The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,
Matthew 21:9 NIV
“Hosanna to the Son of David!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
On what we now call Palm Sunday, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey–the Triumphal Entry. The pilgrim crowd following him from at least Jericho spread their cloaks and palm branches on the road for him. And they shouted out his praise.
But they were doing more than praising him. They were putting voice to their hope. Their hope that he was the Son of David, the promised Messiah. Their hope that he was marching into Jerusalem to take his place at the head of a reconstituted Jewish nation, driving out the Romans.
It may be that no place better illustrates the upside-down nature of the kingdom of God than this. Jesus was indeed the Son of David, their promised Messiah. And he was marching into Jerusalem to establish his kingdom, claiming his throne.
But the kingdom he established, and the way he went about it, were not what his disciples nor the crowd following him envisioned. As he later told Pilate, the kingdom he was establishing was not an earthly kingdom (John 18:36). His crown, rather than gold, was made of thorns. And his reign began on a cross.
Jesus, at the cross, defeated the powers of spiritual darkness (Col. 2:15). And he now reigns as an eternal king, with a kingdom much greater than anything this world has ever seen. And all who surrender to him and come to the cross have a place in his kingdom.
