Did you ever think you knew the truth of a situation and find out later that you had it all wrong? Don’t feel bad, this has happened to entire nations. Our perception of truth will many times be influenced by our desire. Nations have allowed evil people to come into power because they were led to believe that it would greatly benefit them. Time and again people have been deceived because of a lack of knowledge. God said in Hosea 4:6 “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”

Over 2,000 years ago, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey as many people threw their cots on the road ahead of him. Some cut palm branches and threw them on the road while others waved them as they all celebrated the idea that Jesus was the promised Messiah who had come to conquer nations and give them world dominance.

John 12: 12-13 The next day a great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, and cried out: “Hosanna! ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ The King of Israel.”

Hosanna was a cry to be saved. They were expecting Jesus to conquer all of their enemies by military force and the nation of Israel would rule the world. The coming of the Messiah had been taught to them for generations and that was their mindset.

The nation of Israel could not comprehend that the Messiah was going to do a much greater thing than to conquer other nations. He was going to open the way to God the Father to everyone for the remainder of time. Jesus was going to conquer sin, death, hell, and the grave. These were all of the things that kept mankind in bondage from the fall of Adam in the garden. Jesus’s weapons of war against the evil forces of Satan were going to be the works of the Holy Spirit and He was going by the way of the cross to accomplish it. That was not the mindset of these people.

1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Those people who were lining the road and celebration Jesus might not have had the right mindset, but nonetheless, they were experiencing the beginning of the most important event of all time.

Come and join us at The Gathering Place this Sunday morning at 10:30 as we celebrate Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem that we know as Palm Sunday.