04.01.2024
By Pastor John Crotts
When our hopes are dashed it is almost more painful than starting out hopeless. In the movie Cars 2, the arrogant race car, Francesco, quipped, “To truly crush one's dream, you must first raise their hopes very high.” In other words, losing feels a lot worse when you have high hopes of winning.
Learning more about the historical situation around the stories of the Bible provides a richness of understanding their significance. When throngs of people in Israel celebrated Jesus coming into Jerusalem on a donkey by waving palm branches and shouting, “Hosanna, to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (Matt 21:9), what were they so excited about? What did they imagine was about to happen?
They were energized by high hopes, but when we discover the historical background, we find that their hopes were misplaced and would soon be dashed.
Israel in the time of Jesus was occupied by the Roman Empire. The Caesar in Rome was literally the emperor of Israel at that time. The Caesar delegated his rule throughout the Mediterranean territories under its control, and the man in direct charge of Israel at this time was Pontius Pilate. Imagine, Roman soldiers all over the country. Pagan Roman soldiers. Pagan Roman soldiers that required extra tax money and had the muscle to back up their demands.
It is not overstating the situation to say that the Jews loathed the Romans. They desperately wanted them to be gone.
Although they had no earthly hope of defeating the Romans, they did have their Bibles, at that time the Old Testament Scriptures. They would read about times in the past when God empowered his people to defeat their foes, including times when Israel was a massive under-dog, like David and Goliath, Joshua at Jericho, and Gideon versus the massive army of Midianites. But they also read about the Messiah, and that sparked their hopes.
As the Old Testament unfolded these predictions of Messiah began to take shape, but before Jesus came to fulfill them, they were still not so clear. Yes, they knew he would be born of King David’s line in David’s city of Bethlehem. They knew he would do miracles and preach God’s truth like no other. Yes, they knew he would reign over and judge God’s enemies. How could this not be about the Romans, right?
But, there were other odd predictions that didn’t seem to fit their imagined version of Messiah. There are references to him shining God’s light of the gospel to the Gentiles, and of him suffering and dying in the place of sinners. Because these prophecies didn’t fit together as well, they were not really included in the people’s thinking.
So then, into that historical scene, with those expectations and hopes burning like wildfires in the hearts of the people of Israel, insert Jesus. First, they heard stories. Could it be true that the blind received sight? Is it possible that the man full of incurable leprosy was made perfectly clean? “My cousin was there listening to Jesus teach for so long that the food nearly ran out for thousands of people. He told me that Jesus prayed over a boy’s lunch and fed everyone full in the whole place. They even had leftovers!”
After the stories came the road trips. People had to see these things for themselves. Thousands of Israelites came from all parts of the nation to see for themselves. Jesus consistently exceeded their expectations. No one ever taught the way that he did. No one ever healed the way that he did. No one could cast out demons and create food and change the weather and raise the dead like he did. He must be the Messiah. Our high hopes are about to be realized at last!
Then he comes to Jerusalem. The people pour out of the city to meet him. Others were walking with him already. It must have been a joyful chaos. Then they brought the branches and started shouting Hosanna to the Son of David. The Son of David is a direct reference to the predictions that the Messiah will come from David’s line. Hosanna means “Lord save us.” All of their hopes were erupting into confident expectations. Their hopes were raised very high, as Francesco said.
But then their high hopes were dashed to pieces. He wasn’t going to defeat the Romans. He cleansed the Temple of its corruption and disputed with the religious leaders over their rituals and rules, but he even said rendering taxes to Rome was alright. This wasn’t going well at all. The bitterness of the people’s dashed expectations came out in their venomous cries for Jesus’s crucifixion later that very week.
What most of the Jews of Jesus’s day failed to see was that although their hopes for Jesus were dashed, they were hollow hopes.
They gutted out the parts of the Old Testament that didn’t fit what they wanted so badly to happen. But as Jesus died on the cross, God poured out his wrath on Jesus in the place of sinners. God was making a way for a much greater liberation than anyone could have anticipated.
Three days later God raised Jesus from the grave. That’s what Christians are celebrating at Easter. God validated all that Jesus said and did. He really was the God-man. The cross really was God’s way of justly punishing sin and providing the only way to have sins forgiven forever.
The Jews of Jesus’s day were right to think that Jesus was the promised Messiah. Sadly, they had wrong ideas about what Messiah ought to do. But even though their wrong hopes were dashed, Jesus provides ultimate hope––eternal hope. If anyone then or now turns from their sin and trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ by faith alone, God will forgive all of their sins and declare them to be right with God.
I’m sure living without Roman taxation and Roman oppression would have felt nice for the next 30-40 years for someone living in Israel back then. But having one’s sins washed away feels great for 30-40,000 years and then for all eternity. Have your hopes been dashed? Maybe they have been misplaced. Put your hope in God and all that he accomplished in Jesus.
