Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. --2 Corinthians 2:14
Tomorrow is Palm Sunday, when Christians celebrate what we call the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Wednesday is the beginning of Passover, when our Jewish friends celebrate God's power and mercy, in commemoration of the night before their ancestors who were slaves in Egypt placed the blood of a lamb on the lintel and doorpost so that the Angel of Death might pass over them.
There is a lot of crossover between the two religious celebrations. Passover to the Jews is when a lamb is sacrificed, while Christians believe that Jesus is the sacrificial Lamb of God. If you imagine the blood on the lintel dripping to the ground, you have four points of blood. Draw a line from top to bottom, and from side to side connecting the blood on the left and right doorpost, and you have an image of the cross. Christians know that there was blood on the top from the crown of thorns Jesus wore, and blood on the bottom where His feet were nailed to the cross, and there was blood on either side where nails pierced His two hands.
Hebrews 9:22 in the Christian Bible reminds us that, "Under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins." (ESV). Bearing this in mind, we read about Jesus's triumphal entry with the foreshadowing of the cross.
John's Gospel describes it this way:
The next day 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!" 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." His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written about Him and that they had done these things to Him. Therefore the people, who were with Him when He called Lazarus out of his tomb and raised him from the dead, bore witness. For this reason the people also met Him, because they heard that He had done this sign. The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, "You see that you are accomplishing nothing. Look, the world has gone after Him!" --John 12:12-19
The first thing we should notice about this passage is that it is in the context of Lazarus being raised from the dead. We are told just before this passage, in verses 10 and 11, that the Jews were plotting to kill Lazarus because so many people were coming to see Jesus after hearing what He had done for Lazarus. John records seven significant signs or miracles that Jesus did which point to Him as the Messiah. The raising of Lazarus from the dead was the seventh sign, and the most significant. John will later write in 20:30-31, "These signs were written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God."
The crowd that had gathered to make Jesus their King were those who had heard the witness of Lazarus, as well as others that bore witness of Jesus. I can imagine there might have been some in the crowd who were present at the wedding in Cana where Jesus had turned water into wine. I'll bet the nobleman from Capernaum was there, whose son Jesus had healed with just His words. I'd even be willing to bet that the man whom Jesus met at the pool of Bethesda, who had been infirm for 38 years before Jesus healed him--he was there, too.
You know that some of the 5000 whom Jesus had fed with the two fish and five barley loaves were there in the crowd shouting and waving palm branches. And of course, the disciples were there who had witnessed Jesus's walking on the water through the storm. There is even a high probability that the man was there who had been born blind, to whom Jesus gave the gift of sight, was there in the crowd shouting, "Hosanna!" These, along with those who were witnesses of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, were all there, all bearing witness to these seven signs and wonders that Jesus had performed and that John had memorialized in his gospel.
What a glorious reception. What a joyous occasion. What a sight that must have been.
The second thing we see in this passage is the prophetic passages that were fulfilled when the crowd wanted to crown Him king. Jesus was riding on the young donkey, just as had been written in Zechariah 9:9, where it says, "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey."
The word Hosanna is a Greek transliteration of a Hebrew phrase meaning "Save us, please" or "Save us now." It is written in Psalm 118:25-26, "Save now (yasa na), I pray, O Lord; O Lord, I pray, send now prosperity. Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!" The crowd spontaneously spoke these words, perhaps chanting them together as Jesus passed. Some of them may have remembered the words of the Psalm, but probably not all of them had this in mind. John says in verse 16 that the disciples didn't put it all together until after Jesus had died and was resurrected. It was only after Jesus had been glorified and ascended into heaven that they realized that the ancient prophesies had been fulfilled in Jesus.
There is a juxtaposition of Jesus's purpose and the crowd's chants. Commentator Leon Morris wrote, “The ass was not normally used by a warlike person. It was the animal of a man of peace, a priest, a merchant or the like. It might also be used by a person of importance but in connection with peaceable purposes. A conqueror would ride into the city on a war horse, or perhaps march in on foot at the head of his troops. The ass speaks of peace.” Yet the people wanted to crown Jesus King. They wanted a political ruler to overthrow Roman rule. FF Bruce wrote of this passage, "One who could summon a dead man back to life would certainly be able to deliver the holy city from the yoke of Caesar."
Which brings us to the third thing we see in this passage: the contempt of the Pharisees. You will recall in the previous chapter John told us of the chief priests and Pharisees who gathered in council and said, "What shall we do? For this Man works many signs. If we let Him alone like this, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation." (11:47-48). In the same way the Pharisees said among themselves, "You see that you are accomplishing nothing. Look, the whole world has gone after Him!" (12:39).
NT Wright in his commentary John For Everyone writes,
The Pharisees, like Caiphas before them, speak a contemptuous word which John intends us to understand in a much more positive sense. In verse 19 they scoff at Jesus and His ragtag following. Just as in 7:49 they sniffed dismissively at the common crowd ("this rabble that doesn't know the law!"), so here they are determined to distance themselves from Jesus's supporters: "the world has gone off after Him". The tone of voice can be imagined all too easily. They regard themselves as infinitely superior to the common herd of people. They, after all, know the Torah, and keep it to exacting standards that most people wouldn't even understand. But John wants us to hear something else as well, which will then be developed in the next passage. Jesus has come into the world because God so loved the world (3:16). He has other sheep to find and rescue as well as the lost sheep of Israel (10:16). His death will deliver not only the nation but also the children of God throughout the world (11:52). It is no accident that immediately after this contemptuous statement of the Pharisees...that Jesus sees this as a sign that the moment is fast approaching when He will complete His work. "When I am lifted up from the earth," He says in verse 32, "I will draw all people to Myself."
There is some hyperbole in the Pharisees' envy over Jesus's success, as well as some irony. Clearly not everyone had gone after Jesus, but they had discovered that they were clearly not in charge of the situation. There is, however, some ironic sweetness in their statement, "Look, the world has gone after Him!"
May it ever be so.
Jesus bade us to go into all the world and preach the Gospel. His Great Commission was that we spread His word until the whole world knows.
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