Matthew 21:1 - 11
As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 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. 3 If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”
4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
5 “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.’”[a]
‘See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”[a]
6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,
“Hosanna[b] to the Son of David!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”[c]
“Hosanna[d] in the highest heaven!”
10 When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?”
11 The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”
Questions:
ReplyDelete1. Did the crowds know what they were shouting and what it meant?
2. Why didn't the crowds answer (to "who is this?") that Jesus was the Messiah?
http://awretchlike.me/283/hosanna-in-the-highest-matthew-219/ says:
ReplyDeleteThe people who cheered Jesus’s arrival in Jerusalem had an agenda. They wanted a Savior, all right, but they wanted the Savior they had envisioned in their own mind. This Savior would do certain things: kick the Romans out of the Holy Land, lower taxes, and lead the Jews back to the glory days of King David when they were a prosperous and sovereign state. They liked the idea of Jesus and they were willing to accept Him as their king, but they had their own specific ideas of what this king ought to be doing for them.
Jesus had no such agenda. Look back over all of the things that Jesus said and taught during His time on earth. He never talked politics; He never said He was going to kick the Romans out of the Holy Land. When asked point-blank about taxation, Jesus said that was not His concern ("Render unto Cesar the things Cesar’s.") Jesus never promised prosperity or said that He intended to restore the state of Israel back to its former glory.
So why did people expect Him to do things He never said or even hinted He would do? The same reason people today imagine that Jesus is the God of getting a good parking place or making your life easy or making you rich. It is very easy to project onto Jesus your own agenda.
The problem with projecting your own ideas onto Jesus is that you will be disappointed. After even a few days, the people in the "Hosanna" crowd could see that Jesus was not going to kick the Romans out of Jerusalem–He wasn’t even going to cause trouble for them. It was the other way around, the Romans had arrested Jesus! Jesus clearly was not seizing power, lowering taxes, or doing any of the super-hero things that the crowds expected. They were disappointed, and in their disappointment, they wanted this Jesus destroyed.
When false teachers tell us about a different Jesus than the one in the Bible, it causes the same results. People project their own aspirations onto Jesus, only to be disappointed … and then turn into God-haters. Some of the most vehement and vitriolic atheists on earth are people who were once in the church and many of them were taught a false Jesus.
My sisters, you must believe in the right Jesus. Believing in Santa Claus and calling Him Jesus not only will not save you, it blasphemes God and will eventually turn you into one of the voices screaming, "Crucify Him!" So in this Holy Week, let’s take a minute to reflect on the real Jesus.
Here is how you can be sure you know (or are coming to know) the real Jesus:
Read the Bible. Contrary to popular belief, Jesus does not live in your heart. He does not live in your mind. He is seated at the right hand of the Father at this exact moment and our best source of information about Him and His work is Scripture.
Please study the Bible seriously. Stay away from aberrant teachers.
Jesus said that in this life we will have troubles. He also said that one should count the cost of being a Christian. He warned His disciples that they would face hardships and be persecuted for His sake. If anybody teaches you that Jesus is your sure path to an easy life and that he wants to make sure that everything goes your way, you are being taught the wrong Jesus.
Jesus and His Apostles taught that we should serve the poor. If you are being taught that Jesus wants you to be rich and that it is a good thing to have lots of "stuff" even while other Christian brothers and sisters are going without, you are being taught a false Jesus.
Dive into the Scriptures at least daily and pray over them. Pray that the Holy Spirit will help you to discern what you need to know about Jesus.
http://www.trinityurcvisalia.com/NTSer/mt21v09.html says:
ReplyDeleteActually, the excitement had been building for some time already. Scripture tells us that a large crowd of people followed Jesus and His disciples from Jericho to Jerusalem (Mt 20:29). Most of the crowd probably were pilgrims from Galilee going to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast.
It was with increasing excitement that the crowds also witnessed that Jesus approached Jerusalem in a round-about way from the village of Bethphage on the Mount of Olives. This crowd of Jewish pilgrims was acquainted with what the Old Testament prophets had said about this Mount: from there comes the Messianic judgment and from there also arises the Messianic resurrection (Zech 14:1-9; cf Ezek 43:2-9).
The crowd's excitement built up to a fevered pitch when Jesus mounted on a colt, the foal of a donkey, before He entered Jerusalem. This was no ordinary donkey; rather, it was a purebred which had never before been ridden. This is significant in the light of the ancient provision that an animal devoted to a sacred purpose must be pure and unblemished, one that has never been put to ordinary use (Num 19:2; Deut 21:3). Jesus, in other words, was going to enter Jerusalem with all the pomp and pageantry of royalty. Here was further proof for the crowds that Jesus must be the Messiah.
It was at this point that the crowd's excitement could be contained no longer. Jesus was the Messiah, the King, the Son of David, so He had to be greeted like the royal personage He was.
The appearance of the Messiah heralds the beginning of a golden and glorious age for Israel. The glory and splendor of David's rule would return to the Promised Land. There would be prosperity for all. There would be no more hunger. God's people would be set free from foreign domination. The rich would no longer oppress the poor. The lame would begin to leap and jump and dance. The blind would see a world of vivid color. The deaf would listen to the songs of birds and the music of harps. The deserts of Israel would be turned into fragrant gardens. Swords and spears would be hammered into plows and hoes. Enemies would become friends. Jerusalem would be at the center of the world, and all the kings and rulers of the earth would come there to worship Israel's God.
That's the kind of world the Messiah would bring. His coming heralds the beginning of a glorious, wondrous, beautiful time for the people of the Lord.
A few days later many of the same crowd turned against Jesus: "Crucify him! Crucify him!" they shouted.
Our Savior experienced how short-lived human approval really is.
Does the way others think of you mean a lot to you? It is really a strange thing that we are all so sensitive to public opinion and the approval of the people around us. Perhaps you even base your happiness upon this. It is the most human thing to do, but it is also very foolish. For popularity and approval never remain constant – they ebb and flow with the ups and downs of human emotions.
Why was Christ's popularity of such a fleeting nature? Why did "Hosanna in the highest!" so quickly turn into "Crucify him!"?
Why? Because Jesus was not the kind of Messiah the crowd expected. The crowd expected Jesus to be a Jewish Caesar with an earthly kingdom. They saw Him as a political or military Messiah Who would establish His kingdom by power and force.
In large part Jesus, as Messiah, was seen as the fulfillment of the beliefs of the Zealots. The Zealots were right-wing extremists. They believed that the rule of God was to be set up by the violent and military overthrow of the Romans.
http://www.trinityurcvisalia.com/NTSer/mt21v09.html continued:
ReplyDeleteAt the time of Jesus the palm branch was the national symbol of Israel. Simon Maccabeus conquered the Jerusalem castle in 142 B.C., the Jews took repossession of it carrying palm branches. And, when Palestine revolted against Rome in A.D. 132-135 the palm was the symbol for resistance and was imprinted on the Jewish currency.
What did He do? Did He call for a war council, a strategy meeting? No. "He left them," says Scripture, "and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night." (Mt 21:17). What a let down! It became clear to the crowds that Jesus was rejecting what they were offering Him: an earthly kingdom established by force and blood.
And then I want you to notice what Jesus did – this is very important. Instead of driving the Romans out of Jerusalem He chased His own countrymen, good and upstanding businessmen, from the temple area.
How could the crowd be so wrong, so mistaken, about Jesus? Why did they see Him as a deliverer from Rome rather than as a Savior from sin? Why? Because the crowd listened to only part of Scripture. Whenever God's people begin to pick and choose out of Scripture only what they want to hear, there are bound to be misinterpretations and they have started on the road to apostasy. We ignore any part of Scripture, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes us feel, at great risk both to ourselves and the Church.
We must be careful that we are not too harshly critical of the crowds of Palm Sunday. We must not forget that the hosannas of the crowd expressed a real longing for the coming of God's Kingdom. The people were so wildly enthusiastic because they thought the Kingdom was being established.
We could and should learn from their enthusiasm. I look at God's people in Trinity, I look at my own life, I look at believers across this land and, I'm afraid that I do not see people who live in the expectation of the Lord's coming. Look at your own life, dear people – can you honestly say that you are expecting the Kingdom at any moment?
You know what the problem is? It is possible for us to be so in love with this world, so involved in its affairs, so used to sin and injustice, that we lose the expectation of the new heaven and new earth. Too many of us are so wrapped up in the cares of day-to-day life that we no longer live in the expectation of the Lord's impending return.
Before we condemn the crowds for their selective reading of Scripture and their spiritual blindness we would do well to be jealous of the intensity of their anticipation of the Kingdom, of their hunger for the triumphs of the Messiah. How many of us, for instance, get so excited about Jesus that we rip off our coats, wave branches, and start shouting "Hosanna!"?