Sword & Trowel 2018: Issue 2
scriptures they would have said: ‘He is fulfilling prophecy. He is accepting the mantle of Messiah as prophesied. The great moment has come of which he has spoken.’ But they did not remember the
words of the prophet, and John re- calls, ‘These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were writ- ten of him, and that they had done these things unto him’ (verse 16). Prophecy nevertheless gave voice to the occasion, the image proclaimed by Zechariah being held before their view for that final journey into the city where the Object of all prophecy should die.
3 THE VOICE OF WITNESSES The third voice, identified in verse
17, is that of the witnesses to the raising of Lazarus, and it was these people who gave rise to excited crowds surging out from Jerusalem. These were ‘the people therefore that was with him when he called Lazarus out of his grave’. Many if not most of them had been doubters. Some were probably members of the Sanhedrin council. They had observed close up the miracle of life to the dead, and some had even assisted in removing the grave clothes from Lazarus. At that time they could speak of nothing else, and they ‘bare record’, or more exactly, they went on bearing record to all they had seen. They went on telling people until the surge to the Bethany road was irresistible. ‘For this cause,’ John says, ‘the people also
met him.’ So now the Jerusalemites join the procession for the triumphal entry.
Matthew gives details that John passes over, because by the time John writes his Gospel he is aware that people are familiar with the synop- tics. Matthew says (Matthew 21.12) – ‘And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money- changers, and the seats of them that sold doves.’ (This is the second time he cleared the Temple, the first be- ing at the beginning of his ministry.) Then in verse 14 of Matthew 21 we read, ‘And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them.’
Immediately after the triumphal
entry, the Lord heals people in the Temple, the blind and the lame. But instead of being delighted, ‘when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; they were sore displeased.’ Their re- sponse is seen in the next voice.
4 THE VOICE OF OPPONENTS
The fourth voice, the voice of op- ponents, is recorded in John 12.19: ‘The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, Perceive ye how ye pre- vail nothing? behold, the world is gone after him.’ The Pharisees speak, but it becomes clear that the chief priests and the scribes, or most of them (who were Pharisees), are in- volved. They are against Christ; they
Seven Voices of Calvary page 5
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