Sermon Tone Analysis

In our text, it's Passover.

Passover was such a huge festival time, perhaps the greatest attraction for Jerusalem.

Pilgrims from all over would travel to Jerusalem.

They wanted to be there at the Passover celebration.

Josephus tells us that just prior to Titus' invasion in 70 AD that the Passover celebration had grown to 2.7 million people coming into this small city of Jerusalem.

And Jerusalem is a small city, so people are camped everywhere, I'm sure.

They're staying in the nearby villages, all wanting to…at least at one point…make their way into the Temple walls, into the city area itself.

A time of great excitement.

A time of religious fervor.

In the days of Jesus, there was also a zealot feeling, a political fervor.

A desire, perhaps understated, underneath the table so to speak, that they wanted to overthrow Rome.

They wanted to get away from the bondage they were in under the rule of this powerful oppressor.

They would come in the daytime, and they would celebrate the different feasts and the different elements of Passover.

But in the alleys at night alone they would grumble and talk and desire to be freed from that Roman oppressor.

Of course, the freedom would come from the prophesied Messiah.

And by the days of Jesus, they saw Messiah as a ticket away from Rome.

They were looking for that one individual who would rally them together, that would help them to overthrow those shackles…unless you were benefiting from Rome, unless you were benefiting from the oppressor.

And so with the Sanhedrin, with the high priest, with many of the Pharisees, with many of the landowners, there was a sense of not rocking the boat.

There was a great desire to suppress any revolutionary attempt.

Now they didn't like Rome either, but they did like what Rome had afforded them…nice living, a nice way of life.

And so they wanted to protect that.

They wanted to keep that from being destroyed by the takeover of the people.

They didn't want insurgent activity to cause Rome to come down hard on them to punish them for letting things get out of hand.

So you had these different elements opposing each other.

Jesus comes onto the scene.

Jesus has no intention of being the political Messiah.

He hasn't come in order to lead a revolt against Rome, but He has come to die.

And He is going to die at the hands of the Pharisees, and on this particular Passover weekend…we would call it…on this particular Sunday, He is going to force their hand.

He is going to orchestrate really an event that will, though not lead an insurgence, will cause the Pharisees to change their timetable to God's timetable.

Their timetable had already been stated in Scripture.

They weren't going to do anything during the Passover feast.

They were going to arrest Jesus, but they were going to do it after the feast.

They were going to do it when people returned back home.

They were going to do it when no one was watching, so to speak.

They intended to kill Him.

They intended for Him to die so that Rome would not come down on this new movement and mess things up, but they were going to do it later, but God was going to do it this week.

And so Jesus is going to force their hand, if you will, and we see that activity take place today.

I call the message Hosanna! because that is the cry of the people when they see Jesus coming.

There are two groups.

There is one group of people that come with Jesus from Bethany, just about two miles east of Jerusalem itself.

They will travel with Jesus as He makes His way into Jerusalem.

And then there are the pilgrims who have come from Galilee, who have come from different areas, who are inside the city of Jerusalem celebrating the Passover week.

They're going to come out of Jerusalem, and they're the ones really whom John focuses on as we see these two groups come together.

In John 12, beginning in the 12th verse, it says, /"The next day…"/ And we take that to be a Sunday, /"…a great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him, and cried out: 'Hosanna!

"Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!' The King of Israel!'"/

This multitude of people that John mentions have heard that this Jesus is coming to Jerusalem.

He has been threatened by the Pharisees.

They've tried to stone Him, they've tried to arrest Him before, and now, low and behold, He is coming!

But another rumor, another story, and other witnesses have also been circulating.

And that is that He actually brought a dead man, dead four days now, back to life!

And that witness has spread, and it has excited the people, and they are thinking that this may indeed be the King of Israel.

This may be the long awaited Messiah.

So the multitude pours out the Eastern Gate.

They come in droves down that western slope of the Kidron Valley.

And along both sides of the Kidron Valley trail that leads down to the valley and then up to the Mount of Olives were date palms.

And so as they're coming out, they're reaching up, and by whatever means they're grabbing these date palm leaves, and they're carrying them with them.

Now that is significant for a Jew.

First of all, in the Feast of Tabernacles, they would use those date palm leaves as part of their celebration.

They would sing what we call the Hallel psalms…Psalms 113 through 118.

They would sing them every day.

And when they got to Psalm 118, part of the process was to wave these palm branches.

In fact, the palm branches became to be known as the hosannas.

And they would cry out, "Hosanna!"

Hosanna simply means, "Save us, O Lord.

Save us, Lord."

It came to be sort of a proclamation, an acclamation, a word in and of itself.

And so when they would come to that part in Psalm 118, they would sing that.

In fact, in Psalm 118, verse 25, the words that they would sing are recorded for us in English, and it says, /"Save now, I pray, O LORD..."/ Now that in Hebrew: Hosanna, /"…O LORD, I pray, send now prosperity."/

And then the next verse: /"Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD!"/

So I have the idea…they knew the music.

We don't have that music.

It didn't survive along with the Psalms…that as they're lining up both sides of that path from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem, they're waving their palm branches, and they're singing.

They're singing this song.

They're singing the song the chorus of which is, "Hosanna!

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" Except it's not the Feast of Tabernacles.

Later on, it's the Feast of Passover six months later.

But they bring those palm branches with them, and they sing what the Psalm was addressed to.

And that was to the Messiah.

And they see that perhaps this Jesus is that Messiah.

Now also the palm branch held another significance.

In the same way that our American bald eagle is a national symbol, the palm branch was a nationalist symbol for Israel.

In fact, even the Romans when they conquered Israel, and they printed the coins for Israel, they would include a palm branch on that.

It therefore was almost like waving the flag.

To wave the palm branch would have the implication that this coming Messiah is also a political Messiah, that He is the One who is going to lead our revolution.

And of course Jesus is very well aware of that.

That is why in verse 14, back in John 12, it says, /"Then Jesus, when He had found a young donkey, sat on it; as it is written: 'Fear not, daughter of Zion; Behold, your King is coming, Sitting on a donkey’s colt.'"/

Now riding in on a donkey's colt was a formal symbolic gesture of a king.

When a king would come to another place, to another kingdom, to another king, riding in on a donkey showed he was coming as a prince of peace, that he was coming in terms of peace, that it was a peaceful visit.

Jesus sends His disciples.

He tells them to go to what we believe to be the area of Bethphage, just another suburb there just outside Jerusalem.

And they would find such an animal tied up, and they were to bring it back to Him.

And so they bring this young colt back.

And the disciples take their cloaks, and they lay them on this animal to sort of form a saddle for Jesus to sit on.

And He chooses to sit on that young colt to show Jerusalem that He is coming in peace.

Now Jesus could have ridden a warrior horse.

A warrior horse you would ride when you're coming in triumph.

You see if Jesus was wanting to lead the revolt that He could have so easily led, if He was wanting to take this fervor that was at a fever pitch, and if He wanted to ignite it to a full blown revolution, He just needed to get on a big white horse.

Get on that big white steed and march that same path, and the people would have literally gone crazy.

But Jesus didn't want to do that.

He wasn't there to be a conquering King.