Herodian coin from Judea with palm branch (right) and wreath (left), 34 AD.
And Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” And he answered him, “You have said so.” – Luke 23:3
They had remembered hearing the indictment of this gentile governor
while hiding their faces from his Roman judgment seat. Although complicit in Jesus’ prosecution, an illegitimate half-jew Herodian sat powerless while Roman troops ruled the streets of Jerusalem.
While Jesus was not the kind of Messiah King they had expected, He did acknowledge the title bestowed by Jews accusing Jesus of treason against Judah and Rome.
Most amazingly, Jesus has now appeared to these disciples after His resurrection! He continues to appear to hundreds of disciples; here and there, even in the locked rooms of Jerusalem.
Herod’s rule as tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea, holds no authority over Judea, ruled by Marcus Pontius Pilatus, Roman prefect (governor) under the emperor Tiberius.
Captive Israel, now named Judea, Samaria, Galilee and Perea had no king, only legions of Rome. Most people lamented for the days of their strong kings, David and Solomon. Occasionally some rebelled against Rome, led by misguided ambitious young lions in hope of glory.
Judge or King?
From the day Israel crossed the Jordan its people encountered many kings of surrounding kingdoms. The Hebrew people had followed the Lord, but judges would become unable to rule this stiff-necked and proud people.
15 Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life. 16 And he went on a circuit year by year to Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpah. And he judged Israel in all these places. 17 Then he would return to Ramah, for his home was there, and there also he judged Israel. And he built there an altar to the Lord.
“… Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.”
More than a thousand years before Pilate judged Judea, here marks the beginning of kings of the Jews. Samuel was no more inclined to accept a king of the Jews than the Roman governor Pilate.
6 But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the Lord. 7 And the Lord said to Samuel,
“Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.
8 According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. 9 Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”
A King to rule over Israel
A risen Christ Jesus must have reminded disciples of the Lord’s anointing of their kings. Its truth had not been as their traditions recalled, but rather a concession to the desires of their forefathers.
… “Behold, there is a man of God in this city, and he is a man who is held in honor; all that he says comes true. So now let us go there. Perhaps he can tell us the way we should go.” …
5 Now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed to Samuel: 16 “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines. For I have seen my people, because their cry has come to me.” 17 When Samuel saw Saul, the Lord told him, “Here is the man of whom I spoke to you! He it is who shall restrain my people.”
A Humble King and Triumphant Return
What was it worshipers near Jerusalem had sung while laying palm branches before Jesus?
“As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”
I will tell of the decree:
The LORD said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
It had been a week of anointing for the King of the Jews.
The Cross had not been the anticipated breaking of Israel’s oppressors, but the Lord’s embracing forgiveness for mankind.
And now with a resurrection begins the ascent to His Kingdom of righteousness and everlasting reign. Jesus certainly must have repeated stories of the kings and predictions of the Prophets. For the Gospels retell those very scriptures.
His disciples hear their beloved friend, the risen Messiah, tell why He had to be crucified on a cross and sacrificed for our sins.
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.
THE FOLLOWING IS AN UPDATED POST ABOUT JERUSALEM by Roger Harned originally published on
TALK OF JESUS .COM
APRIL 14, A.D. 2014
about Palm Sunday in Jerusalem
Do you with eyes to see Jerusalem as it is and was in the time of Jesus see it?
Hosanna to the Son of David:
It is not unlike today.
Jerusalem is no longer Holy to the Lord!
The dome of the false prophet boasts victory over the Jesus of the Jews.
Christ did not claim the city or the mount or the Temple.
The Messiah King of the Jews did not win the battle of the day.
AND thus far, JESUS has not won the battle of this day!
Peter, Philip and many others have encountered false teachers and false prophets from the very earliest days of Christ’s Church.
~ A.D. 30
Jerusalem had been taken by Rome, as it once had been conquered by Babylon.
The enemies of the Jews have their own gods. Stone idols, Myths, false prophets who are mere mortals from their cultural past, men and women who are and will remain dead.
The enemies of the Jews of Jerusalem have their own cities with their own gods.
For two millennia since that notable kingly entry of the Son of Man worshiped as He approached Jerusalem, anti-Christs have opposed their own Savior, the Messiah and Eternal King of not only the Jews but a KING of KINGS over all of the world for all of time into eternity.
You must understand that these are battles for God.
These are battles AGAINST God in every generation until the last.
CLAIM to Jerusalem is important
Is it an international island of Palestine?
Does Jerusalem legitimately reclaim its nation of Israel bequeathed once more to it by a United writ of the Nations which had opposed Zion’s rule for millennia?
Not even David ruled in Jerusalem for many years of his reign.
Yet as it is now, and in certain prescribed seasons, the hills of Jerusalem rise into a yearly international spotlight of the world. It was during one of these great feasts that the Messiah of Israel approached its gate on what Christians now call Palm Sunday.
פֶּסַח
pesaḥ [Passover]
Why do the Jews make pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover?
What were all the Jews commemorating?
And let us not forget that Jesus was a Jew - a son of man born to the line of David - the Messiah Savior of Israel making His way there on Palm Sunday.
God had saved the Hebrew people from Egypt and led them by His promise to Israel. Jerusalem was Holy to the Lord for the chosen people of the Lord.
Moses did not build the Temple.
THE TEMPLE
Built by Solomon and completed ~957 Before Christ,
King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed Solomon’s temple around 586 or 587 B.C.
Putting aside the false claims of the false prophet (that Jerusalem was not given to the Jews, but belongs to Arabs), God had a personal relationship with the Hebrew people. Moses had met with God in the Tabernacle — a tent of worship and forerunner of the Temple.
God would make His Presence known at various times… in the Tabernacle and in the Temple.
King David brought the Tabernacle to Jerusalem.
Yet the LORD commanded that The Temple would be built by King Solomon. This was at a time when the Lord blessed Israel with great power and might for His own glory.
AND of course no good Jew would neglect a reverence and respect for:
Moses who had led them from slavery in Egypt,
David who had conquered most of the people and lands of Canaan (Palestine) and
Solomon, who not only built the TEMPLE but conquered vast surrounding lands, nations and peoples who then sent great riches to Israel.
(But all that had been before great division and disobedience to the LORD by generations of Kings who mostly did ‘what was evil in the sight of the LORD.)
Therefore the LORD’s Temple built by Solomon had been destroyed, Jerusalem captured and then both eventually restored on a much smaller scale.
Israel’s false client Kings, The Herod’s
The Temple itself (we ought to remind ourselves) is NOT the Temple Solomon built which was completely destroyed.
The Temple also was NOT the Temple Nehemiah rebuilt, but a prideful project of Herod to build back bigger than the LORD’s intention.
A.D. 70
Herod’s Temple would be destroyed by the Romans just 40 years after Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, crucifixion and resurrection.
Christ’s entry into Jerusalem and history remain controversial even to this day in the year of our Lord, 2023.
Jesus had been rumored to have fed thousands in the wilderness just like Moses had fed the Hebrew people by the hand of God for forty years.
Word on the street had it that Jesus was approaching Jerusalem, again. AND, as always, the crowds gathered.. this time along the road from Bethany where rumor has it that this JESUS, the Galilean of Nazareth and Capernaum, had raised a man from the dead and told him to follow with the funeral crowds to Jerusalem’s Passover feast.
This time the crowds (under the watchful eyes of their Roman captors) would pour into the city as Jesus would enter like the conquering King David, look around (doing nothing) — and then leave.
But the overall purpose of the LORD God (which no mortal man understood at the time) was worship through a NEW COVENANT of grace and a personal filling of the Holy Spirit of God.
Jesus brought not the Tabernacle of God to Jerusalem, but the Very Presence of God.
Jesus was coming into Jerusalem for the Passover feast. Everyone would be there… waiting for their King and Savior.
Did He really have the power of God?
Is He the promised one, as John the Baptizer had preached?
One more thing about Jerusalem and its buildings:
Llike any city, people lived there, people worked there, people visited there.
(Tourism was and still is big, especially during the big religious holidays. And of course the out-of-town tourists here for the festival are NOT all acceptable to our ‘religion‘ which celebrates this feast.)
Like anywhere else, the rich ran things and the poor just got by.
The rulers of the city were the leading Jews: Priests, Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Temple guards and Temple police, officials of Herod’s household and officials of Herod’s governments of the city and of the region.
All of these had their role to play. And not so unlike today the religious establishment managed the money of their patrons well.
The King IS here. He IS in the Temple.
This particular Temple was built by Herod, grandfather of this King Herod. With Rome’s help the Great King Herod had been the great builder of many great buildings in Jerusalem and the surrounding area.
As a point of fact, the Temple (of any era) was just another Grande building used as a place of worship.
Imagine the grandeur of the present-day Vatican and you will have an image of Herod’s Third Temple, where Jesus would soon make a scene after riding triumphantly to the Gate of Jerusalem on a donkey.
Vatican City
Yet a church or Cathedral without Jesus is just a building.
The Temple without God was just a building.
BUT THIS WAS NEVER GOD’S INTENTION! THE LORD’S VICTORY IN JERUSALEM WAS NEVER INTENDED FOR A PALM SUNDAY PARADE. For this Celebration of Christ’s Holy Presence Was just a prelude to His victory Of the Cross.
Luke 1:5 In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. 6 And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord…
The Birth of John the Baptist
57 Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. 58 And her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her. 59 And on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child. And they would have called him Zechariah after his father, 60 but his mother answered, “No; he shall be called John.”
(a few months later in Jerusalem, which is near to Bethlehem)
Jesus Presented at the Temple
22 And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord…
25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26 And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. 27 And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, 28 he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said,
29 “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,
according to your word;
30 for my eyes have seen your salvation
31 that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel.”
33 And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him. 34 And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed 35 (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”
(Jesus was eight days old; then Joseph fled from the wrath of Herod to Egypt.)
We have picked up the story of Jesus’ early ministry 30 years later.
He is filled by the Holy Spirit, baptized by John, faced Satan for 40 days in the wilderness and returned to Nazareth and the surrounding towns to preach repentance.
Jesus moves to Capernaum. He teaches and performs miracles on the Galilean hillsides. All the time, of course, Galilee is under the administration and watchful eye of Rome. A Roman army could occupy any town at any time if they perceived a threat from its people or a charismatic leader with thousands of followers listening to his teaching. Of course, watchful Roman ears would have the intelligence to hear what such a Galilean would be saying to his followers. Rome and the gentile solders certainly knew Jesus prior to His triumphal entry into Jerusalem which would occur just three short years from now.
Christ Jesus is not only a teacher and friend of the Jews. Jesus IS a light and salvation to the gentile Romans.
The Prophesy of Luke 1:
30 …for my eyes have seen your salvation
31 that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to your people Israel.”
(Next we continue Jesus’ journey and witness to Capernaum and Nain in Galilee.)
Herod’s rule as tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea, holds no authority over Judea, ruled by Marcus Pontius Pilatus, Roman prefect (governor) under the emperor Tiberius.
