A week before commemorating Christ’s death, many Christians observe Palm Sunday. Palm fronds are handed out to remind people of Jesus’ triumphal entry. If you care to check, you’ll see how His arrival exactly fulfilled Zechariah’s prophecy (Zechariah 9:9), made five centuries before.
Every other time the Lord came to Jerusalem He was hardly noticed. He slipped in to observe and comment on how the changes their leaders had made to their religion didn’t help—actually they got in the way of coming to God.
The Sabbath, He said, was for resting, not for adding restrictions. Their offerings should be expressions of love, not obligation. The temple was a place of prayer, not a den for thieves making money.
For this reason, “the common people heard Him gladly” (Mark 12:37), but the leaders hated Him and were determined to silence Him permanently.
Jesus wanted a kind of dress rehearsal for His next return, not on a donkey as the lowly Man of Galilee, but when He rides a white steed, and “has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.” (Revelation 19:16) So He stirred up the city with His most remarkable miracle—raising Lazarus.
He had raised an only daughter from her deathbed, and an only son from his coffin, but skeptics say they probably weren’t even dead. In this case, Jesus waited until even believing Martha thought it was too late. “Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.” (John 11:39) THEN Jesus raised him!
Everybody in Jerusalem was abuzz with the news. “They were looking for Jesus and asking one another as they stood in the temple complex: ‘What do you think? He won’t come to the festival, will He?’” (John 11:56, HCSB) Why wouldn’t He? “The chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where He was, he should report it so they could arrest Him.” (v 57)
So the stage was set. Leaving His friends’ home on the eastern slope of Olivet, and borrowing an unbroken donkey, He began His ride into the City. As He did, “a great multitude that had come to the feast…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!’” (12:13)
But He arrived to mixed reviews. One of my favorite authors, David Anderson-Berry, describes it like this: “As the low thunder of the groundswell breaking on the beach…tells the listener of the coming storm, so the low murmur, ‘Who is this?’ (Matthew 21:10)…betokened the coming tempest when, from the sea of faces white with rage, breaking around that central weary Figure into a spray of clenched fists, there arose the awful cry, ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!’”
“Who is this?” The answer is vital for each of us to answer. Philosopher? Example? Martyr? What we need is a Savior! And there’s only One. “Salvation exists in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12, BSB)
If you haven’t done so, this is the perfect time to personally receive the Lord Jesus by an act of simple faith. What a triumphal entry THAT would be!
Article by Jabe Nicholson first published in the Commercial Dispatch, Saturday, March 23, 2024.