J. Albrecht…Palm Sunday…March 29^th, 2026…Zechariah 9:8-12…Behold! Your King Comes

⁸ Then I will encamp at my house as a guard, so that none shall march to and fro; no oppressor shall again march over them, for now I see with my own eyes. ⁹ Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. ¹⁰ I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. ¹¹ As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. ¹² Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double.

Grace, Mercy and Peace be yours from God the Father and the King of kings, the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

INJ who is our Victorious King and in whom we can place our faith for the hope of His coming again, DFR:

One of the most marvelous aspects of God’s creation is found in migration. Millions of animals, each year, travel to another part of the country for a multitude of reasons. Today, I want to highlight two specifically. The Robin and the Monarch Butterfly. Growing up in Minnesota, there were multiple ways people tried to predict when winter would end. There was an onion guy, who guessed based on the rings of an onion (Still don’t understand that one), many look to the “prophecy” of Punxsutawney Phil. But the most reliable was watching for the migration of the Robin. When robins are spotted in spring, you could expect there to be 3 more snows, then spring will officially be here. The robins were a sign that winter was leaving and the new life of spring was beginning.

The Monarch Butterfly is another marvel of migration. They make a 3,000 mile journey down to Mexico every year. But that is not the incredible part. The incredible part of the monarch migration is that it takes four to five generations to complete the whole cycle. You have the super generation, born in late summer, and this generation of monarchs live eight times longer than the normal butterfly, so that they can make the trip down to Mexico in one go. But then, over the course of four more generations, they make the trip back north. That means, there are brand new butterflies, who had never made the trip to and from Mexico, that know exactly where to go. Another incredible feat that points to our Divine Creator.

What do migration patterns have to do with our Palm Sunday celebration? Well, that of an expectation of something that is guaranteed. every year you can rely upon the migration of birds and monarchs, that they will return. Palm Sunday is the same. The Old Covenant people could look expectantly towards the coming of Jesus, knowing God will keep His word. These words from Zechariah were meant to be a reason for the people to move forward. It was a message of hope and a reason to put their faith in the Lord’s goodness and salvation. And we, as the New Covenant people, can look expectantly to Jesus’ second coming, knowing that God did keep His word the first time. Whenever we grow sluggish or uncertain about the future, we are reminded of who we put our faith in, the Son of God, who is our triumphant King.

And thus, this prophecy of Zechariah unites the old covenant and new covenant peoples. Behold, your King comes to you, a message of hope meant for faith, and a message of faith meant for hope.

With these words of our Lord before us, let us pray: O Holy Spirit, bless our study of Your Word today, and sanctify us by Your truth, Your Word is truth, Amen.

Zechariah’s job was not an easy one, much like the rest of God’s prophets. He dealt with a largely complacent people. Yes, they had the joy of being the exiles returned to the Promised Land from Babylon, but Jerusalem was destroyed. The Temple of Solomon was gone. To them, it looked like God had brought them back, but He had destroyed their entire identity as a people.

It’s not too different when people go through a natural disaster. They evacuate their homes, but when they return, there is nothing left. They have to start from scratch. And it can be depressing, difficult to find a reason to rebuild.

Now picture it this way. Imagine this happens to you. You suffer a natural disaster, everything you knew was destroyed, but by the time that you return, it is not you, but your children, your children who have never seen that home before. They don’t know those floorboards that always creak when you step on them. They don’t know of the beauty of your landscaping work. They don’t remember the former glory of the place that you called home. All they know is what you had described to them. How much more difficult then would it be for them to find the reason to try and rebuild what was there before?

That was what it was like for the exiles who returned to Jerusalem. Many had never seen the former glory of the city of God. They never stepped foot in the glorious temple of Solomon. And those who had only lamented because the current glory paled in comparison to the former. These people had only heard stories and legends of the city and God’s miraculous deeds.

It’s no wonder they would have been sluggish to rebuild and pessimistic about their future, but not on Zechariah’s watch. Zechariah’s book is filled with calls to repentance, calls to rely upon God’s redemption, a call to serve their purpose as the Lord has enabled them to do.

And then we have the reason for these calls given to us in chapter 9. ⁹ Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Here we have the prophecy of what we see on Palm Sunday, but it goes much deeper than that. This text is not just about Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey and receiving the praise from the people. No, its emphasis is on the kingdom, which this King will bring. For the people that Zechariah is writing to, it’s looking forward to His coming as another reason for them to rebuild Jerusalem, to restore the temple. See the Lord is the one calling them to prepare the city of God for the coming of this King, to make sure that there is a temple for Him to enter in, but then to receive from His hand the kingdom that He ushers in.

What is this kingdom? It would seem almost impossible for the people to believe. They have been without a king for 70 years, and the last few kings they had were incredibly wicked people who only brought disaster upon the people and not the glory of God. How would they be able to restore a godly kingship in Jerusalem? Simple. This kingdom is not the earthly throne of David, but the eternal ruling of Jesus Christ.

¹⁰ I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. ¹¹ As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. ¹² Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double.

The kingdom Jesus brings is one of peace, not of war and that peace is with God. For the people hearing this in Zacharias’ day, they would know exactly what this prophecy is talking about. They could look back in their own history, when David had anointed Solomon as the next king of Israel. What did David do? He sat Solomon on the king’s donkey. See, believe it or not, the donkey was actually the royal steed. It was a symbol of royalty and authority and power, but more than that, it also symbolized peace. So that’s what defined Solomon’s kingdom. His father David was a king of war. He conquered all of Israel’s enemies, but Solomon did not.

Solomon’s reign was filled with peace, expansion, and the height of the glory of Israel. But this King, Jesus, is a greater Solomon. He was the one who would bring a peace that will not come to an end. This was their hope and this was the true glory of Israel. It was in God’s chosen King who would set them free from sin and death as He had set them free from Babylon.

Yet, the coming of this King is like the Monarch Butterfly. They can know it will happen as the Lord declares, but it might be that they aren’t the ones to shower Him with praises and honor in Jerusalem. They may not be the ones to lay palms before His feet. And so, they do so in faith. By trusting in the Lord’s promise to send the King of salvation, they are taking the hope of the King’s coming and setting their faith on Him. They can shout aloud the glory of God even 500 years before Jesus would come, because they are placing their hope and their faith on what the Lord says, today I declare that I will restore to you double.

That’s the beauty of faith, isn’t it? God counts their sins as forgiven hundreds of years before Jesus suffers and dies. That is how dependable God is, and how certain their hope could be. God would be true to His promise, counting them righteous through faith.

So is it for you and me. In many ways we are not that different from those exiles who returned to Jerusalem. Though many of you have lived here your entire lives, you and I are still strangers. We’re sojourners. We recognize that this is not our final home. And because of that, the temptation might be the same for us as it was for those people 2,500 years ago. Why build? Why invest in this place that is wasting away?

though some days we might be filled with the zeal for the Lord and greatly desire to do everything we can to abide by His will, there are days where we don’t have that zeal, where we lack the motivation to further the kingdom of God. And that’s especially true when we see unspeakable evil unfold in our own backyard. Or when people ardently reject the message of the gospel. Does the question pop into your mind, “What hope do we have?”

Well, Zechariah answers that question for you. Behold, your King comes to you. In other words, look back in faith on what Jesus has done. That is your hope. Remember, it is you that Jesus calls blessed, for you have not seen with your physical eyes and yet you have believed. Which means that yes, you have seen Jesus come, ride into Jerusalem, suffer and die on the cross to pay for your sins, to rise from the dead for your justification. Not with these eyes of flesh, but with the eyes of faith. It means that Jesus has won the victory. That He has already ushered in His kingdom at peace and has called you into it. Jesus has broken down the barriers between you and God. He has overcome every one of your enemies.

Yes, truly, Jesus has given you a reason to rejoice greatly, to shout aloud, because even the gates of hell cannot prevail against this faith. All these things are done. They have been accomplished, so that you and I can look back on them in faith as a basis for the hope that is within us.

Yes, we do have hope, despite the evils of this world, despite those who would despise our preaching of the gospel, for it is like the robin. As you see the robin in spring and know winter is coming to an end, so also do we look on our Savior’s victory over sin, death, and the devil, and know that He is coming again to take us home to bring us into a new life that will last forever. What greater reason do we have to rejoice in? Christ has answered our greatest need in the best possible way.

In scripture, when you see the word, “behold”, it means pay attention. It means, “Look here! for God is about to act.” That’s what we have in these words of Zechariah. The Lord is about to act. He was about to send Jesus to be the Savior of the world, so also is the Lord about to act today, sending Him again to bring us home.

What a glorious union this makes between believers of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant through faith. We both look forward to the King’s coming. One’s faith in the expectant hope of Jesus’ first coming and the salvation He will win; and the other in an expectant hope of His return because of faith in the salvation He has won. Behold! Your King Comes to You. He offers you salvation, righteousness, and peace. He gives you a reason to push forward, proclaiming the Gospel to every person, that they too might receive the victorious King of kings. Amen.