"Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!" - Matthew 21:9
Jesus enters Jerusalem and, in so doing, fulfills Zechariah's prophecy (Zechariah 9:9) and the Psalmist's praise (Psalm 118:25-26): he is the long-awaited Messiah meant to liberate his people from their oppressors. And yet, their Messianic expectations of Jesus will ultimately be the reason they turn on him. For he refuses to liberate them from the Roman discipline meant to sanctify them, and instead comes to deliver them from sin, an oppressor they delight in.
The popular belief in those days was that the Messiah was to be a militant liberator. He was expected to be like David, the warrior-king, who fought to destroy God's physical enemies on earth and defend His people against oppression. The Jews had waited generations for the coming of this warrior-king ever since the line of David had been defeated by the Babylonians generations prior. They had longed for, prayed for, wept for the return of this Messianic king to restore Israel to its glory days.
Jesus arrives and, both implicitly and explicitly, claims to be this Messiah. The Jews' response, as we see here, is ecstatic. They chant Zechariah's prophecy in Zechariah 9:9: "Hosanna to the Son of David!" They certainly have in mind the previous verse, "I will encamp at my temple to guard it against marauding forces. Never again will an oppressor overrun my people, for now I am keeping watch," (Zechariah 9:8). Jesus does as well. But it is not the Romans that he comes to expel. It is the sinful idolatry within his own people. As Peter writes elsewhere, "Judgment begins at the house of God," (1 Peter 4:17).
Though Jesus arrives to their applause, within moments, he will make his true mission known when he visits the temple courts. He overturns the tables of the money changers and the merchants, and in doing so reveals what he has come to do: liberate his people from the oppression of sin and idolatry. Will we welcome his rule and reign in our hearts and lives? Or will we cling to the sin that clings to us?
His own people made their choice - as we see later on in the Passion procession to the cross.
We all come to Jesus with Messianic expectation. Only one is true: "He will save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21)
