AP

Mark 11:8-11  Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields.  Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted, “Hosanna!”  “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”  “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!”  “Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

These verses are inspired by Psalm 118 which is replete with the truth of the ‘Gospel’ which the Psalm is foreshadowing.

The Psalm was written (probably by King David, but lacking the usual rubric to that effect) for mass singing by God’s people as an entrance liturgy to the Temple, used at the festival of Passover.  Its words, therefore, would have been uppermost in the minds of the people of Jesus’ day in the week leading up to the Passover.  In the light of everything Jesus had been doing and saying among them for the last three years, it was not difficult to see the underlying message of Psalm 118 as applying to him.

His name, Jesus, in their native language (‘Yeshua’ or ‘Joshua’), meant ‘One who Saves’, and although it is not so obvious to us ‘Hosanna’ derives from the same Hebrew root and is a cry for help: ‘Lord, save us now’.  Psalm 118 is obviously a ‘Messianic’ Psalm – verse 25 is “LORD, save us (‘Hosanna’)! LORD, grant us success!” which was exactly the mission of the Promised Messiah.  (If there was room I would quote all of Psalm 118, but I would encourage you all to take the time to read it yourself in your own Bible!)  Later NT writers would quote from other parts of it extensively, especially verses 22-23: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” and verse 24: “This is the day which the LORD has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

The most significant thing about the way the four Gospel writers report the events of the first ‘Palm Sunday’ is the fact that what the Jewish ‘religious’ leaders failed totally to recognise about Jesus (confirming the prophecy in Psalm 118:22, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone;”) was enthusiastically acknowledged and embraced by the general populace. 

This makes the continued prophecy in verse 23: “the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” even more encouraging for us.  We might feel that our testimony about Jesus in our present culture is falling on deaf ears and being sown in hard rocky ground, but the Lord is carrying out his purposes every day among us, softening hard hearts, leading people of all ages to trust Jesus as Saviour and Lord, and building his Church so that even “the gates of Hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).  Let us never be discouraged, or tempted to give up, in our divinely commissioned task: “Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’” (Matthew 28:18-20)

– Bruce Christian