There is a tendency in all of us to treat symptoms rather than underlying causes. We want the quick fix. A doctor who prescribes medication without ordering bloodwork. A contractor who slaps new drywall over a rotting wall. A person who reaches for the latest supplement instead of changing how they eat and sleep. It feels like progress, but the real problem remains untouched.
The people of Israel in Jesus’s day had the same instinct. They believed their greatest problem was Rome, and they were waiting for a messianic King who would come and solve it—politically, militarily, finally. What they didn’t yet understand was that their deepest problem wasn’t outside of them. It was inside.
That’s the story Palm Sunday is really telling.
Main idea: Jesus is the promised King who established peace through his humble and gracious sacrifice.
In John 12:12–33, we see three dimensions of his kingship, and all three would have surprised the crowd that lined the road that day.
A King Nobody Expected
Jerusalem was buzzing. The population swelled every year for Passover, and word had spread that Jesus was coming, the same Jesus who had raised Lazarus from the dead just days before. People poured out of the city to meet him, waving palm branches and shouting “Hosanna!,” and from Psalm 118: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!”
The palm branches weren’t random. They had become a Jewish nationalistic symbol, associated with the moments when foreign rulers had been driven out of Jerusalem. The crowd was signaling something: we’re ready. Take the throne.
Then Jesus did something that must have confused everyone watching. He found a young donkey and sat on it. Not a war horse. A donkey.
John tells us this was intentional, a direct fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9: “Look, your King is coming to you; he is righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey.” And notice what follows in Zechariah: this coming King would cut off the chariot and the war horse, proclaim peace to the nations, and bring freedom through the blood of the covenant.
Jesus was pressing the brake on the crowd’s feverish expectations. Yes, I am the King, he was saying. But not the kind you’re imagining.
John tells us his own disciples didn’t understand the significance of the donkey until after the resurrection, when they looked back and it all came together.
Even the Pharisees, watching from the edges, muttered something truer than they realized: “Look! The world has gone after him.“
Jesus is the promised King. But he is humble in his reign. We will not find our salvation in political power or military strength. His kingdom doesn’t look like the world’s kingdoms, and that is precisely the point.
A King Who Dies Like a Seed
A group of Greeks approaches Philip at the festival with a simple request: “Sir, we want to see Jesus.”
What happens next is interesting. Jesus doesn’t respond to their request directly. Instead, he gives an answer that addresses something far deeper than a personal meeting.
“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself. But if it dies, it produces much fruit.” (John 12:23–24)
He is describing his own death. Glory, for Jesus, would come through the cross, not around it. He is the Seed who fell to the ground and died, willingly, as a substitute to pay the price for sin.
But then he turns it outward. This pattern—death that leads to life—is not just his story. It is the shape of discipleship itself.
“The one who loves his life will lose it, and the one who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
This isn’t a call to be miserable. Jesus isn’t prescribing a curmudgeonly, joyless faith. He’s using a rhetorical device, similar to the one he uses in Luke 14, when he says that anyone who follows him must “hate” his own family by comparison. He means that loyalty to Christ must be so supreme that every other loyalty looks like hatred next to it.
The person who clings to their own life, their own agenda, their own control, will ultimately lose everything. The person who releases their grip and follows Christ will inherit eternal life.
You can’t have the life without the death. You don’t sign a spiritual prenuptial agreement with Jesus, keeping certain areas of your life for yourself. Following him means coming with open hands: Take my life. It’s all yours.
Have you come to that point?
A King Whose Reach Has No Limit
“Now my soul is troubled,” Jesus says in verse 27. “What should I say — Father, save me from this hour? But that is why I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.”
One of my friends owns a gym, and she posted something recently that stuck with me: “Getting in shape is simple, but it’s not easy.” She meant that the formula—eat well, lift weights, move your body—isn’t complicated. But being disciplined enough to actually do it is another matter entirely.
Jesus knew the plan. He had come to fulfill the Father’s will by submitting to death on a cross. But we must not assume this was easy. The physical torment was real. The spiritual weight of bearing punishment that we deserved was real. This is why he asks whether he should pray for the Father to spare him.
And then we see the breathtaking faithfulness of Christ: “That is why I came to this hour.” He went to the cross because he loves the Father. And because he loves you.
A voice comes from heaven, audible to the crowd, though some thought it was thunder and others thought it was an angel. Jesus tells them the voice came for their sake, not his. And then he announces what the cross will accomplish: “Now is the judgment of this world. Now the ruler of this world will be cast out. As for me, if I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”
“Lifted up” means crucified. And look at what that crucifixion would accomplish: the defeat of Satan, the judgment of sin, and people from every corner of the world drawn to him. His death was not a tragedy that happened to a good man. It was a sacrifice for the nations. Everyone who looks to him in faith becomes a citizen under his gracious rule.
The King Who Is Still Coming
John’s Gospel closes in the book of Revelation with a scene worth sitting with:
“After this I looked, and there was a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, which no one could number, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: Salvation belongs to our God, who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”(Revelation 7:9–10)
Palm branches. A throne. Every nation. The crowd on Palm Sunday caught a glimpse of something they couldn’t fully see yet, a king arriving not to drive out one empire, but to redeem every people on earth.
That king has come. And his kingdom is a gracious one, where robes stained by sin are exchanged for robes of holiness.
If you’re still waiting for a different kind of king—one who will fix the external things, solve the political problems, make life more comfortable—Palm Sunday is an invitation to look again. The King who rode a donkey, died like a seed, and drew all people to himself is the only one who can fix what’s actually broken.
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