Triumphal Entry
It was Sunday, the tenth day of Nisan—by our calendar, the sixth day of April—four days before the Feast of the Passover. According to the Book of Exodus, it was the day when every family celebrating Passover would choose a lamb to sacrifice. Then priests would watch it closely from the tenth to the fourteenth day of Nisan in order to ensure it was in the best of health and was without flaw or blemish. Picture in your mind’s eye tens of thousands of lambs being brought into the holy city. And in the midst of all the choosing, inspecting, and bleating, the Lamb of God entered the city of Jerusalem.
The waving of palm branches and crying of Hosanna was a tradition that began two hundred years earlier, following the reign of a bloodthirsty Syrian king named Antiochus Epiphanes. A man so blasphemous that he slaughtered a pig in the Holy of Holies and made the priests drink its blood, Epiphanes bludgeoned the Jews into submission. After several years of this, however, a man named Judas Maccabee, whose name meant “hammer,” and his brothers decided to nail Antiochus Epiphanes by launching a guerrilla war against him. Approximately nine years later, when Maccabee and his band of renegades miraculously overcame the Assyrian army and drove Epiphanes from Jerusalem, the people spontaneously celebrated by waving palm branches. And from that time on, the back of Jewish coinage depicted a palm branch as a symbol of deliverance from oppression.
Here in John’s account, two hundred years after Maccabee, the Jews find themselves oppressed again, not by the Syrians, but by the Romans. Consequently, what the people were essentially saying when they cried Hosanna and waved palm branches as Jesus rode into Jerusalem, was, “Be Judas Maccabee. Deliver us from the Romans.” But when they realized Jesus had a different agenda than a political one, a different agenda than a national one, a different agenda than a material one—their cry changed from “Hosanna” to “Crucify him.”
The same is still true. Christians individually and churches corporately mobilize politically for this cause or for that personality; to change our government or to change our economy. But very few are interested in a Cross that speaks of dying to self. An arresting picture of Calvary depicts three empty crosses on Golgotha, with a donkey in the background, chewing on a palm frond. You see, it’s one thing to shout at a parade, and something else altogether to stand at the foot of the Cross.
According to rabbinical theory, when Messiah came, He would ride into Jerusalem on a white horse. If, however, Israel was not ready for Messiah, He would ride in on a donkey. And here’s Jesus riding on a donkey—not to confirm rabbinical speculation, but to fulfill prophetic indication made hundreds of years earlier when Zechariah said the King would come riding on a donkey (9:9).
Jesus riding in to Jerusalem on a donkey, the people waving palm branches and shouting Hosanna meant nothing to the disciples until Jesus was glorified. Are the Scriptures confusing to you? Do they make no sense? Keep reading; keep studying—for as Jesus is glorified in your life, you will have a greater and greater understanding of Scripture. The problem is, we want understanding, but we don’t want to glorify the Lord by obeying Him.
We want to understand esoteric insights; we want to grasp the meaning of this verse, or that chapter—but it is only when we glorify the Lord in obedience that we will understand what’s being said in any given passage. The disciples didn’t understand initially. But when Jesus was glorified, they understood eventually.
The disciples did not fully understand what was happening. They believed Jesus was the Messiah. They believed he was the king from David’s line. They believed those OT texts were about him.
John’s statement in verse 16 that these OT texts were written about Jesus is in keeping with Philip’s statement that Jesus was the one “of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote” (1:45) and with Jesus’ assertions that the Scriptures bear witness about him (5:39) and that Moses wrote of him (5:46). Understanding how these texts are about Jesus requires knowing how Jesus will be glorified, and it is significant that these references to Jesus’ being “glorified” use the same term found in the Greek translation of Isaiah 52:13 to describe the servant’s being lifted up and “glorified.” Jesus will be glorified by his crucifixion and resurrection, and, apart from those events, his disciples cannot understand the fulfillment of the OT. Nor can anyone else.