HOSANNA! HOSANNA! HOSANNA!
HOSANNA! HOSANNA! HOSANNA!
Palm Sunday, March 20, 2016, the Year of Our Lord
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
As our story of Jesus’ last days before Resurrection Glory continues to unfold, it is now the first day of the Passover (Christian Palm Sunday). Many pilgrim bands and caravans are coming across at sunrise by the Jericho Road. They would have been traveling all night by the light of the stars and of the Passover moon.
Droves of lambs also for Passover offerings are with the pilgrims. One author writes that 250,000 Passover Lambs were offered at the Feast.
There is someone in the midst of the crowds, seated on a white colt. The crowd pressing around Him are strewing their garments on the road to form a carpet for the Rider. They are shouting---Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna!
John 12:13: “They took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet Him, and cried, ‘Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
Jesus is mounted on the animal which the old princes, prophets, rulers and judges of Israel rode upon on rare and public occasions. Horses were used in the chariots of war; donkeys were used as symbols of peace. Donkeys are not considered lowly animals in Eastern countries.
There was another time when the people wished to make Him a King. He positively refused. Now he rides in royal majesty and is willing to receive the hosannas of the crowd.
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout O daughter of Jerusalem; behold your King comes unto you. He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding upon a donkey, and upon a colt the foal of a donkey.”
He was to suffer death that week---to die for the sins of the world. He is presenting Himself as the true Paschal Lamb. In a few days, he will be stripped of robe and mantle to be nailed to a cross of shame.
“Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the kingdom that comes of our father David!” (Mt. 21:9)
The disciples were again thinking they were going to be ushered into an earthly throne and their Master was to become King of Judea. This royal procession would be a lot to take in for simple men.
The crowd was gradually becoming larger. Many of the pilgrims inside the city went forth to meet Him and to join the triumphal procession. They cut down branches of the fig, olive and palm from the groves and gardens along the slope. The palm trees are waved before him as thousands of new voices cry, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”
Palm branches are a double symbol of gladness and triumph. There is yet another happy white-robed company in heaven who continually wave palms of joy and total victory in their hands.
Revelation 7: 9-10: “… behold, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, kindreds, people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands. They cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb. All the angels stood around about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts. They fell before the throne on their faces, and worshiped God. Saying, Amen; Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor and power and might be to our God for ever and ever. Amen.”
The King of the Jews moves on. The procession descends the road past the Garden of Gethsemane, crossing the brook Kedron; they enter the streets of the city. When the Temple-gate is reached, Jesus dismounts and enters it. For the second time He drives out the money-changers who, with their noise and shameless bargaining had made His Father’s house like a robber’s den.
(Could it be another deliverer is overturning the tables of the money changers? “just askin.”)
Matthew 21:13-14: “It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves. The blind and the lame came to Him in the temple; and He healed them.”
When order was restored, he soon got a crowd of hearers gathered round about Him. Even though the Hosannas of the crowd had ceased, the shouts of praise were on the lips of others. The Hosannas still arose from the lips of children in the Temple.
The chief priests when they heard the tender voices of the little ones take of the Hosanna-song; we are told “they were sore displeased.”
Matthew 21:15-16: “When the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; they were sore displeased. They said to Jesus, “do you hear what they say?” Jesus answered, “Yes, have you never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings you have perfected praise?”
What a beautiful incident this triumphant entrance of Jesus was! How worthy of the Prince of Peace! Rome often had her great processions too. They were processions of war horses and war-chariots---of chained slaves and wailing captives. How different from this procession. Who were among the rejoicing multitudes who followed in the train of Jesus? There were the cripples He had healed; the blind whose eyes He had opened; the lepers he had restored to health, home and friends; the dumb whose lips he had unsealed. Each was bearing his palm branch in this march of love and peace!
Yes, and as we have seen children, too, are there, lining the royal processions with their tiny branches and flower-wreaths.
Jesus well knew, that before these strewn palm leaves were withered, some of the voices which were now shouting Hosanna, would be crying “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”
In the evening of the day, he and His disciples went out to beloved Bethany. In the early morning both of Monday and Tuesday, Jesus went into Jerusalem from Bethany, and taught in the temple. He left the temple on Tuesday afternoon never again to return.
These proud Jews in Jerusalem would not listen to His pleadings. They had turned a deaf ear to His earnest warnings and His loving invitations. He tells them that the hour of mercy, long offered to their guilty nation, is past and gone.
They had despised all His counsel, and not received His reproof. His heart is burning with grief.
Matthew 23:37: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets, and stone them which are sent to you, how often would I have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not!...You shall not see Me hereafter, till you shall say, Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord.”
Jesus then crossed the brook Kedron with his disciples. They sat down on the Mount of Olives. The disciples could hardly believe His words as they looked at the huge towers and battlements of white marble, beautiful gates, pillars and golden roof of the temple when Jesus spoke, “There shall not be left one stone up on another that shall not be thrown down!” (Mt. 24:2)
When Jesus concluded His ministry of starting His Church and establishing His Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven, the old order of Temple worship had served as a copy and shadow of heavenly things. This is the “last days” of animal sacrifices in the temple (Heb. 9:22-10:6).
Hebrews 8:6: “Now He has obtained a more excellent ministry by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant which has been enacted on better promises
Hebrews 9: 11-13: “but when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood. He entered into the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh. How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleans your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”
Hebrews 10:12: “He having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time sat down at the right Hand of God.”
Heb. 12: 22-24: “You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood which speaks better than the blood of Abel.”
Jesus fulfilled the sacrifices, the feast days, the temple, and the priesthood of the Old Covenant which “served as a copy and shadow of heavenly things”…”It was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavenlies to be cleansed, but these heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. (Heb. 9:23)
As Jesus and the disciples looked on the temple of which every Jew was so proud and whose ruin the Savior had just foretold, surely thoughts of thirty-three years previously, He received His first welcome from Simeon and Anna. Only two days before, He received His last welcome from the children who cried Hosanna.
The great Council had, four days before, entered into a bargain with the traitor. Judas appears before them a second time. They agreed to pay him the money when he surrendered the Savior into their hands.
There was a piece of ground which Judas wished to purchase. The shekels he received from betraying his Lord would enable him to purchase this land.
It was now Thursday, probably the same day of the month on which the Hebrews killed their Passover Lamb in Egypt. On the morning of Thursday, the disciples came to Jesus and asked Him, “Where will we prepare for you to eat the Passover?”
Mark 14:13-14: “Jesus sent forth two of his disciples, and says to them, Go you into the city, and there shall you meet a man bearing a pitcher of water; follow him. Wherever he shall go in, say you to the Goodman of the house, The Master says, Where is the guest chamber, where I shall eat the Passover with My disciples? He shall show you a large upper room furnished and prepared; there make ready for us.”
The two disciples meet the man carrying the pitcher of water and follow him. When the shadows of night had fallen, we see Jesus at the table of the Jerusalem householder, with his twelve disciples.
They are jealous of one another and quarrel over who will sit at the best places at the table. To humble them, he washes their feet.
Then with a troubled spirit, H makes the announcement to the guests around Him, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray Me.”
In their favor, they are not suspecting each other. Instead they each cry out suspecting himself, they ask, “Lord is it I?”
Jesus takes a piece of bread from the table and dips it in the dish before Him. He lefts the bread and gives it to Judas.
Christians let us guard our souls. Judas had received nothing but kindness from Jesus. He had years of close intimacy seeing the holiness and tenderness of his Master’s life. They had shared daily meals and prayers. He has listened to his daily teachings. He had been loved as a dear friend and brother. To Judas, Jesus had in vain spoke that parable, among others---of “the Fool” (Mt. 5:22) who had sacrificed his never-dying soul for the sake of amassing some poor earthly riches!
Jesus now takes a portion of the bread and the wine and institutes the Lord Supper which we are commanded to do in remembrance of Him.
The broken bread would remind them of His broken, crucified body. The wine would remind them of His poured out, precious blood. “Do this in remembrance of Me”
“I shall drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.”
He does not call them “servants” or “Apostles”. He calls them “little children” and “friends”. He speaks of a blessed Comforter who will come and fill their hearts with His presence after He is taken away. Many earthly fathers when they die leave gifts to their children---money, houses, or lands. Jesus leaves His disciples something far better than any of these. “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you.”
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries Church
Scripture from K.J.V. – I entered into the labors of Brighter Than the Sun by J. R. Macduff. Comments and conclusions are my own and not meant to reflect the views of Bro. Macduff.