Palm Sunday: A Tale of Two Kings

 

A Tale of Two Kings: The King We Want vs. The King We Need

I’ve always found it difficult to think about Palm Sunday without first thinking about David’s conquest of Jerusalem in 2 Samuel 5.

That may seem like a strange place to begin when the church calendar is focused on palm branches and Hosanna, but years ago I heard Sandy Wilson briefly connect those two stories, and ever since then I haven’t been able to separate them in my mind.

In many ways, Palm Sunday really is a tale of two kings.

David was the king the people had always wanted. He was strong, decisive, victorious, and powerful. Jerusalem sat high and fortified, never having been conquered, and the Jebusites mocked him by saying that even “the blind and the lame” could defend it. But David found a weakness, entered through the water structure, and took the city. It became the city of David, the political and symbolic center of Israel’s power.

This is what the people had long desired — a king who could conquer, establish greatness, and make them significant among the nations.

And that desire did not begin with David.

Back in 1 Samuel 8, the people had asked for a king “like the other nations.” God’s response was clear: in asking for a king, they were rejecting Him as their King. Yet He allowed them to have what they wanted.

That desire for a visible, powerful, earthly king was deeply ingrained in the hearts of God’s people.

So when Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, it is no surprise that the crowd interpreted the moment through the lens of David.

Everything about the scene looked royal. The crowds gathered. The city was stirred. People lined the streets.

And yet, from the very beginning, something was different.

He came riding on a donkey. No army. No weapons. No war horse. No visible plan to overthrow Rome. The whole scene had the appearance of triumph, but it was a very different kind of triumph.

The people’s expectations, however, were unmistakable. They cried out, “Hosanna.”

That word is often heard as praise, but it is actually a cry for help: “Save us now.” And what they meant by that was not hard to discern.

Save us from Rome. Restore David’s kingdom. Make us a great nation again. Give us back our significance. Be our next David.

They were not praising Jesus. They were defining their expectations of him.

This is where Palm Sunday becomes deeply personal for us. The people were not confused just once. They misunderstood consistently.

Even the disciples, who had walked with Jesus and heard Him repeatedly say that He would suffer, be rejected, and die, somehow still held onto the expectation that He was about to establish a political kingdom in Jerusalem.

Their expectations were so strong that even clear truth could not break through.

They had a severe case of expectation blindness. And if we are honest, it is not just their problem. It is ours as well.

Scripture warns us that it is entirely possible to know the Bible, follow Jesus, and still miss Him because our expectations are louder than His words.

We all have expectations of what God should do. We assume He should solve the problem in front of us. We assume He should remove our suffering. We assume He should restore what we think has been lost.

And sometimes, when He does not do those things, we begin to question whether He is really at work.

But Palm Sunday reminds us that Jesus often refuses to meet our expectations because He is after something deeper.

The crowd wanted Him to march toward Rome. Instead, He marched to the temple. He drove out corruption. He confronted the heart of their broken worship.

And then, in one of the most beautiful contrasts in all of Scripture, the very people who had been pushed to the margins in David’s story (2Sam5:8) — the blind and the lame — were welcomed and healed by Jesus in the temple.

David took the city. Jesus came to redeem it. Not just the city. The world.

That is the King we needed.

On Palm Sunday, the crowd welcomed Him like a conquering king, not realizing that His victory — and theirs — would come not through a crown, but through a cross.

The King they needed had to die, not reign.

And that remains true for us.

We are still prone to creating a god in our own image, a version of God that feels manageable, familiar, and predictable. We want a king who exists to meet our needs, solve our problems, and validate our expectations.

But sometimes the very thing we are asking God to remove is the thing He is using to transform us.

As James 1 reminds us, trials produce endurance, maturity, and wholeness. So when Jesus does not meet our expectations, it does not mean He is failing us. More often than not, He is forming us.

That is why Palm Sunday leaves us with a question we all must answer:

Do we want the King we have imagined?

Or do we trust the King who actually came?