Triumphal Entry: Rejection and Acceptance; John 12:12-26
At this point we are entering into the last week of our Lord's life on the earth. Passover always occurred on the 14th day of the month of Nisan. It was the first month in the feast calendar of Israel. Passover began at sunset. Six days prior to the Passover Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus was. On this day we know that several things transpired. First of all he went to Jericho where He had an encounter with Zacheus, a tax collector. Then He travelled to Bethany and there at the home of Simon the leper where, along with Mary, Martha and Lazarus, there was a dinner party where we saw that Mary anointed Jesus feet.
Six days before Passover would be Saturday. It would begin at 6pm. That would be a problem. Jesus has travelled from Jericho to Bethany, more than a Sabbath day's journey and a violation of the Sabbath. He would not have done that. In the evening is when they have the meal, vv. 1-8, then in v.9 there is the great multitude of the Jews which learn that He was there. That is not on the evening of the 6th day, that would be on the 5th day when all the multitudes come out, so 9-11 takes place on the day after that. Then the 4th day before Passover is the day that he enters Jerusalem. At the same time that He is entering they are choosing the Passover lamb at the temple. This is what is going to happen here when He enters Jerusalem fulfilling that typology as the Passover Lamb coming to take away the sins of the people.
John 12:12 NASB "On the next day [the 4th day before Passover] the large crowd who had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem." Josephus tells us that approximately 256,500 lambs were sacrificed on Passover in Jerusalem. One lamb was sacrificed usually for a family of ten. Sometimes the family was a little larger, there was not just Mom, Dad and the kids, there was the whole extended family who would get together for Passover. So if calculations are based on a family of ten people per lamb then there would be well over two and a half million people crowding into Jerusalem for Passover. Normally Jerusalem only had a population of 100,000 or so. So people are going to be camped out all over the hills outside of Jerusalem. The picture here is that Jesus has been in Bethany and is coming to Jerusalem, and as he approaches Jerusalem these multitudes are outside and camped along the road begin to gather and line up the road.
John 12:13 NASB "took the branches of the palm trees and went out to meet Him, and {began} to shout, 'Hosanna! BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, even the King of Israel'."
What is going on here? One of the most difficult doctrines to understand is the doctrine of the hypostatic union. The word "hypostatic" comes from the Greek word hupostasis [u(postasij]. It refers to a substance or essence of something. The term hypostatic union refers to the union of two essences: undiminished deity and true humanity united together in one person. There is a complete unity here. That is a difficult concept to understand. There is no intermingling of attributes but it comes from the one person who does it. One person calmed the sea, one person changed the water into wine, one person forgave sin. He was a person who has all of the attributes of deity and all of the attributes of perfect and true humanity. So there are certain things that He does that reveal that he is true humanity. When he grieved and wept at the tomb of Lazarus that indicates His true humanity. He hungered, he thirsted; these are things that indicate His true humanity, but they don't just come from one side of His person. Jesus is eternal God and he possesses all of the attributes of deity. He did not give any of those up. When he walked on the earth he was still sovereign. He restricted the independent use of His attributes of deity, he didn't give them up. There were times when He did utilise His divine attributes and those were occasions when He turned the water into wine to demonstrate His undiminished deity. And there are instances of His humanity, but Jesus never sinned because of the virgin concept and virgin birth, he was always sinless.
We have to understand all of this or we are going to miss a lot of what John has for us in these two episodes from v. 12 down through v. 26. Jesus is coming, we know, as the second Adam. Because of the virgin conception and virgin birth he is born sinless. He is going to fulfil all of the requirements that the first Adam failed to fulfil. He is also going to demonstrate, as the first Adam did not, true humility. Humility is comprised of authority orientation to God the Father. He was always going to be completely submissive to the Father's plan. It also involves grace orientation and is related to a completely relaxed mental attitude towards man. All of this is going to be evidenced in this section. In His humility fulfilling the role of the second Adam He is going to demonstrate that he fulfils the original covenant with Adam in Eden, known as the Edenic covenant. In all of this He is going to demonstrate that the key element in true humanity is being a servant of God. Adam was created to serve God in the garden of Eden and to represent God to all of the creation. When Adam violated the prohibition in the garden the image of God was violated. He quit serving God, he quite being a servant. Man in natural humanity following Satan says that the way to power is through self-promotion and arrogance. Jesus demonstrates that the way to power and glorification is through proper relationship to God in terms of being a servant in relation to the plan and purposes of God. That is what is going to be demonstrated in these two episodes that we find in this section, and they relate to one another.
Why are they using palm branches? Palm leaves were used for a victory celebration in the Jewish culture. So this demonstrates that this is a misguided attempt to develop a political solution to their problem. This is also indicated by the fact that they insert into the psalm the phrase "the King of Israel." This brings a political dimension to what they are doing, it is not a recognition of Jesus as the Messiah. They are making the same mistake that the Sanhedrin and Caiaphas made at the end of chapter eleven. They are interpreting the data wrongly. They look at the resuscitation of Lazarus and say that if Jesus has power over the dead then he can defeat the armies of Rome and we are going to have a solution to our political situation. The people are now looking at Jesus as a political Messiah, they want the crown before the cross. The masses did not understand that from the Old Testament the cross had to come before the crown. The religious leaders never understood that the cross had to come before the crown, the masses did not understand that the cross had to come before the crown, the disciples did not understand that the cross had to come before the crown. The only person who understands that the cross had to come before the crown in Mary. That is why she anointed Jesus' feet. So the people come out and recite Psalm 118 over and over again and they really don't understand what they are doing. What we see here is a picture of emotionalism, religious hysteria, crowd psychology. Religious hysteria has nothing to do with spirituality, the work of God the Holy Spirit, or the work of God. This is clear from what happens in this passage. What we will see from some parallel passages is that Jesus is not impressed at all with their emotionalism. In fact, His response is just the opposite. Never confuse emotionalism with anything in the spiritual life.
They cry out, "Hosanna." The word is based on a hiphil imperative of the verb ysha. In the form is took for a name it was yeshua, or Joshua, in the Old Testament. The root form means to save or to deliver. In the hiphil imperative plus the word nah it is a request, almost a demand. That is what hosanna means. They are crying out to the Lord to save them and they don't understand what they are saying, they are looking at deliverance in political terms and not in redemptive terms in relationship to sin.
John tells us what they did not the road into Jerusalem and then he has a flash back to what led up to this. John 12:14 NASB "Jesus, finding a young donkey, sat on it; as it is written,
Genesis 1:26 NASB "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth'."
After the flood of Noah God reiterates and makes a covenant with Noah that entails the way life will be after the flood. It is a restatement of these exact commands. So we know that because that is a covenant, this is a covenant. The second thing we observe is that when God restates the covenant with Noah He says that animals will now fear man and there is a relationship of antagonism between the animal kingdom and humanity. But there is no antagonism in Genesis 1:28. It changes because of sin. Originally there was a state of harmony between man and the animal kingdom and man was to rule and subdue the animal kingdom. This is further explained in Genesis 2:15 (Chapter 2 is merely an explanation of the details of what happened in the 6th day of creation): "Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.." So man is given responsibility as part of the mandate to rule and subdue the earth. He is put in the garden to cultivate and keep it. Then in v. 18 God is going to give the man a helper. The woman is designed to help the man in fulfilment of the dominion mandate. Then in v. 19: "Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought {them} to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name." What this indicates is that man had a fantastic ability and mental capacity, prior to the fall. We are just a pale reflection of what Adam was prior to the fall.
Psalm 8 is looking at ideal humanity, Adam before the fall, and Jesus as the second Adam. Psalm 8:3 NASB "When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;
So when Jesus comes in, what has happened here if we compare the accounts in the Synoptics which give a lot more detail, He leaves Bethany and heads toward Jerusalem. All along the way the people are lined up. When Jesus comes to Bethphage He sends two of His disciples ahead for a donkey that has never been ridden. Jesus rides this unbroken foal. Why? He is demonstrating that He is fulfilling His position as the second Adam. This isn't the fact that he is God. He is exercising His prerogative as per the original dominion mandate to subdue the earth. He is showing that He is the second Adam, the ideal man, and thus has the right to rule Israel. That is how all of this fits together. He is demonstrating two things. Two types of animals were used for transportation in the Jewish world. A horse was the sign of a wealthy person as well as use in warfare. The donkey was the conveyance of the poor. It was a very humble means of transportation, not used in warfare, and was a sign of peace. So when Jesus rides the donkey in He is indicating a couple of different things: true and genuine humility, not asserting His power and right to rule over mankind; He is indicating that He is fulfilling the divine mandate of Genesis 1:26-28 and fulfilling the role of the ideal man in Psalm 8. Humility is the primary virtue required by genuine man to rule. The path to glory is through being humble.
Another reason for this was the fulfilment of prophecy which was given to indicate these aspects. Zechariah 9:9 NASB "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout {in triumph,} O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, Humble, and mounted on a donkey, Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey." So Jesus comes in on a donkey. The purpose of this is the elimination of the hostile forces. [10] "I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim And the horse from Jerusalem; And the bow of war will be cut off. And He will speak peace to the nations; And His dominion will be from sea to sea, And from the River to the ends of the earth." So He is coming as the Prince of Peace. He does not end warfare in human history until the second coming. Because He was rejected at the first coming we go through and age that is characterised by trends, and one of those is warfare.
Jesus is coming in on an unbroken foal of a donkey in order to demonstrate His humility and that He is presenting Himself as the Prince of Peace. The people are claiming that he is the King of Israel and are wanting Him to defeat the armies of Rome militarily. So they are completely rejecting His offer of peace and substituting for it their desire for warfare. That nobody understood what was going on is exemplified in verse 16.
John 12:16 NASB "These things His disciples did not understand at the first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written of Him, and that they had done these things to Him.
Luke 19:29 NASB "When He approached Bethphage and Bethany, near the mount that is called Olivet, He sent two of the disciples, [30] saying, 'Go into the village ahead of {you;} there, as you enter, you will find a colt tied on which no one yet has ever sat; untie it and bring it {here.}' [31] If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' you shall say, 'The Lord has need of it.' [32] So those who were sent went away and found it just as He had told them. [33] As they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, 'Why are you untying the colt?' [34] They said, 'The Lord has need of it.' [35] They brought it to Jesus, and they threw their coats on the colt and put Jesus {on it.} [36] As He was going, they were spreading their coats on the road. [37] As soon as He was approaching, near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the miracles which they had seen, [38] shouting: 'BLESSED IS THE KING WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD; Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!'"
Luke is going to point out that among this crowd of several hundred thousand people there are some disciples who are honestly worshipping the Lord. They have accept Him as messiah and they are honestly saying this. John is going to focus on the masses that don't. They are operating on pure crowd hysteria and emotionalism. But Jesus recognises the fact that the crowd is not accepting Him. This is not an acceptance of Him as Messiah and this is why we need to carefully look at the Luke passage.
Luke 19:39 NASB "Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, 'Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.' [40] But Jesus answered, 'I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!'" This is a fantastic passage because it tells us His presence is so powerful and demands such a response that even if they were muted the stones would have to cry out. [41] "When He approached {Jerusalem,} He saw the city and wept over it." If the crowd singing Psalm 118 was accepting Him as Messiah then Jesus would not be weeping over Jerusalem in verse 41. That is the point we have to pay attention to. [42] "saying, 'If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes." Jesus says that they have rejected Him and rejected Him. He has come to Jerusalem now about five times, as we have seen in the Gospel of John, and each time He has been rejected. So now that they have set their course in terms of negative volition God is going to harden them into that negative volition. They have already made their decision, now he is setting it in place for the final act of the drama. [43] "For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, and surround you and hem you in on every side." In other words, the dye is cast, it is determined now by your rejection of me. So Jesus recognises that the crowd hysteria is nothing more than emotionalism.
Emotions
1) Emotions were created by God as part of the human soul and therefore are legitimate. But their role is to be the appreciator or responder of the soul. The emotions respond to what is going on inside the thinking of the soul. What the mentality of the soul believes the emotions respond to. But when this is reversed so that the emotion is the initiator and the mentality starts responding, that is when you get into emotionalism. Now emotions take over and are in the driver's seat rather than thinking and reason.
2) Emotions are design to respond to what is in the intellect of the soul.
3) When emotions begin to dictate our attitude, when they become the criterion for life, become the basis for making decisions or are identified as spirituality that is when you have emotionalism. Emotionalism is when emotion becomes the deciding factor—how it makes you feel. How you respond, instead of thinking and reasoning and making objective decisions now your emphasis is on emotions.
4) Emotionalism bases decisions on subjective impressions and feelings, not on thought and analysis and objectivity based on Bible doctrine.
5) Christianity rejects emotionalism as a basis for spirituality. God rejects emotionalism. Jesus rejected emotionalism when he entered into Jerusalem and presented Himself as the King. Our emotions do not impress God, God does not lead us through our emotions, and emotions are not to be confused or identified as the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus weeps over Jerusalem because He sees all of this superficial emotional acceptance as true rejection.
John 12:17 NASB "So the people, who were with Him when He called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead, continued to testify {about Him.}
John 12:20 NASB "Now there were some Greeks among those who were going up to worship at the feast." This is the only time that these Gentiles are mentioned in all the Gospels. Remember, John is writing at the close of the pre-canon period, about 90 AD, he has been reflecting on these events all of his life, there is no more nation Israel it had been wiped out by the Romans, there is no more temple. He is reflecting on all this. None of the other Gospel writers make any mention of these Gentiles. John doesn't mention the second cleansing of the temple. He is thinking now in terms of the temple being gone. The destruction of the temple was a statement from God that the old dispensation has gone, God no longer inhabits a temple geographically in Jerusalem, He now is inhabiting the temple of every believer's body in the church age. So the destruction of the temple is a reminder of the dispensational shift, that God is moving His plan and program from Israel to the church. It has gone from being a Jewish oriented ministry to a Gentile oriented ministry, and John thinks back and says something really unusual happened that day. Not only did Jesus clean out the temple but right after he cleaned out the temple these Greeks came up.
There were three categories of people, according to the Jews. There was the Jew who was under the Law, there was the proselyte who was the Gentile who had been circumcised and had placed himself under the Law, and then there is the Greek who doesn't want to be circumcised but is still a monotheist and still basically a believer in God. These Greeks have some orientation and they have come to the feast which shows they have some positive volition, but they want to meet Jesus.
John 12:21 NASB "these then came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and {began to} ask him, saying, 'Sir, we wish to see Jesus.' [22] Philip came and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip came and told Jesus.
John 12:27 NASB "Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, 'Father, save Me from this hour'? But for this purpose I came to this hour'." As a result of hearing this question, this inquiry by the Greeks, Jesus goes to soul torment. This is the perfect God-Man and He has real soul anxiety, a troubling, He is stirred up. He recognises that the time has come, and the bottom line is that as the perfect God-Man he is going to be tainted with sin. He knows the pain that he is going to face when the sin of the world is imputed to Him. So when these Greeks came to Him it was a transition point in Jesus' ministry, and the point that Jesus makes in vv. 24-26 is not a statement, as most people will take it, of salvation. He is not talking about believing in Christ. Belief is never mentioned here. Jesus is talking instead, and if we compare this with other passages in the Synoptics, about the value of humility and the quality of humility and servanthood for having a valued ministry in time and in eternity. It comes back to being qualified through the inheritance to rule and reign with Christ. We are not going to rule and reign with Christ in the Millennial kingdom on the basis of man viewpoint character qualities for leadership in this age, it is something different.
John 12:24 NASB "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies [true humility], it remains alone; but if it dies [the absence of self-absorption], it bears much fruit.