Matthew 21:1-11 Palm Sunday
Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace-Tucson, AZ
March 29, 2026
The Sights and Sounds that Signaled the Savior’s Arrival It’s probably not too hard to imagine preparing for a happy holiday, since we have one coming up a week from today. You’re likely making some sort of plans: an Easter dinner, getting together with family and friends, an Easter Egg hunt. Or maybe your celebration will simply be going to church to celebrate how God sent Jesus to rescue us from slavery to sin and captivity in hell. Right before Jesus’ death—right before, 5 days before—there were people already coming into Jerusalem to prepare for the huge, annual, happy, holiday celebration called Passover. They were finding places to stay and buying the certain foods they would need for the special Passover meal. They say the population of the city swelled from maybe 50,000 people to 200,00 for that week as people came from everywhere. This was also a celebration of how God rescued his people. The holiday was about remembering how God saved his people from slavery and captivity in Egypt. At this particular Passover, there is no way anyone travelling to the big, Holy City could have ever imagined what would happen—and what they might become part of. They had no way of knowing that they were going to see the promised Messiah. Already on Sunday, things began to happen. Things you could see. Things you could hear. Things that signaled the Savior’s arrival. Try to picture—if you have some kind of image in your head—the city of Jerusalem with the beautiful temple. It sits high on a hill. If you leave the city and head east, the road will take you down through the Kidron Valley, then up the Mount of Olives and just over the top is the area of Bethphage Matthew mentions and the city of Bethany. That is where Jesus preferred to stay when he was in Jerusalem—with his friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. On Palm Sunday, Jesus left Bethany, went through Bethphage, then on the steep, dirt road down the Mount of Olives, through the Kidron Valley, then up into the city of Jerusalem. That’s where all of this takes place. Now, pick who you want to be today. Imagine yourself as one of those people from a nearby town who had seen or heard about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead and who now had found Jesus again and are following him as he’s making his way into Jerusalem. OR you’re one of those people who has travelled from far away, and this procession is what you run into. OR you live in Jerusalem and you hear a commotion on the road coming up to the city gate. If you’re part of the excited crowd who had wanted to see Jesus and are now trailing behind him, you are amped up because someone with the kind of power to raise a dead man sure looked like he might be the Messiah God promised.