PALM SUNDAY
THE ANOINTED ONE
DR. JIM DIXON
APRIL 9, 2006
LUKE 19:28-44
“Hosanna!” That’s what the crowds shouted on Palm Sunday, as Jesus descended the Mount of Olives into the Kidron Valley, heading into the holy city of Jerusalem. “Hosanna!” And that’s what the children shouted, as we’re told in Matthew’s Gospel, the 21st chapter, that same palm Sunday, as Jesus was approaching the temple in Jerusalem. The children shouted, “Hosanna!” And we find this word hosanna six times in the Bible, and each of these times is associated with Palm Sunday. But the strange thing is that no one knows what the word means. What does hosanna mean?
Now, some people think they know what the word means, but scholars tell us that there really are many possibilities. Some scholars believe that the word hosanna comes from the Greek “hos” and “anna,” which means “to send up, or to praise.” Other scholars believe the word hosanna comes from the Aramaic, and it comes from “ousna,” which means power. Most scholars believe that the word hosanna is a Hebrew word. They believe that it’s a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew found in Psalm 118, where the Hebrew words are “howosiahna anna,” which means, “Save us, we beseech thee.” But this much is for certain. On this, all scholars agree: the word hosanna was associated with Messiah. It was a word in the Hebrew culture that was used to herald the coming of the promised Messiah.
We see this conclusion strengthened by the fact that in the Palm Sunday account, when the crowds shout hosanna, they say, “Hosanna to the son of David,” which was a Messianic title. And they say, “Hosanna, blessed is the king.” Again, a Messianic title. And so, on that Palm Sunday, as Jesus came into Jerusalem and the crowd shouted hosanna, they were recognizing Him as the Messiah, from “masiah,” which means anointed. They were recognizing Him as the Christ, from “christos,” which also means the anointed. He was the Messiah; He was the promised Christ. He was the anointed one. But as Mark said earlier, just five days later, many of those same people were shouting, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” They did not understand what it meant for Jesus to be the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One.
So this morning on this Palm Sunday, I have two teachings, and the first teaching concerns the cross; why the Messiah had to go to the cross. Now, Cincinnati, Ohio, is a city which is named after Cincinnati, who was a Roman general and a Roman statesman. The year was 458 BC when Cincinnatus was on his farm outside the city of Rome. He was a general and he was a military leader and he was a statesman, but what he really loved was farming. He wanted to spend all of his time on his farm outside of the city of Rome. But in that year 458 BC, Roman authorities came to Cincinnatus and said, “There is a vast army approaching the eternal city of Rome, and the people are in a panic and we need someone to lead the Roman armies. There is no one greater than you. Leave your farm, come and lead the armies of Rome to battle. Defend the city.”
Cincinnatus left his farm and he led the armies of Rome. He led the Roman armies to victory, and they conquered that invading army. And then Cincinnatus turned his Roman armies around and they marched into the eternal city. Crowds lined the street, and they all hailed him as he rode into the city of Rome in triumph. The crowds, the people, and even the Roman leaders wanted to make Cincinnatus king. They wanted to make him king of Rome, king of the developing empire. And Cincinnatus said no. He just wanted to go back to his farm. And so 16 days after leaving his farm, he returned to his farm and he began to work his crops.
Now, George Washington has been called the American Cincinnatus. He’s been called the American Cincinnatus because George Washington also refused the crown in the aftermath of the War of Independence. In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, as we were victorious, many military leaders and indeed political leaders drafted a letter to George Washington asking if George Washington was willing to be the new sovereign, the new king of this new nation of America.
George Washington wrote back from the city of Newburgh on May 22nd, 1782, and I want to read some of his words to you. He wrote these words: “If you have any regard for your country, if you have any concern for yourself or for your posterity, if you have any respect for me, banish these thoughts from your mind. Never again communicate a sentiment of like nature to anyone. Your obedient servant, George Washington.” George Washington refused the crowd. And there’s a sense in which when Jesus came into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday, He also refused the crown. “Blessed is the king!” they shouted, but He refused the crown. Now, He did not deny His kingship. I mean, when the crowds shouted, “Hosanna, blessed is the king, peace in heaven, glory in the highest!” AND the Pharisees said to Jesus, “Rebuke your disciples,” Jesus said, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
He was not denying His kingship, but He was not ready to take the crown. First He had to ascend a hill called Calvary. He had to climb a hill called Golgotha. He had to go to the cross, and the crowd did not understand. I mean, they called Him the Christ. They called Him the Messiah, from “masiah.” They called Him the Anointed One, but they did not understand.
You see, in Israel there were three anointed offices, and the Messiah was expected to fulfill all three of them. The first anointed office was the office of King. If you look at 1 Samuel chapter 10, the king is called anointed and it’s required that the king be anointed. The second anointed office was prophet. And you look at 1 Kings chapter 19, and that the prophet was an anointed office and the prophet could only enter office through anointing. And then the third anointed office was the priestly office. You look in Exodus chapter 28 and you see how the priests of Israel had to be anointed in order to enter office.
But the Messiah, the Christ, was the Anointed One, and He was to fulfill all three of these offices. So, He came into Jerusalem, that Palm Sunday to fulfill the anointed office of priest. And priests existed to represent the needs of man before God through atonement. Priests existed to make atonement for the sin of the people. And so Jesus came into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday to fulfill the priestly office and make atonement for the sin of the people, for He was the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ.
Now many of you know that in 70 AD the Roman General Titus and his Roman legions invaded the city of Jerusalem and they conquered it. They overran it. They drove the Jews from the city. Some fled to Masada. They died there in a later suicide pact. And as the Jews and Titus and his Roman legions ran over the city of Jerusalem, they destroyed the Temple Mount and they knocked down the temple. Not one stone was left lying on another. They destroyed the holy temple on the Holy Mountain, Mount Moriah. And the sacrificial system came to an end in 70 AD with Titus and his Roman legions. That ended the sacrificial system of the Jews because the temple was no more. There were no more temple alters upon which to sacrifice the blood of animals for the sin of the people. And there was no more Holy of Holies, so there was no more Day of Atonement, no more Yom Kippur. It all ended in 70 AD because there was no Holy of Holies for the high priest to take the blood of animals in seeking atonement for the sin of the people.
But in the sight of God, the sacrificial system had really ended 40 years earlier when Jesus died on Good Friday on the cross. That’s when the sacrificial system ended in the sight of God, when His Son made atonement for the sin of the world on the cross. That was the end of the sacrificial system. And that day, Good Friday, was Yom Kippur. It was the Day of Atonement when Jesus Christ took the sin of the people upon Himself and fulfilled the priestly office. He died in substitutionary atonement for you, and He died in substitutionary atonement for me. This is the cross, and it’s at the very heart of the gospel. It’s why Jesus rode into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday—the Anointed One and Messiah.
That’s a curious thing. When you look at the world religions, most of them give honor to Jesus Christ. I mean, most of the religions of the world give some reverence, some acknowledgement, to the person of Jesus Christ. In Islam—in the Koran and in the Hadith—Jesus, we are told, was born of a virgin and he lived a sinless life. Even the prophet Muhammad is not described as having lived a sinless life. But Jesus is called the sinless one in the Koran and the Hadith. He is revered as a prophet, and He is called the Word of God. And it is said in Islam that Jesus will one day come again. Incredible.
In Hinduism, Jesus is called an avatar, a manifestation of deity. And according to Hindu traditions, Jesus went into the east and He became a yoga master, and He returned as guru to the Jews, and He is to be acknowledged and honored by all nations. In Buddhism, Jesus is called the Bodhisattva, which means the perfectly enlightened being. He’s been considered in Buddhism an emanation of the Buddha, and fairly recently the Dali Lama was interviewed by Newsweek Magazine and he had high words of regard and praise for Jesus Christ, whom he called the emanation of Buddha.
But even that article in Newsweek pointed out that, while all the religions of the world honor Christ, they all deny the cross. Every world religion denies the cross. They deny the atonement. And if you deny the cross, you deny the heart of Christianity. If you deny the cross, you deny the very purpose for which Jesus rode into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday, and you deny that He is the Messiah. You deny that He is the Christ. You deny that He is the anointed one, and you deny that He fulfilled the anointed priestly office making, atonement for the sin of the people.
So today, well, we put the cross on the chapel today. I want to come back to that in a moment. You know, in the second and the third and the fourth centuries AD there arose a Greek philosophy and a Greek religion that was called Gnosticism. Gnosticism was a religious construct that held to a philosophical dualism. And Gnostics believed that all matter was evil and all spirit was good. So anything material was evil; only things in the realm of pure spirit were good. And so the main purpose of Gnosticism was to escape the material world—to escape your material body. The goal of Gnosticism was to leave the material body and to enter the realm of pure spirit.
The Gnostics believed that you could not do that just by dying. To enter the realm of pure spirit, you had to have special knowledge. You had to have hidden knowledge. And so, they were called Gnostics, from “gnosis,” which means knowledge. It was hidden knowledge that saved you. And Gnostics believe that the purity of God, who could not be seen and is virtually unknown, is called Bythos, and that there were many emanations that came forth from God by which God was known, and they’re all flawed. The furthest emanation from Bythos, the furthest emanation from God, they called the demiurge. It was so far removed from God that the demiurge was a being that, while it had some God-like qualities, was tainted and corrupted. They believed that it was the demiurge that created the material universe.
It was so far removed from Bythos that it just didn’t understand, and the demiurge went and created the material universe. This world and your bodies were all created by the demiurge. This was a horrible mistake, and the Gnostics believed that the demiurge was the God of the Jews. Gnostics believed that the demiurge was the God of the Old Testament. He made the mistake of creating the material universe. And so, the Gnostics by definition repudiated Judaism. Gnosticism also assailed Christianity, although (here’s the amazing thing) the Gnostics believe that the first emanation closest to Bythos in this world, the closest to God, is Jesus Christ. That’s what the Gnostics believe. So, in the second, third, and fourth centuries, they infiltrated Christian churches. They did not believe in the resurrection. I mean, who wants to get another body? You’re trying to get rid of the one you have, and you want to enter the realm of pure spirit.
So they rejected the resurrection, and they also rejected the cross because you weren’t saved by atonement. You were saved by hidden knowledge. And so, Gnostics rejected the cross and they rejected the resurrection. And they believed that Jesus didn’t go to the cross. Either His spirit left the body before the cross, or there was somebody else who went in His place. Gnostics rejected the cross. And Gnostics wrote many books, and they wrote their own gospels. So they wrote the Gospel of Eve, and they wrote the Gospel of Mary, and they wrote the gospel of Thomas, and they wrote the Gospel of Bartholomew, and they wrote the Gospel of Philip, and they wrote the gospel of Judas, which the newspapers in these last few days has made so much of. And these gospels were written 50 to 200 years after the books of the Bible.
50 to 200 years later, those Gnostic gospels were written. And what they tried to do in their Gnostic gospels was go back and retrofit Gnosticism into all the apostles and into Jesus Himself. So they tried to make Thomas a Gnostic, Mary a Gnostic, Judas a Gnostic, and they tried to make Jesus a Gnostic. But the crazy thing is, Gnosticism didn’t even exist in the first half of the first century. Jesus was not a Gnostic. His apostles were not Gnostics. This is all retrofitted by books written centuries later. And the Gnostic gospels were rightly rejected by the ecclesiastical councils, including the Council of Nicaea. But you read the newspapers or you listen to the news and you think, wow, the Bible’s all up for grabs. But it’s deception. And the Bible says, “In the last days, many will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.”
The Bible says the time is coming when people will no longer endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own liking, and they’ll turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. And that’s what Gnosticism is, just a silly myth. Those gnostic gospels were rejected long ago. The gospel of Judas (even though a copy of it has just recently been found) has always been known because Irenaeus wrote about it in the year 180 AD, and he called it blasphemous. But all of this is really about a rejection of the cross—a rejection of Jesus Christ, a rejection of holy scripture.
So where are you and what have you done with the cross? Because it’s at the heart of the gospel. And it’s why Jesus rode into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday. Have you come to the foot of the cross? Have you knelt there? Have you ever cried there? Have you ever repented of your sin? And have you ever embraced Jesus as your Savior? Have you ever asked Him to wash you whiter than snow by His shed blood, by His fulfillment of the anointed priestly office, by His atoning sacrifice the cross?
Well, I have one more teaching briefly this Sunday morning, and that concerns the crown. Of course, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and the people shouted, “Hosanna, blessed is the king! Blessed is the king!” And as we have already seen, five days later, many of those same people were shouting, “Crucify Him!” They didn’t understand His kingship; they didn’t understand His reign.
93 years earlier in 63 BC, Pompeii and his Roman legions had ridden into Jerusalem, conquered it, and conquered all of Palestine. And so, Pompeii and the Romans made Palestine and the city of Jerusalem a vassal. And for 93 years, by the time Palm Sunday came and Jesus rode into Jerusalem, the people had been subject to Roman tyranny. “Hosanna!” they shouted, perhaps in the literal sense of “howosiahna”—”Save us, we beseeched thee, save us!” And prior to the Romans, the Jews had suffered from the tyranny of the Seleucids and Antiochus IV, who was called Epiphanes. And prior to the Seleucids, they had suffered under the tyranny of the Greeks and Alexander. And prior to the Greeks, they had suffered under the tyranny of Medo-Persia and Cyrus the Great. And prior to the Medo-Persians, they had suffered under the Babylonians and Nebuchadnezzar. They’d suffered under the Assyrians. They had experienced centuries of suffering, centuries of being conquered, centuries of being a vassal state. And so they shouted, “Hosanna, save us, we beseeched thee! Blessed is the king; save us now!”
But they didn’t understand. He wasn’t the kind of king they wanted. And how about you? Is He the kind of king you want? And if He’s the kind of king you want, then you must trust His reign. One day He will come again, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He said, “Behold, I’m coming soon, bringing My recompense to repay everyone for what He’s done. I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.” He will come again. But as you live now in this day, can you trust His reign? In the midst of whatever you’re going through, in the midst of all the hardships of your life, can you trust Him? Have you really embraced His reign?
You know, one of my favorite passages in the Bible is John chapter 21. In John chapter 21, we’re told how Jesus appeared to the disciples by the Sea of Galilee, resurrected and alive, and sat down and had breakfast with them that morning. What a wonderful breakfast that must have been; how incredible. And after breakfast, Jesus took a walk with Peter; He just took a walk. As Jesus and Peter walked along, Jesus told Peter how Peter would die. And Jesus told Peter that he too would die of crucifixion; he would be crucified. And Peter must have had many thoughts as Jesus revealed this to Him. But the Bible tells us that Peter turned around and He saw the Apostle John following them. And I think you know what Peter said. He said, “Lord, what about him? What’s going to happen to him?”
Jesus must have smiled. And Jesus said, “Peter, if it be My will that John lives until I come again, what is that to you?” You follow me. And that’s what He says to you. That’s what He says to me. Just follow Me. Just follow Me. Trust Me.
It’s not easy because the road has many bumps and there’s pain in life. There’s joy, but there’s also pain. And we’re called to trust His reign. Some of you have probably seen a beautiful little movie called Love Comes Softly. In one scene, Clark sits on a bench with Marty and Marty is wrestling with the loss of a little girl’s mother. She doesn’t understand how God could let such a thing happen. Clark responds that even though bad things happen, God’s promise to us is that He is still always there with us.
When Clark leaves, Marty stays on that bench, looking at God’s creation, and in the scene that follows, she flashes back on her life and all the hardships she’s been through and all the things that had made her angry at God. She began to surrender and embrace the reign of Christ and the sovereignty of God. She began to trust. It’s a beautiful movie. And of course, it’s not easy sometimes to look back on your life and some of the things that have disappointed you and embrace the reign of Christ, but that’s what it means to accept Jesus as King. That’s what it means to say “Hosanna” and really believe it.
You know, Barb and I have friends named Ken and Jeannie Atkinson. Some of you know them. Ken and Jeannie were both in my singles group more than 30 years ago back at Faith Presbyterian Church in Aurora. At that time, Ken was in medical school preparing to be a doctor, and Jeannie was in nursing school. Ken and Jeannie met and they fell in love and they were married. I flew back to Kansas City to do their wedding more than 30 years ago. And through the years, Ken and Jeannie have had four children. Allison and Whitney, their first two children, I had the privilege of baptizing. Their last two children, the third and the fourth children, have recently died. In these last few years, Kendall and Taylor have both passed away. They were both born with a congenital illness, a disease called Fanconi anemia. And it’s based on two FA genes coming together. It’s extremely rare, and there’s really no cure.
Kids who have Fanconi anemia don’t live long. They rarely live past their teenage years. And so Kendall died a few years ago, and then Taylor just died recently. I know many of you were praying. Ken is my doctor, and Ken and Jeannie loved Jesus. I just got a letter from them this last week. And Ken and Jeannie write that when I married them more than 30 years ago, none of us could possibly have known that God was bringing together two FA genes. None of us could have known that; only God could know. But they wrote that they believe it happened by the hand of God.
They believe that sometimes what comes by the hand of God is painful. But they said they also believe that it’s only God’s hand that can take away the pain. And they asked for our prayers. What’s so beautiful is I know that Ken and Jeannie have embraced the reign of Christ. And even in the midst of stuff like this, they trust Him. And I tell you, when Ken and Jeannie have been in heaven for 10,000 years, and when Kendall and Taylor have been in heaven for 10,000 years, they’ll look back and the few years on this earth won’t seem like much. But the time you have here now needs to live by faith. You need to live by faith.
Now, I read an article two weeks ago in Christianity Today, an article by Chuck Colson. And the article was called Soothing Ourselves to Death. Chuck Colson believes that’s what a lot of churches are doing in their worship services. As Christians come into church to worship on Sunday, they’re just soothing themselves to death. And he says he thinks this is particularly true in the praise songs that we sing. Obviously, Chuck Colson doesn’t like praise songs. He believes they’re excessively repetitive and theologically vacuous. And so he says he gets tired of singing the same phrase over and over again, soothing ourselves to death. And he spoke of a time just a few weeks ago that he was in church and they were singing a praise hymn that included the words, “Draw me close to you.” And they must have sung the phrase, “draw me close to You,” about 20 times. And you’re thinking, how many more times are we going to sing this? And then there’s a pause. And the worship leader says, “Wasn’t that wonderful? Let’s sing it again.” And Chuck Colson shouted out, “No!” The whole service just stopped. I mean, it must have been an amazing thing.
I understand where Chuck Colson is coming from. Sometimes praise songs are excessively repetitive and sometimes they are theologically vacuous. But I do believe that part of the ministry of a church is to soothe. It sometimes been said that, you know, churches are supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted. I think all of that is true. But I think sometimes what we do at church does need to comfort and needs to help you embrace the reign of Christ and trust it. It’s not easy living in this world. Jesus never said it would be, but trust Him.
Well, our time is more than up. But as you think of Palm Sunday, think of the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ, who fulfills the office of Prophet because He is the Word of God; and fulfills the office of priest because He has put away the sacrificial system by the offering of His own body and atoning sacrifice; and has fulfilled the office of King, for He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And He will one day come again. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.