SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/17/2016
9:39 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
With The Passionate Multitude
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John
12:12b-13
Message of the
verses: “12 On the next day the large crowd who had come
to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, 13 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.’”
As we begin to look at these two verses I want to look at
Matthew 21:9 along with Mark 11:9 to show that this gospel suggest that there
were two crowds that converged around Jesus, and some historians have estimated
the crowd to be as many as one million people since it was the time of the
Passover: “The crowds going ahead of Him, and those who followed, were
shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David; BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE
NAME OF THE LORD; Hosanna in the highest!’”
“9 Those who went
in front and those who followed were shouting: "Hosanna! BLESSED IS
HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD.”
Next we see that these excited people cut palm branches
or trees and had them as they went out to meet Him, and then we here their
shouts “Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord, even the King of
Israel.” John MacArthur writes about the
palm branches “The Old Testament does not associate palm branches with
Passover, but rather with the Feast of Tabernacles (Lev. 23:40). In the intertestamental period, however, palm
branches became a general symbol of victory and celebration. When the Jews, led by Simon the Maccabee, recaptured
Jerusalem from the Syrians, they ‘entered it with praise and palm branches’ (1
Macc. 13:51; cf. 2 Macc. 10:7). Perhaps
many in the crowd had that incident in mind as they waved their palm
branches. Maybe, they hoped, Jesus would
prove to be the great messianic King and military conqueror who would liberate
them from the yoke of Rome and establish the promises to Abraham and David
(Gen. 12:1-3; 2 Sam. 7:16).”
We next need to look at the word “Hosanna” as this word
is very interesting in the Hebrew as MacArthur points out: “Hosanna, a term of acclamation or praise,
transliterates a Hebrew word that literally means, ‘Help, I pray,’ or ‘Save
now, I pray’ (cf. Ps. 118:25 NKJV). It
was a term with which every Jew was familiar, since it came from the group of
Psalms known as the Hallel (Pss. 112-18).
The Hallel was sung each morning by the temple choir during the major
Jewish festivals.”
Let us take a look at Psalm 118:26 “Blessed is the one who comes in
the name of the LORD; We have blessed you from the house of the LORD.” Now by using the phrase that I have
highlighted the people were affirming their hope that Jesus was indeed the
Messiah that they were accepting. Now we
mentioned that Jesus had to die when the Passover lambs died and that the
Jewish leaders wanted Him to be executed after the feast was over, and so as
Jesus comes into Jerusalem and accepts the praise of the people that He is
indeed the Messiah, then the Jews would speed up their time of execution of
Jesus. The Jewish leaders feared even
more when the people were saying the words confirming that He was “The King of
Israel.” Remember we looked at this from the 19th chapter of the
gospel of Luke and once this was spoken the Jewish leaders wanted Jesus to
rebuke His disciples who said it and Jesus told them that if the did not say it
the rocks would cry out for this had to be said of Jesus on this day as we
mentioned in an earlier SD, for this was the conclusion of 783 years after
Daniels prophecy found in Daniel 9:24-27.
Jesus was accepting the praise of the people as this
fulfilled the prophecy of Daniel but let us look in conclusion at Luke 19:41-44
to see that Jesus knew what was coming very soon. “41 When He approached Jerusalem; He saw the
city and wept over it,
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. 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, 44 and they will level you to the ground and your
children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize
the time of your visitation.’” As
we have been also studying the book of Zechariah and in the first three verses
of chapter eleven we see a description of what Jesus was weeping over as He
came into this city as Jesus is talking about the time that the Romans would
come into Jerusalem and destroy it. The
Romans began in the northern part of Israel and came all the way to the city of
Jerusalem and totally devastated it, which fulfilled what Moses would write
about in Deuteronomy 28:68 "The LORD
will bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the way about which I spoke to you,
’You will never see it again!’ And there you will offer yourselves for sale to
your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer.’” This literally happened to the Jews as no one
would even buy them to be slaves for there were too many slaves on the slave
market at that time.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: The following is
a couple of definitions of the word “wept” that we see in Luke 19:41 “1a)
weeping as the sign of pain and grief for the thing signified; to weep for,
mourn for, bewail.” This pictures the
love that Jesus Christ had for the people of Israel as what we read in Romans
11:25 was about to fall on them, and even near the end of this chapter
too. “25
For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery-so
that you will not be wise in your own estimation-that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until
the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.” In God’s plan these things were going to
happen to Israel and they have been happening to them since 70 AD, actually
since they went into captivity the first time, but we see that through all of
this that they are loved by God and that God one day will give them their
promised kingdom. I mentioned Zechariah
11:1-3 earlier, but 4-14 prophecy of what the Messiah would do when He came the
first time, and the description is very true to see in the life of Jesus.
My Steps of Faith for Today: To love like Jesus loves through the power of
the Holy Spirit.
Memory verses for the
week: (Romans 6:10-11) “10 For the death
that He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life that He lives, He lives
to God. 11 Even so consider yourselves dead
to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Bethany” (John 11:1).
Today’s Bible
question: “Who told Naaman what to do to
be cured of leprosy?”
9/17/2016 10:39 AM
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