“those who went before and those who followed cried out, saying, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’”
As I was reading through some scriptures on the week leading up to the crucifixion, this passage stuck in my brain and I’ve been meditating on it ever since.
In context, Jesus is coming into Jerusalem and being hailed as a king. Did they really believe Messiah? Hard to say, but it was the reception of a king, nonetheless.
The phrase I found interesting is “those who went before and those who followed.” Some preceded Jesus into the city, while others followed. But they all cried out the same thing.
Not mind boggling, necessarily, but important to realize that all men of God before and after the manifestation of the Son of Man were speaking of Christ.
Jesus deals with this in the Gospel of John when He says to the Jews of His day, “You search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life. These are the scriptures that testify of Me, but you are not willing to come to Me that you might have life.” This helps us to understand the purpose for even the Old Testament, which was the scripture Jesus was speaking of here. The Old Testament wasn’t an end of itself but a preparation for a greater revelation, Christ Himself. To read the Old Testament apart from ultimately being fulfilled in Christ the Person will lead to bad teaching.
I’m also reminded of when three of the twelve were taken to a mountain and Jesus is revealed along with Moses and Elijah. As the three disciples were about to make an altar to all three, they were blinded temporarily, and when they could see, only Jesus was left. God says, “This is My Son. Listen to Him.”
The Bible says the Law came through Moses but grace and truth through Jesus. Was there not grace and truth before? Not apart from the person of Christ, no. Jesus later explains that He sends His own Spirit to lead us into “all truth.”
I’m rambling here, but suffice it to say that there is no greater perspective to understand all truth than the perspective of Jesus through His Spirit. In fact, you need nothing else apart from the Person Who declared Himself to be the Truth to receive it. You cannot fully understand any of the scripture, the Old Testament included, unless you have a proper revelation of the Son of God by His Spirit.
Both the Greek and Jewish ways of thinking cannot perceive the truth of Christ, as Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians. God is Spirit and can therefore only be fully and truly understood through the Spirit. We should no longer even know Christ after the flesh, either, but only by the Spirit. Christianity is so spiritual that all fleshly designations are put to death in Him (no Jew or Gentile, barbarian, slave or free), and we are not to even know one another after the flesh.
The men of God who came before spoke of Christ through a mystery. They prepared the way for the Word being made flesh, even through veiled glimpses into the glory that was to later come. But we who have followed after the Word was made flesh, we declare a present reality not a future mystery. We deal in substance where they dealt in shadow. The ones before said, in essence, “He is coming”, not really knowing what that meant. We say, “He has come”, knowing the boundless treasure that truth entails. For He not only came in the flesh two thousand years ago, but the Word is continually “made flesh” in and among His people.
Peace.
The Word, the Spirit, and the Body all united; there it is again; now how to live this out in our congregation?