The Miracles Were Never The Point

And when he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near to Beth′phage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village opposite, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat; untie it and bring it here. If any one asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ you shall say this, ‘The Lord has need of it.’” So those who were sent went away and found it as he had told them. And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” And they said, “The Lord has need of it.” And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their garments on the colt they set Jesus upon it. And as he rode along, they spread their garments on the road. As he was now drawing near, at the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

Luke 19:28-38

There is a sublime irony in Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on what is now celebrated as Palm Sunday: The same crowds that cheered His arrival would, just a few days later, call for His crucifixion and death.

This is perhaps one of the more challenging aspects of Jesus’ ministry on Earth. How could people so ecstatic at the miracles He performed and the healings He administered turn on Him so suddenly and so completely?

Why would the crowds choose to reject He whom they themselves declared to be “King of the Jews” and the Messiah?

According to the text in Luke, there is no doubt that the crowds heralded Jesus as the King of the Jews. How else are we to apprehend their shouting a blessing for “the King who comes in the name of the Lord”?

There is no doubt but that the crowds in Jerusalem at least acted as if they believed He was the Messiah.

Yet neither does Luke leave any doubt how Jesus apprehends the cheering of the crowd. It impressed Him not.

And when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

Why would Jesus weep over a city that received Him with the adulation described in Luke? Why would He say that the people “did not know” when the Lord would come? How can that be, when those same people celebrated His coming so enthusiastically?

Luke gives us one small clue: the people were praising Jesus for all the miracles and “mighty works” which they had witnessed. The people were completely enamored of what Jesus had done, and as a consequence they perhaps were less mindful of what Jesus taught, and what Jesus came to Jerusalem to do.

Throughout Jesus’ ministry, it is clear that He understood His mission was ultimately to die on the cross at Calvary. Jesus came to Earth both to preach a message of repentance and forgiveness, but also to offer up Himself as the perfect sacrifice, flawless and without the blemish of sin, that the sin offering mandated in Leviticus might be offered for all men and for all time. In dying on the cross Jesus quite literally fulfills the mandate of the Law, that there be atonement for sin.

Thus it is that in Christ we can move from atoning for past sins to accepting that we are redeemed by Christ and forgiven by God. Through Christ’ death on the cross at Calvary, we are given freedom to look forward into an hopefully sinless future instead of being trapped looking back into a sinful past.

For all of the miracles and healings Jesus performed, which the crowd loved and for which the crowd adored Him, the one miracle which mattered was the one He had yet to perform. All the other miracles, all the ones for which the crowd adored Jesus, truly were of no consequence.

The crowd did not, we must conclude, realize this. The crowd did not, we must conclude, understand this.

Perhaps this also lets us understand how the crowd could turn on Jesus so easily. While He was performing miracles and healing the sick and the lame, He was easy to celebrate as “Messiah” and “King of the Jews”. Yet those miracles did not require most of the crowd to understand that Jesus was more than a man, that He was the only begotten Son of God in human form—fully human and fully divine, a mystery our mortal brains will likely never fully comprehend.

If Jesus had been “just a man”, then when the soldiers came to arrest Him, it would have been made clear to the crowd that Jesus was indeed “just a man”. Very likely they would have assumed that the Romans had flexed their muscle at last and decided to put an end to both Jesus and His ministry. The crowd, being fickle in its allegiances among men, would have then found it quite easy to turn on Jesus, simply as an act of survival against an oppressor.

As His disciples would find out on the day of His resurrection, the day we now call Easter Sunday, Jesus was indeed much more than just a man. Jesus was—and is—the only begotten Son of God. Jesus was—and is—the perfect sacrifice, flawless and without blemish, by which all of mankind is redeemed for our sins for all time.

The crowd in Jersusalem on that first Palm Sunday did not understand this. They did not see this. Not seeing, they turned away from Jesus, from redemption, and turned, perhaps unwittingly, back towards sin.

Like the crowd in Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday, we might not know all the things that will bring us peace. Unlike that crowd, however, we know that Jesus did die on the cross at Calvary, and that by His death He did redeem all of mankind for all time. Unlike that crowd, we can know that the miracles Jesus performed during His ministry were never the point, that they were merely the prologue to the real miracle of His death and resurrection.

If we know that, perhaps we know just enough to avoid making the unwitting choice back towards sin.