02 Apr Discussion Guide Palm Sunday 2023
Before We Get Started
For our discussion today, we will be using the sermon series discussion guides. If you would like to follow along you can access this discussion guide on the website at mosaicchurchaustin.com and then select “community group resources” in the menu options.
Prayer
Because the primary goal of our time together is to establish relationships and learn how to walk with one another in all that God has called us to be and do, we’d like to begin by praying for one another. So, does anyone have anything you’d like us to pray for or anything to share regarding how you’ve seen God moving in your life that we can celebrate together?
This Week’s Topic
Today, we continue our series titled Zoë, in which we study Jesus’s incredible claim that he came to bring us abundant life, even in the midst of our spiking cultural anxiety and fragmentation. We will explore how the life Jesus lived is the best way to tap into that promise as we seek to establish specific rhythms and practices to cultivate a life marked by a gospel-centered abundance of strength, health, and vitality.
Today’s Topic
Palm Sunday 2023
Matthew 21:1-14
As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 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. If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”
This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
“Say to Daughter Zion,
‘See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”
The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 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!”
When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?”
The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”
Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”
Jesus, the King Who Rides a Donkey
Graves and May, Preaching Matthew: Interpretation and Proclamation
If we choose to retain the “Triumphal Entry” title, we must do so with the greatest sense of irony. This entry by Jesus into Jerusalem is unlike any other triumphant processional familiar to first-century people. It is not an imperial Roman grand propaganda parade heaping accolades on a king/warrior for the successful incorporation of another province into the empire that was Rome. It was a parade, certainly, but not that type of parade. The sad-eyed man riding into Jerusalem on a donkey that day was leading a funeral parade—his own.
How was choosing a donkey to ride the opposite of what the cheering crowd would have expected from someone they believed had come to liberate them from Roman rule?
What does Jesus’s refusal to meet their expectations of him say about how he relates to people?
Jesus, the King in the Temple
Matthew 21:12-14
Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’” The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them.
Why do you think Jesus behaved so passionately about how the people coming to worship were being taken advantage of financially?
Why is it significant that he called the temple “my house”?
How is the behavior of those selling doves and changing money in the temple the opposite of a king who would ride a donkey into town?
Jesus, the King of All
Hebrews 1:3
In the past God spoketo our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.
Morgan Stephens
What kind of a person miraculously restores the blind, rides in to a city like a King, receives praise as God, and sets up camp in the middle of the most sacred place the world had ever known? Only someone who is claiming to be King over everything. Bodies, cities, lives, and every other religion. Only someone who is claiming to be the true and ruling and Cosmic King of the Universe. By standing in front of the temple, calling it mine and healing those who would come, he is hanging out and turning on a neon sign for all who would read it: I am the true Temple.
How do you think people present on the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem would have responded to the events described in Matthew 21?
How ought we respond to Jesus as King of our lives?
How does Jesus’s divine kingship benefit those who regard him as the true temple?
Closing Thought
Matthew 21:14
The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them.
Spend some time praying for anyone present who needs healing.