At first it seems like a red carpet welcome.
Your previous misgivings melt away.
You start to feel warmed, encouraged. These people like you after all. Everything is going to be fine. You laugh at yourself for having been so apprehensive.
That’s the way we would have entered the holy city with Jesus so long ago on Palm Sunday.
People were giving victory shouts, chanting praises, throwing palm branches down in front of Him.
Yet this conversation had happened shortly before their arrival in the midst of all the jubilation:
“As Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside, and on the way he said to them, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified…’” (Matt. 20:17-19).
Having gotten there, though, the initial reception of the people seemed otherwise. Much to the contrary of the dark attitudes Jesus had predicted, this was a moment of celebrity.
None of it moved Him. Jesus knew where their red carpet was leading.
Concerning the rejection, the outrageous treatment, and the cross, Jesus had said, “will be.”
But…but…they’re calling Him Son of David! They’re saying, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Yes, they are. However, nothing could change those two simple words–”will be.”
Even wild popularity.
The disciples, perhaps, hoped their Master had, at the very least, overstated the traumatic events that would take place in the city. Maybe those things “wouldn’t be.”
Thank God their wish didn’t come true.
The very last “will be” of verse 19:
“he will be raised on the third day.”
