Lamb Selection Day

9 “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,

A colt, the foal of a donkey.

The people understood the symbolism of Jesus as Messiah in His entrance into the city.

9 Then the multitudes who went before and those who followed cried out, saying:

“Hosanna to the Son of David!

‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!’

Hosanna in the highest!”

The people expected a warrior messiah to drive out the Roman oppressors like the Maccabees had done with the Seleucids centuries earlier. The people adopted palm branches as patriotic symbols in honor of the Maccabees, and now they brought them before Jesus when they heard He was coming, as John describes in John 12:12-13 (NKJV):

12 The next day a great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, 13 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!” (CF. Psalm 118:25)

While Jesus is the Messiah, He was not coming to Jerusalem to overthrow the Romans and judge the nation. He will return in His next visit to judge all nations (Matthew 25) and determine eternal destinies and rewards. He came the first time to save us as God’s sacrificial lamb at Passover. Listen to Jesus in John 12:47 (NKJV):

And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.

You will remember that Jesus wept over Jerusalem as He entered the City. He knew what was coming regarding His death, burial, resurrection, and the city of Jerusalem. The Romans would destroy the holy city like the Babylonians did in 587 BC. The Jewish people could have avoided the Roman onslaught if they had repented and embraced the Messiah. Jesus knew they would not and wept for them in the catastrophe that was coming a few decades into the future. Listen to Luke 19:41-44 (NKJV):

41 Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, 42 saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, 44 and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

This week of Passover included the time of examination. After He came into the city, Jesus examined the people, especially the religious leaders, and found them wanting. He drove the money changers out of the temple courts for their many violations of God’s intentions for the temple. No wonder the Jewish leaders were after Him. Listen to Luke 19:45-46 (NKJV):

45 And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, 46 saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.”