“The Bible’s Children: the children who shouted ‘Hosanna’”
Matthew 21:15-17
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Sixteen years ago, back in February of 2007, a television game show hosted by Jeff Foxworthy and produced by Mark Burnett aired for the very first time. It was called Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?
The idea was simple. In each game, each contestant was asked a series of questions, taken from first through fifth grade textbooks, that spanned ten different subjects. And while some of the questions were simple true or false, others required either a short answer or a multiple choice. And each time the player answered correctly, they had the chance to win anywhere from $25,000 all the way up to $1 million. And if they got a wrong answer, they were forced to drop out, (what they called “flunking out,”) and had to face the camera and say, “I am not smarter than a 5th grader.”
So in the spirit of making sure you’re awake this Sunday morning, let me try a few of the actual questions on you…
The first one’s this--if a car is traveling at 40 miles per hour, how long will it take to go 190 miles? Is it 4 hours, 45 minutes; 3 hours, 30 minutes; 4 hours, 15 minutes; or 3 hours, 15 minutes. (You look confused!)
Just divide 190 miles by 40 miles per hour, and you get the correct answer of 4 hours and 45 minutes.
How about this one--how many nouns are in the following sentence: “The rabbit ran to the cafeteria and ate a big salad”?
The correct answer is…three--rabbit, cafeteria, and salad.
How about an easy one--what are the three types of rock?
The correct answer is igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic.
And one more, this time a hard one--a farmer notices that every day for the past ten days, the number of pigeons in his field has doubled. There are 1,024 pigeons in the field today, and there were two pigeons there the first day. How many pigeons were there yesterday?
The correct answer is 512! Maybe that wasn’t so hard after all.
Now in case you’re wondering--so far, only two people have made it all the way to the million dollar prize. One was a woman named Kathy Cox, superintendent of public schools for the state of Georgia, and the other was George Smoot, who not only won a Nobel Prize in Physics, but who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, proving that they were, in fact, smarter than a 5th Grader.
In our text for today, we meet a whole group of people who, unfortunately, were not smarter than a 5th Grader. I’ll read the words of Matthew chapter 21: “And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and He overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, ‘It is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer,” but you make it a den of robbers.’ And the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ they were indignant, and they said to Him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read, ‘“Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies You have prepared praise”?’ And leaving them, He went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there” (Matthew 21:12-17).
Let’s step back for a moment to see what’s going on.
Matthew chapter 21 takes us to the very beginning of Holy Week, the final week of Jesus’ suffering and death. Over the next seven days, He’ll join with His disciples in one last Passover meal, He’ll take bread and wine and say, “Take, eat, this is My body; take, drink, this is My blood,” He’ll fall with His face to the ground in cold, dark Gethsemane, He’ll suffer six grueling hours on a rough, wooden cross, then He’ll die for all the sins of all the world.
There’s no more important week than Holy Week.
And it all started with this--His triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
Remember how it all began? Just as soon as He sent His disciples to find a donkey and its colt that He sat down on that colt. And as the crowd waved palm branches in the air and spread their cloaks down on the road, they shouted: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (Matthew 21:9).
And making His way through the city streets, He came at last to the temple, to the place of worship and sacrifice, prayer and praise--His Father’s house. Then He took a whip and drove out all who bought and sold there, and even overturned their tables, saying, “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves” (Matthew 21:13).
And seeing the blind and the lame in the temple, the Bible says He healed them, and sent them seeing and walking on their way.
“He came to the temple,” it says. Not to Pilate’s palace or to Herod’s house, and not even to Fortress Antonio, the home of the Roman army. He went instead to the temple, because that’s where He wanted to be. That’s where He needed to be.
As one commentator wrote, “While many need a soldier and many need an army, more than anything, men need God. For only when men are right with God--His worship, His purpose, and His will--can men be right with men.”
Then what? Matthew wrote in verse 15: “But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ they were indignant, and they said to Him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying’?” (Matthew 21:15-16).
Let’s stop there for just a moment. The Bible said, “the chief priests and scribes.” Who were they?
They were the religious leaders, the spiritually elite. They ruled over the temple and over all who bought and sold there. And as far as they were concerned, they had every right to be there.
Now if this Jesus character wanted to preach and teach or even feed thousands with fish and bread, He could do all that somewhere else, but not here. This was their place, this was their turf, and He had absolutely no business being there at all.
“So Jesus, if You don’t mind, You can just pack up Your disciples and Your adoring crowds, and get Yourself on out of here!”
And what was even worse, what for them was the last straw, were the children, the children who cried, “Hosanna! Hosanna to the Son of David!”
Children? What were they doing there?
This was the feast of Passover, after all, and they had come far from home, with their mothers and fathers, their sisters and brothers, to give praise to God. Besides, they had heard so many others shout “Hosanna!”, so why couldn’t they praise Jesus too?
But “Hosanna”? “Son of David”? Now wait just one second here! That word, “Hosanna,” comes from the Old Testament, from the book of Psalms, Psalm 118. It’s where it says, “Save us, we pray, O Lord! O Lord, we pray, give us success!” (Psalm 118:25).
“Save us, Lord!” “Hosanna!”
And “Son of David”? Not only are these simple, ignorant children praising Jesus as one should only praise God, but they’re calling Him the Son of David, the Messiah, the Son of God!
Born in October of 1836, James Tissot knew that he wanted to be a painter, even at the age of seventeen. So even though his father discouraged him, (while his mother encouraged him), that’s exactly what he did. So he traveled all the way to Paris to study under the masters, to learn how to paint. Before long, he became known for painting elegantly dressed women in scenes of fashionable life.
But when he turned fifty, things changed. For some reason, and we don’t know why, he felt a need to return to his Christian faith, the faith his mother once taught him, so he first took one trip, then two more trips to the Holy Land. And there he sought to paint the people, the landscape, the architecture, and the way of life as accurately as he could. Then when he returned home, he put together an entire collection of paintings on the life of Jesus, paintings that would go on display in museums as far away as London, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
And most of his work was on Holy Week, like Jesus in Agony in the Garden, or the Raising of the Cross, or What Jesus Saw from the Cross.
And when he came to Palm Sunday, he painted that too, like the Procession on the Mount of Olives or through the streets of Jerusalem.
He even painted the children too. Can you see them, arm in arm, shouting “Hosanna!” while the chief priests and scribes are as mad as mad can be?
And what did they say? They said, “Do you hear what these are saying?” (Matthew 21:16). In other words, do You realize they’re praising You as one should only praise God?
And what did Jesus say? He said, “Yes!” But He wasn’t done. He also said, “Oh, and, by the way, haven’t you ever read the Scriptures that say, ‘You have taught infants and even nursing babies to offer perfect praise’?” (Matthew 21:16).
In the words of a poem: “King Jesus, why did You choose a lowly donkey to carry You to ride in Your parade? Had You no friend who owned a horse--a royal mount with spirit for a king to ride? Why choose a donkey, a small unassuming beast of burden trained to plow, not to carry kings?
“King Jesus, why did You choose me, a lowly unimportant person to bear You in my world today? I’m poor and unimportant, trained to work, not carry kings--let along the King of kings, and yet You’ve chosen me to carry You in triumph in this world’s parade.
“King Jesus, keep me small so that all may see how great You are; keep me humble, so all may say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord,’ and not what a great donkey He rides.”
And so today, even we, along with the children, are privileged to lift our palm branches high and say, “Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Lord Jesus, on that first Palm Sunday, children shouted “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” Reign in our hearts, Lord Jesus, and enable us to know You to be both Lord and God. This we ask in Your name. Amen