expression, along with “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” reflect Psalm 118. Both were chanted antiphonally at every major festival of Israel as a climax in the Hallel Psalms.
The main reason that the governor would increase security during events leading to the Passover celebration was that hopes of deliverance ran high among the people. The Passover alone prefigures a future redemption, along with the people’s cry for God to save them (“Hosanna”). Imagine how the crowds reacted to the arrival of a prophet already associated with messianic qualities and feats.
Regardless, the triumphal entry of Jesus wasn’t about what Rome or Israel thought of him. It was about him fulfilling prophecy. He was the king spoken of by the prophet Zechariah who was to come to his people not as a warrior on a chariot pulled by horses, but as a gentle and humble savior riding on a colt.
It was about him receiving the adoration of the people who saw him primarily as their savior. Most of those in the crowd may have had an inaccurate view of the kind of savior Jesus was, but he received their worship anyway. In just a few days, he would reveal the true nature of his kingship—not a ruler who saves them from physical bondage or political oppression, but the Savior who delivers them from the deeper tyranny within the human heart.
The King Who Is God
What makes the Palm Sunday triumphal entry theologically striking is not that the crowds fully understood Jesus’ divinity—they likely did not—but that Matthew presents Jesus deliberately acting in ways that only make complete sense if he is more than a merely human king. The scene quietly layers royal, prophetic, and divine signals that point beyond the crowd’s limited expectations.
First, Jesus consciously fulfills Zechariah’s prophecy. He does not simply stumble into messianic symbolism. He orchestrates it himself. By arranging the manner by which he entered Jerusalem, Jesus presents himself as the promised King of Zion in Zechariah 9:9. Anyone with mere political aspirations might simply seize power, but instead, Jesus reveals his identity through the fulfillment of prophecy. This shows that he has sovereign awareness of his mission.
Second, he receives messianic acclamation without correction. In many places in the Gospels, Jesus would sometimes silence premature or misguided worship. Yet here, he permits and even affirms the crowd’s cries of “Hosanna to the Son of David.” This is significant, because in Jewish thought, accepting public messianic homage during Passover and nowhere less than Jerusalem was extraordinarily provocative.
Third, the contrast between expectation and reality points to a deeper kingship. When the Magi came looking for the newborn King of the Jews, all Jerusalem was troubled (Matthew 2:3). This time, when the king arrived, the whole city was stirred. Matthew uses a stronger language here as the word for ‘stirred’ also means ‘quaked.’ But while the people were stirred because of a hope for national deliverance, the king arrived mounted on a colt and later moving toward the cross rather than a throne in the political sense. This signals that the authority of Jesus operates on a different plane than earthly rulers.
The triumphal entry is special in relation to Jesus’ divinity because it is a moment of veiled revelation. Jesus publicly presents himself as Israel’s promised King, knowingly fulfills Scripture, receives messianic honor, and advances toward a mission only the divine Messiah could accomplish. The crowds see a king; Matthew invites the reader to recognize that the King is far more than they yet perceive.
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