Today begins our
Holy Week services. All of our services this week will tie in together as part
of a five part story. Today, we remember
the Lord’s Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem: (John 12:12-19)
12 The next day the large crowd that had
come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 13 So they took branches of palm
trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna!
Blessed is he who comes in the
name of the Lord, even the King
of Israel!”
“Hosanna”
is an English rendering, of a Greek attempt at a Hebrew phrase meaning “Save
us”. The same phrase used in Ps
118:25-26 when the Psalmist cries out:
Save us, we
pray, O Lord!
O Lord, we pray, give us success!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
We bless
you from the house of the Lord
In a sense, this
calling out is a recognition of who Jesus is, or at least who they believe Him
to be at this time. One who is able to save them. To deliver them. We shouldn’t
necessarily see this as a ‘confession of faith’ however. As we will see in a
few weeks (Jn 12:20&ff) it does not take long for this crowd to turn
against Jesus. But they seek deliverance from earthly bondages, from the occupation
of a Gentile power, when what they need to be delivered from is spiritual
bondage.
Jesus seems to have
carefully sent the message that He had not come to conquer. At least not yet.[iv] (John 10:14-18 tells us that
He had not come to take lives, but for His life to be taken at the proper time
for the salvation of all who would believe.)
14 And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just
as it is written,
15 “Fear
not, daughter of Zion;
behold, your king is coming,
sitting on a donkey's colt!” [Zech 9:9]
A
donkey would be what a king might ride in times of peace, or when they were not
trying to display power or perhaps out of mere necessity.[v] But in this case, Jesus
seems to be sending a clear message that He is indeed a king, but not like the
kings of this world. He is a different sort of King, for a different sort of
Kingdom. (Notice that He does not deflect the worship of the people, but embraces
it.[vi])
25 But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over
them. 26 It shall not be so among you. But whoever would
be great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever would be first among you must be your
slave, 28 even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his
life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:25-28, ESV)
But as is so common, even those closest to Jesus
are unable to understand Him:
16 His disciples did not understand these things at
first, but when Jesus was
glorified, then they remembered
that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.
Jesus, of course,
would be glorified in his death and His resurrection. Hindsight is (almost)
always 20/20. Finally, from where they sat, after the fact, they could see.
I wonder how
often we cannot see Jesus for some reason. Perhaps the forest for the trees, or
the Lord for the disciples (another sermon entirely…) Because of our religious
sensibilities? Because of our biases? How many people missed Jesus that day
because he was not up to specs for them. How many will miss Him today because
they have expectations that He is not meeting, instead of asking Christ what He
expects from them. At some point the question should shift from asking what our
Savior can do for you, to what you can do for your Savior.
17 The crowd that had been with him when he called
Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. 18 The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this
sign. 19 So the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing.
Look, the world has gone after
him.”
In Matthew, the Pharisees
tell Jesus to silence the crowds, in this case they want to silence Him, and
for good. This business about Lazarus had gone on long enough. People
everywhere were coming to Christ, and the religious establishment had to put an
end to that before any more of their power and prestige was lost.
Dead men make no disciples.
(Or so it was generally believed…)
Which, in my mind; begs a few
questions:
Firstly, will you follow until you understand?
Sometimes we put too much
emphasis on understanding. Time and again, we hear testimonies about people who
were baptized at a young age, and then later doubt their salvation because they
did not fully ‘understand’ what they were doing. My question to them is, “Did
you believe?” Because salvation comes by faith, not by mental ascent.
Thankfully, there is no I.Q. test for entrance into Heaven.
But in this case, my point is
this: the disciples were clearly unclear about who Jesus was. They understood
bits and pieces that that got in glimpses, like the raising of Lazarus, but
from there on out, there was a great deal of confusion in their hearts—“who is
this man?” So, even though, we often think of the Twelve as a league of
extraordinary gentlemen, they were more or us utterly ordinary; more like us
than we might want to admit for both their sakes and ours.
They heard what Jesus said.
They saw what Jesus did. Yet, it was not until the Resurrection on Easter
morning that they understood as fully as they could. In the meantime, faith had
to make up the balance, and that sort of faith can only come by the grace of
God.
So I wonder, are you in a
place in your life where you are having to believe, even though you have not
yet seen? I hope so. I hope with all of my heart that there is some part of
your life that is being lived by faith alone.
Secondly, let us see how
quickly Jesus goes from being ‘wildly popular’ to being betrayed. As stated
before, Jesus had reached some sort of celebrity status after the raising of
Lazarus. He had been trending to be sure. As soon as people saw Him entering
the city, they were enthralled. In Matthew, the crowd is said to be ‘stirred’,
another translation records this as being ‘wild with excitement” (NEB) which is
probably closer to the situation. Imagine for a moment if, say, your favorite
musician, or athlete, walked into the room just now, completely unexpected.
What sort of reaction would there be?
A few years back, Justin
Bieber made a semi surprise appearance at a mall, and the response was so
overwhelming that the police shut the entire thing down.
While Bieber still be making his
Beliebers short of breath, he hasn’t risen anyone from the dead to my
knowledge. I can only imagine that there was a different sort of excitement
over Jesus that day.
There is an old song called,
“When God Cried”, which has the line “The crowd that cried “hosanna”, now
shouted for his death…” It has been running through my head for weeks; off and
on for years really. So, ultimately, what I am asking is this: I wonder, what
does it take for to get us from “Hosanna” to “Crucify him!”
Perhaps this happens most
easily when we are ready to take Christ as our Savior, but not as our Lord.
When we understand the message of the Cross to be the message that matters most
of all the messages that we are getting. That He alone died and rose again that
we might live; and that therefore, we should live for Him above all else.
We have to remember that
Jesus has indeed established a Kingdom; one that is over and against the kingdom
of Caesar, of the Devil, of the world. And He is inviting us to become part of
that Kingdom by grace through by faith.
But we have to remember that
being a subject of a Kingdom means being subject to a King. In our case, we
call that repentance, away from this
world and toward Christ that makes
the leap from death into life. And though we are not saved by our works, we are proved
by them.[vii]
Perhaps we are not as far
removed from the crowds that day as we might wish.
Let us pray, for the spirit
is willing, but the flesh is weak.
[i]
J. Jeremias, and others.
[ii]
Platt’s point of course is that Jesus did not come to make a mighty media
machine, but to die and rise again. There are crucial points in Jesus ministry
where He could have pressed His popularity, stoking the embers of nationalistic
zeal or exploiting the weaknesses of the poor for instance, and instead, simply
preaches the truth and lets the chips fall when they may.
[iii]
In the NEB, Matt 21:10 reads “they were ‘wild with excitement’”
[iv]
Rev 19:11&ff
[v]
2 Sam 16
[vi]
We see this much more clearly in Matthew’s account
[vii]
I heard an amazing explanation of this recently:
Say two men are sitting in an air terminal. One of them is dressed in a way
that suggests he has just returned from an extended climb. The other looks at
him and says, “Hey, I love to climb!” to which the first man replies, “Oh?
Great! I just got some great gear on my trip (explanation follows). What sort
of gear do you use?”, to which the man replies, “Well, I have a North Face
jacket.” Suspicious, he pries a bit, “What sort of climbing do you do?” to
which the other replies, “Well, not much… well, actually, I haven’t ever
climbed anything but the rock wall at the playground at McDonlad’s…” Is the
second man a climber or not? He doesn’t have any climbing equipment. He does
not climb. But he calls himself a climber.
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