Something I read today has stuck with me all day. Today we celebrate Palm Sunday, when the crowds were yelling and singing as Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey in clear fulfillment of an Old Testament Messianic prophecy. Yet those were the same ones who were weeping over His death just a few days later.

I wonder what they were expecting. Were they hoping that Jesus would somehow lead an overthrow of Rome and restore independence to Israel? Were they hoping He would set Himself up as a King over Israel?

He didn’t have an army that they could see. He never once spoke about raising up an army. He never told them they needed to rebel against Roman rule. In fact, He’s the one who told them to pay their raxes because the coins which bore Ceasar’s likeness belonged to Caesar.

I wonder how many understood that the kingdom Jesus kept talking about was not one of this world. It wasn’t defined by boundaries or geography. It was God’s active rule in the hearts of all who would believe in His name and have eternal life and be indwelled by His Holy Spirit. It was the Church that would explode in numbers after He ascended back into heaven.

But most of them didn’t get it. Jesus even said they wouldn’t. Their hardness of heart and spiritual blindness kept them from seeing what was right in front of them. Only a few understood, and even they didn’t fully realize what was happening until after Jesus rose from the dead. Even the twelve were most likely expecting what the crowds were expecting.

No one could have foreseen a suffering Messiah. No one predicted that instead of leading a rebellion against Rome, He would lay down His life for them and His own people and the whole world. No one was prepared for Him to die, especially not on a cross reserved for the worst of criminals in a manner that was the worst kind of torture the human mind could conceive.

But to those who believed, He gave the right to become sons and daughters of the living God.