This is part of a series of meditations on what Scripture teaches about each day of Holy Week, which goes from Palm Sunday until Easter, in which Christians everywhere mark the culmination of Jesus Christ’s ministry, His death on the cross, and His resurrection from the dead.

You can find yesterday’s post here

“Save us, we pray, O LORD! O LORD, we pray, give us success! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD! We bless you from the house of the LORD.”

-Psalm 118:25-26, ESV

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!  Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.”

-Zechariah 9:9-10, ESV

The most important week in all of history began with the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.  The crowd had heard about His last and arguably greatest miracle: raising Lazarus from the dead.  They thought that Messiah had finally come to establish His Kingdom.  When they saw Him fulfilling Zechariah 9:9 by riding in to Jerusalem on a donkey as Solomon had a millennium earlier (1 Kings 1), their suspicions were confirmed.  But they misinterpreted what the Kingdom would look like, assuming it to be a political kingdom that would overthrow Rome.  This is understandable considering that Zechariah 9 describes a king ruling over a land with physical boundaries (v. 10), setting prisoners free and restoring their fortunes (v. 11-12), and specifically naming Greece as the enemy Israel would fight (v. 13).  Thus, they answered with the words of Psalm 118:25-26, saying “Hosanna”, which is literally “save us”.  To them, Messiah would resurrect the glory of Israel so that it would exceed even its height in the age of David and Solomon.  Their entire identity was tied up in being Jewish, so their expectation of Messiah was that He would not only free Israel from the Romans but also make it the greatest nation on earth—and by extension make them the greatest people on earth.  In essence, they had placed their hope in human means and a human kingdom.

The Nature of the Kingdom

What they didn’t realize is that the Kingdom Jesus ushered in was not physical or political—at least not yet—but in fact spiritual, superseding all other kingdoms.  Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2 foretold a stone not fashioned by man—the stone the builders rejected in Psalm 118:22—toppling the great powers of the world and establishing a kingdom that filled the whole earth.  Jesus said the spread of His Kingdom would be a slow process, likening it to the growth of an insignificant mustard seed into a mighty tree or leaven slowly working through all of the dough (Matthew 13:31-33, Mark 4:30-32, Luke 13:18-21).  The Kingdom of God also does not spread in the same manner as earthly kingdoms.  As the Gospel spread throughout the Roman empire, the Holy Spirit changed people’s hearts, which slowly changed the culture.  This change was so pervasive that many of the most notable contributions of the Roman Empire on the world were actually due to Christian influence on the Roman Empire.  But as with all empires, Rome’s time eventually ended, but Christianity continued to spread, and has kept spreading to this day.  While Christendom in certain parts of the world has certainly declined at times, Christianity overall has never not grown.  In our own day, we can be discouraged because we see so many empty churches in the West, giving the illusion that Christianity is dying.  However, while the number of Christians (at least on paper) in the West is certainly declining, it is exploding in places like Africa and Asia.  And many of the dying churches we see in the West compromised the Gospel long ago so thoroughly that they cannot be considered true churches, and many who attend them are not true believers in Christ.  So even while many so-called churches are dying, the true Church is growing.  The stone not cut by human hands is slowly and steadily filling the whole earth.  This happens not by military might, political agendas, economic prosperity, or social activism, but by God transforming people from the inside out.  God infuses life into people dead in sin and caused them to come alive much like the way leaven (made up of living organisms) infused into dough (made from dead materials) causes that dough to come alive and grow.  Similarly, we were all dead in sin apart from Christ, who must make us alive in order to incorporate us into His Kingdom. 

Where Will We Place Our Trust?

What Institutions Will We Trust? God’s Kingdom is centered on Jesus as the source of life, whereas all other institutions lack the source of life and will therefore pass away.  Nations rise and fall, power dynamics shift, and ideologies come and go.  But God’s Kingdom—the Church—continues to grow.  Therefore, we must not ultimately trust in any political or economic power, ideology, or system.  A year ago, we watched as one of the mightiest and most sophisticated militaries in the world falter when invading a foe they should have been able to dominate quickly.  Instead, that military that looked so impressive on paper has proven to be all but incompetent, meaning they are now caught in a quagmire that has killed more of their soldiers in a year than they lost in all of their conflicts since World War II combined.  They should therefore serve as a warning that we cannot place out trust in tanks, warplanes, and sophisticated weapons.  Not even science is worthy of total trust, as even seemingly well-established theories can be overturned as our knowledge grows.  As I observed in a previous post, science—while an incredible blessing—is tainted by the way sin distorts our ability to think and reason.  As a result, we cannot place our ultimate hope in it.  The events of the last few years have proven how untrustworthy all human institutions are.  All of these have introduced significant volatility in the market as well, yet again reminding us of the deceitfulness of riches.  And while this past year has seen the monumental overthrow of Roe v. Wade, it has also seen increased political division, proving yet again that we cannot place our hope in politics.  Thus, all institutions are fallible and therefore not worthy of our total trust.  Certainly we can and must place some level of trust in them—otherwise society could not function—but we must not place ultimate trust in them.  We must trust the one institution that will last: the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, which will turn the world upside down (Acts 17:6)–or rather right side up.  So this Holy Week we must trust not in military might, economic prowess, scientific advancements, or any of the other earthly blessings flowing from God’s common grace for the benefit of people.  Instead, we must trust the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who is sovereign over them all and say, “Hosanna!  Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD”.