By Kelita Deems
Palm Sunday. As a child we sang Hosanna songs and waved palm branches. We shouted “Jesus is King!” and celebrated with palm leaves and songs.
How wonderful that Jesus would enter a town with such honor, recognition and rightly adored! However,four days later, Jesus would be hunted, beaten and taken before Pontius Pilate, and those same people would be crying ‘Crucify! Release Barabbas the murderer!’ How could this be?
Let’s look at that day – Jesus was entering Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish custom of Passover. A time when God’s people remembered being set free from slavery in Egypt. On the particular night of “Passover” the death angel “passed over” every home that had the blood of the Passover applied to the doorposts. Of course, we now know that Jesus became our Passover lamb, and as we apply His blood to the doorposts of our heart, eternal death will be forced to pass us by! The very crux of the Christian faith!
But, think of this – On Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey, fulfilling prophecy (Zech. 9:9) and being received as Messiah and King! He rode on a donkey because in those times, when a noble or king entered a city, riding on a donkey symbolized that they came in peace and had peaceful intentions. The laying of palm branches signified great victory or triumph. So, how could these people go from receiving Him in victory with great peace to demanding his death just a few days later?
I have a feeling this had something to do with it: the Bible says He went straight to the temple and cleared out the money changers. (Matt. 21:12) Then, He began to teach with authority and taught things like sinful people would enter the kingdom before the religious folk (Matt. 21:31) He went on to tell the people to pay their taxes of all things! (Matt. 22:21) Then, He called out the hypocrisy of the religious leaders and didn’t hold anything back. (Matt. 12:13-31) So, apparently, the Hosanna crowd had their own ideas of how Jesus was going to be their king and bring the kingdom of God into their lives, and when His ideas clashed with theirs, well….you know the rest.
Wow, these people who hailed Him as King, spread out their garments for Him, crowded to get a glimpse of Him, declared Him to be the Messiah – the Deliverer – their King – these same people would now agree and call for His death. I guess they didn’t like what He had to say. I guess, they didn’t like that He exposed greed and corruption of the money changers who were taking of them. I suppose it irritated them when He exposed the religious leaders of the day and told them their hearts were evil and motives were impure. I imagine it really aggravated the people when He told them to pay their taxes to a corrupt government! And the indignation that arose when by him saying that corrupt tax collectors and prostitutes would be more liable to enter the Kingdom of God before a pious Pharisee and Sadducee? I mean, these were holy men!? Right????
You can probably guess where I am heading. How many times do we, today, come to Jesus, come to church, come together, and declare Jesus is the Lord of our lives. We pledge our allegiance and know that He is our answer! We sing the songs, lift our hands, give offerings, maybe even tithe, then we leave and life sets in. Perhaps, it’s tax time and we pay our taxes, but do not properly disclose all that we should….. or, maybe He exposes a wrong motive in our heart. What about when a religious person – a church goer – offends us and just flat does us wrong? We want to hang on to the offense! We want justice! We feel justified in our anger and so, we also feel the need to make sure this person doesn’t wrong anyone else……after all, we need to warn others, right? Instead of forgiving, we tell a few others – only as a prayer request of course, so that the person will get forgiveness – and THEN we say we forgive, but refuse to look their way the next time we see them. Maybe we feel indignant when a homeless person or a man/woman who is known to hang with the drug crowd comes into church and hasn’t even showered. Don’t they know they are supposed to wear their best to church? What if they are?
The point is, every believer declares Jesus is Lord! And while today, we would never ask Him to be crucified on the cross again, we would never want to see Him beaten and scourged on our behalf again, I often wonder if He sometimes relives the pain of that when we reject His ways!
If He were here today, would we yell CRUCIFY? We like to think we would not. After all, we have the benefit of hindsight. Lest we be too harsh on the hosanna turned crucify crowd, they didn’t have the Holy Spirit as witness to Him. They did not have the scriptures as we have today, and they didn’t know the full revelation of the cross, the salvation that was to play out before their very eyes. WE DO. When He exposes sin in our hearts, we need to shout CRUCIFY!!!!! Yes! Crucify! Only not Him, but our flesh! He died our death! He took our shame! He took our blame! He bore our sin! What we now have to crucify is our will! Our fleshly desires! Our right to be right! We must crucify the flesh and live by the Spirit of God! We need to cry out Hosanna daily, and daily surrender, crucify our flesh and allow Him to be the King, the noble Man of Peace on the throne of our heart!
This weekend is Palm Sunday. I encourage you this weekend to make Jesus King of your heart all over again. As you do, know ahead of time that He will turn over corrupt thoughts and ideas that come into your mind – or maybe come across your television, computer or iPod – He will call out wrong motives and desires, He will demand that you honor authority on the earth and live in peace with all men, He will call out, by the power of the Holy Spirit, hypocrisy and pride, and when He does – don’t be like the crowd and allow Him to be crucified afresh for your sins, but be like the remnant, His followers, who mourned his suffering. He was crucified for us, now, let us with humility and love, with joy, crucify our flesh for Him….presenting our bodies as living sacrifices, which is our reasonable act of worship. (Romans 12:1)
Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord! (Matt. 21:9)
The post Palm Sunday appeared first on The ROCK.
