“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
Zechariah 9:9
Holy Week begins with a murderous plot by the Jews and praise from those who saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead a week earlier.
The Gospel of John tells us that the crowd that praised Jesus with palm branches and cried “Hosanna!” was the same crowd who saw Lazarus alive and well after his resurrection. “The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness” (John 12:17). The crowd bore witness to Christ’s sign of resurrection. Little did they know that this donkey-riding, prophecy-fulfilling king would give them a greater sign—the sign of his own resurrection seven days later.
As we will see this week, for the crowd and Jesus’s own disciples, simply observing the works of Jesus was not enough to convince them of his deity and to make them understand Jesus’s prophecy-fulfilling role in redemptive history. Only a few days later, this crowd would demand the crucifixion of Jesus. They needed spiritual eyes to see Jesus for who he was. He was and is the Son of God. They accepted Jesus’s miracles, but not who he was.
John 12:16 says “His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.”
As we begin to go through Holy Week, here are three things to keep in mind:
Do not be like the crowd who praised Jesus only for his signs and wonders.
Come to Jesus on his terms, not yours.
Pray for the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to see Jesus for who he is.
Brittany Proffitt lives in Dallas and is a writer and content manager for So We Speak.
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