NATIONALISM, WARE AND THE SOUL
PALM SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
APRIL 13, 2003
LUKE 19:28-44
This is the beginning of holy week. And of course, this week culminates with Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and then ultimately Easter Sunday. This is Palm Sunday. On this Sunday, Jesus Christ came into the holy city of Jerusalem. He came with His entourage of disciples with great multitudes lining the streets as He descended from the Mount of Olives through the Kidron Valley and into the city of Jerusalem.
I think a lot of people fail to understand what Palm Sunday is all about. They do not understand its significance. This morning we have three teachings and the first teaching concerns the subject of nationalism. Palm Sunday is very much about nationalism. Now, the word nationalism is used in a variety of ways and in its simplest form it simply refers to love of one’s country, devotion to one’s nation. I think in that sense, we are all nationalistic. We love our country. We are devoted to our nation. Sometimes nationalism takes an extreme form where it blinds people so that they think their nation can do no wrong. Some people have a devotion to their nation that is extreme to where they’re willing to do wrong for their nation. Some people have a form of nationalism where their highest purpose on earth is to serve their nation.
These are certainly extremes. We should understand that on Palm Sunday, nationalism was rampant in Israel. Nationalism was in the extreme in the city of Jerusalem. And indeed, palm branches were symbols of the nation of Israel and at one time had been symbols of the kings of Israel. Certainly, as Jesus rode into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday nationalism was at a fever pitch.
Now Palm Sunday, and particularly because it was the beginning of Passover, was very important in the life of the Jews. Passover was kind of to the Jews like 4th of July is to us as Americans. It was a time when they looked back on the history of their nation, a time when they looked back on the history of their people. So they looked back to the time where God raised up Moses. They remembered how Moses stood against the Pharaoh of Egypt and how Moses led their people out of Egypt.
They remembered how God parted the Red Sea, how the children of Israel were allowed to pass through and cross as if upon dry land, and how the Egyptians, the armies of Pharaoh, when they tried to do the same were drowned. They remembered their wilderness wanderings. They remembered God’s provision for them: how God provided manna from heaven, how God provided water from the supernatural rock, the rock of Meribah. They remembered Joshua and they remembered the crossing of the Jordan into the Promised land. They remembered how the Ark of the Covenant parted the waters. They remembered the battle of Jericho and all the battles that enabled them to inherit the Promised Land and enable them to be born as a nation and as a people. Nationalism was at a fever pitch at the beginning of Passover as Jesus Christ came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. And the people shouted, “Hosanna!” which means bring or give salvation.
They were wanting their nation to be saved. They were angry—not just nationalistic, but angry because they were an oppressed people. 700 years earlier, the Assyrians had conquered the northern kingdom of Israel under Shalmaneser V and Sargon II and Sennacherib and various Assyrian leaders. They had taken the Jewish people into exile and had placed them in bondage, some in chains. Then came the Babylonians 600 years before Christ. They conquered the southern kingdom of Judah and Nebuchadnezzar the Great brought his armies into the holy city of Jerusalem. And they took Jews captives and back to Babylon. Then came the Medo-Persians, and the Medo-Persians subjugated the people of Israel and Israel became a vassal state of Medo-Persia. And from Cyrus the great to Darius I, from Xerxes to Artaxerxes, the Medo-Persians ruled the nation and people of Israel.
Then came the Greeks under Alexander the Great, and if you know your history, after the period of the Greeks came, the Seleucids, who were Greeks. And of course the year was 168 BC when Antiochus IV, called Epiphanes, God manifest, brought his Seleucids army south and they ravished the city of Jerusalem, killing men, women, and children in the streets setting up what the Jews called the abomination of desolation in the Holy of Holies of the Jerusalem temple. It was all part of the abuse of their nation.
There was a brief respite during the Maccabean Revolt and the period the Hasmoneans, but then came the Romans. The year was 63 BC when Pompeii the Great, the Roman general, brought his Roman armies into Israel. And Israel became a vassal state of the empire of Rome. Pompeii returned to Rome in a triumphal entry into the eternal city with a chariot pulled by elephants. But the people of Israel, the Jews, remained a subjugated people and they were angry on Palm Sunday. Hosanna—hosiana! “Bring salvation now!” And they viewed Him as a nationalistic messiah. They had awaited His coming. They believed that He would deliver the nation of Israel from oppression and exalt the nation of Israel to glory on the earth—that they would become the greatest of all nations and the greatest of all peoples. And this was in their heart, and this is what they meant when they waved the palm branches.
So, Jesus came into Jerusalem, but He did not come to be their nationalistic deliverer. He was Jewish, to be sure, conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. He had Jewish blood, but He was not focusing on the nation of Israel. As He came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday morning, He had global thoughts. He was thinking about you. He had eternal thoughts. He was thinking about all the people of the world as He rode into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday.
It’s difficult for some of us in the midst of our nationalism to let Jesus be Jesus. It was very hard for the Jews in Israel to let Jesus be Jesus. They wanted Him to be their nationalistic hero. I think sometimes here in America, in the midst of our nationalism, we kind of view Jesus as an American. I am an American and proud to be an American, but Jesus is not an American. I have pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Jesus has not pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, nor has He pledged allegiance to the flag of any other nation. And indeed, the nations of this world are great when their people pledge allegiance to Him.
And if we would understand Christ, we would understand that when He came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday He was coming to give birth to a new nation from all nations. He was coming to give birth to a new race from all races. He was coming to give birth to a new people from all people. And the Apostle Peter came to understand this. And that is why in the book of 1 Peter, the second chapter, the ninth verse, you read these words. Peter’s writing to Christians of all nations. He’s writing to Christians of all races. And he says to them, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people. Once you were no people, now you are God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, now you have received mercy.” Do you understand? Christ came in to create a new people, a new nation, a new race from all races, from all nations, from all peoples. And today we sit here, and there is this great nation, this great race, this great people, called the Kingdom of Heaven. And it has grown all over the world.
I hold in my hand a book called The Next Christendom. It’s about the coming of global Christianity. Global Christianity has come. This book is by Philip Jenkins, professor of history and religious studies at Penn State University. It’s a brilliant book and it’s a great read. He explains how Christianity in the western world is dying but everywhere else Christianity is in a vast explosion. It’s just exploding and growing all over the world. Here in the United States and in Canada, there are, nominally speaking, 260 million Christians. But that’s nothing. There are 313 million Christians now in Asia alone and 360 million Christians in Africa. Just 103 years ago, in the year 1900, there were only 10 million Christians in Africa. There are now 360 million Christians in Africa. Now there are 480 million Christians in Latin America. There are 1,150 million Christians outside of the Western world.
There are still 580 million nominal Christians in Europe, so there are 2 billion Christians on the planet. By the year 2050, Jenkins argues there’ll be 3 billion Christians on the earth and Anglo people will only represent one out of every five Christians, 20%. You better get used to diversity, you better love color, you better love all nations, because that’s what this new nation is founded out of. That’s what this new people consists of. The kingdom of heaven. When we get to heaven, you’re going to see a lot of color. You’re going to see a lot of nations represented. And it’s all part of why Jesus went into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
So we are citizens of an earthly nation. We are citizens of the United States of America, and we are blessed. But even more importantly, we are citizens of a heavenly nation, and in that sense, strangers, aliens, and exiles on the earth. We are citizens of the kingdom of heaven, and it demands our highest allegiance. And in that sense, nationalism, earthly nationalism, is repudiated because our highest allegiance must be to Christ and the kingdom of Christ. And that is what Palm Sunday was all about. We’re told in Revelation chapter 11 that one day the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ and He shall reign forever and ever. We’re told in Matthew 25 that one day Jesus Christ will judge the nations. And Jesus Himself said that one day He would come in power and great glory, and with Him will come the angelic host and He will sit on His glorious throne and before Him will be gathered all the nations, all the people groups. And He will separate them one from the other. He will judge the nations. And He demands our highest allegiance. It’s not about America. It’s not about Israel. It’s about the kingdom of heaven. And the people on Palm Sunday did not understand that.
Secondly, Palm Sunday is about war. For many people in the crowd, perhaps for most of the people in the crowd, when they saw Jesus coming towards Jerusalem with His entourage of disciples and when thousands of people lined that road, they were thinking, “This is the beginning of the end. This is the war to end all wars.” They believed that Jesus Christ would be the militant Messiah. That’s what they looked for. And palm branches were a symbol of military victory. The year had been 165 BC when a man named Judah Maccabee came into the city of Jerusalem. Judah Maccabee, sometimes called Judah Maccabeus, was the son of a priest. He’d been raised up by God. His story is told in the inner testament literature. It’s told in the apocrypha; it’s told in the book of 1 Maccabees.
He was the son of a priest raised up by God as a national deliverer for Israel. He was a kind of messianic figure, and he rallied the Jews and formed a vast army. And they went to war against the Seleucids and against Antiochus Epiphanes and they won. They drove the Seleucids out of Israel. It was the beginning of the Hasmonean reign. And Judah Maccabee was kind of the leader of the Hasmoneans. He drove them out of Israel militarily in war, killing them as they tried to kill him. And then he brought his Jewish armies into Jerusalem and he went into the temple and they cleansed it; they purified it. They took the desecrating sacrilege, the abomination, the pagan altar that Antiochus Epiphanes had put up in the Holy of Holies, and they removed it and they cleansed the temple and they relit the lamps. And of course, that’s all celebrated today by the Jews in the festival of Hanukkah.
Judah Maccabee died in the year 160. çhis brothers, Jonathan and Simon, continued the fight and they became Messianic figures in Israel and military leaders. And they ruled the Hasmonean dynasty. In the year was 141 BC when Simon Maccabee won a great victory over the Seleucids and brought his Jewish army back to the city of Jerusalem. And as he came down the Mount of Olives on that road and into the holy city, the people lined the roads and they had palm branches as Simon Maccabee, 141 years before Christ, came into Jerusalem. They waved their palm branches in a symbol of military victory and threw palm branches in the road before him.
It was all about war. And I can guarantee you as Jesus Christ came into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday, there were many who thought that way. They didn’t think it was the beginning of Holy Week. They thought, “This is the beginning of the war and He’s our militant messiah.” And there were zealots in the crowd. The zealot party was the fourth party in Israel, founded by Judah of Galilee in the reign of Quirinius. And the zealots sought the violent overthrow of Roman oppression. Some zealots were assassins, as mentioned in Acts chapter 21 in the Bible. The Greek word “siccari” means “dagger man,” and that’s what the zealots were like. They carried daggers in their coats, and they would try to hide in crowds. And when they found Roman soldiers, they would just kill them. And they waited for a militant Messiah who would come and lead them and all of Israel to victory over Roman and stop the oppression.
Maybe some of the disciples were zealots. In addition to Simon Peter, the Bible mentions the disciple called Simon the zealot. Some Bible scholars believed Judah was a zealot. We’re told in Matthew chapter 18 that the Apostle Peter bore a sword (at least he did near the end of Christ’s earthly life). And we’re told in Luke chapter 22 that all the disciples wore swords. Maybe they viewed Him at least in part as a militant Messiah, and they believed He was coming to wage war. But He was not. It was not about war. They didn’t understand. He was coming in peace, and they should have suspected that because He came into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. He had chosen that donkey. Historians tell us that in the Middle East in the time of Christ when a king visited a city and He was coming in peace, He would ride a donkey. When He came for war, He would ride a white stallion. Jesus came riding a donkey. That doesn’t mean Christ is anti-war; it doesn’t mean that one day (as the Bible tells us in Revelation chapter 19) Jesus Christ is coming again. In the apocalyptic language of the Book of Revelation, we’re told this: He’ll come on a white horse. He’ll come on a white stallion, and He’ll come for war. He’ll tread the wine press of the wrath of the fury of the Lord God Almighty. That’s what the Bible says. And Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
We’ve been in the midst of a series on the Old Testament for seven months looking at life lessons from biblical people. We’ve now reached the period of the judges and you know their story. Each of the judges were war leaders, military deliverers—from Othniel and Shamgar to Ehud, to Deborah, to Barack, to Samson, to Jephthah, to Gideon. They were all military deliverers raised up by God. When the children of Israel were oppressed by some other power, some other nation, God would raise up a military deliver to lead the children of Israel in war, that they might cast off the shackles of oppression. God is not anti-war. We misunderstand Christ if we think He’s anti-war. We look at the New Testament in the book of Romans, the 13th chapter, and we look in the New Testament in the book of 1 Peter, the second chapter, and we see that earthly government and earthly nations are willed by God to deter evil. God has given earthly governments, the Bible tells us, the sword, the physical sword. And God wants earthly governments to use the sword, the Bible says, to deter evil.
Yes, Jesus was coming in peace. It was not about war and it was not about any earthly kingdom; it was about the kingdom of heaven. And Jesus wants you to understand today the kingdom of heaven does not need war, not for its purposes. The kingdom of heaven has not advanced militarily throughout history. Christians have sometimes misunderstood that. You know the story of Constantine the Great, emperor of Rome. The year was 312 when he allegedly had a vision. He was on his way to the battle of the Milvian bridge on the Tiber River. He had this vision, allegedly, where God told him to fight under the sign of the cross. Historians tell us that Constantine the Great took the first two Greek letters in the name of Christ, “chi rho,” and he put them on his battle shields. And he honestly thought he was advancing the kingdom of heaven on earth militarily.
What a tragedy. Of course, we come to the year 800 AD and we see Charlemagne, Charles the Great, crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III. And he would drive foreign armies to flight and he would send them into oceans and lakes and rivers and force them to receive Christian baptism or he or he would kill them. And he thought he was advancing the kingdom of heaven in war, militarily. Frederick Barbosa in the 12th century, the holy Roman emperor, did exactly the same, driving the armies of foreign nations into bodies of water and forcing them to receive Christian baptism. In the crusades, misguided men and women were actually thinking they could advance the kingdom of heaven through war.
As Jesus came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, it wasn’t about earthly kingdoms. It was about the heavenly kingdom. And he was coming in peace, not about war. It’s a tough thing for us as Christians though, isn’t it? Because we’re citizens of two kingdoms, aren’t we all? We have dual citizenship. I have dual citizenship. I’m a citizen of the United States of America, and then I have a higher citizenship. I’m a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. And the Bible deals with both. But Christians seem to get confused. The Bible tells us that earthly governments must bear the sword for earthly purposes, to deter evil on the earth. So even as a Christian, you might be called to a service as a police officer. You might need to bear the sword to deter evil. You might be called as a citizen of the United States to serve in the military. You might be called to war, hopefully to stop oppression and to deter evil. And that’s a legitimate call, biblically.
But of course, we are also citizens of the kingdoms of the kingdom of heaven. And the kingdom of heaven operates under the mandate of love. It’s what Maundy Thursday is all about. It’s coming up this week. “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another even as I have loved you.” This characterizes the kingdom of heaven. The Sermon on the Mount guides the people of the kingdom of heaven. We are people of the cross, people who have come to the cross and asked Jesus Christ to forgive us. We’ve embraced His atoning sacrifice. We’re people of the resurrection. We believe He rose from the dead in power and great glory and that He’s coming again. We believe that He will raise from the dead all who love Him. We believe that we have eternal life with Him. We believe our life is eternal and our purpose is great. But it’s tough being a Christian because you know we’re bridging two worlds: earthly kingdoms and then the heavenly one. But when Christ came into Jerusalem, the people didn’t understand. They thought it was all about their earthly kingdom called Israel. And it wasn’t. It was about the heavenly kingdom of Christ.
Well, there’s a final teaching, and that concerns salvation. Of course, the palm branch was also a symbol of salvation. If you lived in the Middle East, you’d understand that if you traveled across barren, parched earth, if you traveled across desert regions, you knew what a palm tree represented. If you saw an oasis, you’d see palms. And it was a source of life and salvation in the midst of a parched and barren land. A palm tree was a symbol of salvation. And in that sense, how appropriate as Christ came into Jerusalem it is often called the triumphal entry. And you can get out a Bible commentary and you can look up “Palm Sunday” and it will call it the triumphal entry. And you might even be able to look up triumphal entry and it will call it Palm Sunday.
But of course, the phrase triumphal entry is a military phrase and it really doesn’t fit well the event of Christ coming into Jerusalem. Certainly, when Simon Maccabee in 165 came into Jerusalem after military victory, that was a triumphal entry. Certainly, when Julius Caesar entered Rome after his many military victories, those were triumphal entries. And he would come on a chariot of gold pulled by a team of lions and there’d be a huge processional. And you can just envision it: Roman senators at the front of the processional followed by trumpeters. And then came sacrificial oxen, then came carriages laden with the spoils of war. Then there came prisoners bound in chains. Then came Julius Caesar himself in his golden chariot and behind him the armies of Rome. And as they marched down the Via Sacra moving towards the Roman forum, crowds by the thousands lined the street. Historians tell us more than a hundred thousand would line the street. “Hail Caesar, hail Caesar, hail Caesar!” “Veni, vidi, vici.” He said, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” That was a triumphal entry. He had triumphed over the enemies of Rome.
Jesus hadn’t won any victories. When he came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, His victories were all ahead of Him. They were all ahead of Him and they were not military. He was going to the cross and then He was going to the grave. But of course, those were His greatest victories. And on the cross He shouted, “Tetelestai,” “It is finished.” But that word means “paid in full.” They used to stamp it on documents when debts had been paid. It was victory; paid in full. He paid for your sin. The penalty for your sin, the penalty for my, was sin paid in full. That’s victory.
Of course, He rose from the dead triumphant. Death could not hold him. That’s victory. He’s the hope of the world. That’s victory. So He came into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday and the victories were yet ahead of Him and they were greater than any military victories could be: victory over sin, victory over death. And if you’re here this morning as a Christian, you’ve embraced Him as Lord and Savior. If you’re just listening and you don’t know what you believe, this is a moment where Palm Sunday can literally be real for you and change your life. I mean, this moment you can understand that it’s really not about earthly nations. It’s about the heavenly kingdom of Christ. In these moments, you can understand that earthly wars might be necessary, but there’s a spiritual battle far more important for the souls of men and women all over the world.
In this moment, you can understand that only Jesus Christ offers forgiveness of sin. No one else died for you. Only Jesus can, and only He triumphed over the grave. And he is the hope of the world. In this moment, you can pledge your life to Him and you can receive Him as the Messiah, the anointed one Lord. Let’s close with the word of prayer.