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“Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the LORD! Hosanna in the highest!”
᛭ INI ᛭
The LORD comes. That’s part of what it means that He’s the LORD. He comes to the Garden looking for Adam. He comes to the tower of Babel to see the work that the sons of man are doing. He comes to visit His people in Israel. He comes among them as their God in the tabernacle. Always coming, that’s the LORD.
It was His promise to come, and to come as His people’s King. “I will raise up for David a righteous Branch,” the LORD says through Jeremiah, “and this is the name by which He will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” So Zechariah also cried out: “Tell the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, Your King is coming to you, Righteous and having Salvation is He.’”
That is, after wall, what it means to come as King: to set His people free, to save them. His saving them can be summarized by His people, those He’s saved, as we gather around Him. We can summarize it in one word. You know the word. It’s “hosanna.” In that little contains everything you need to know about your LORD who comes:
CHRIST, YOUR LORD, COMES TO HOSANNA.
(I. He comes as promised.)
The Lord comes as promised. “All this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet.” Time and time again Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and even Paul tell us the same thing. As we confess from 1 Corinthians 15, “on the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures” that is, the Prophets. “Deep in the prophets’ sacred page, And grand in poets’ winged word, Slowly in type, from age to age The nations saw their coming Lord.” (LSB 810)
The Lord kept His Word. He didn’t say anything empty or void or meaningless. So it was that the Lord promised Judah through Jacob: “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor a lawgiver from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes; And to Him shall be the obedience of the people. Binding his donkey to the vine, And his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, He washed his garments in wine, And his clothes in the blood of grapes.” (Gen 49) So also Zechariah proclaims, “Behold, Your King is coming to you, lowly, and sitting on a donkey.” (Zech 9)
He must come that way, not only to match Judah’s blessing, but to be seen as the true son of David, for David commanded: “Have Solomon my son ride on my own mule, and take him down to Gihon. There let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint him king over Israel; and blow the horn, and say, ‘Long live King Solomon!’ (1-Ki 1)” Yet Christ is the “Greater than Solomon,” (Mt 12) the true and better Solomon, the true and better David, for Christ is not only David’s Son but also His LORD and God. (Ps 110)
(Transition.)
YOUR LORD CHRIST came as promised. When He gives a Word it is as He said, no matter how improbable it may be. “Go into the village, and you’ll find a donkey. Untie it and bring it to me.” He said. “The disciples went and did as [Christ] commanded,” because it was just as Christ said! No reason to doubt His Word at all, but more on that in a bit.
Christ still comes as promised. He comes holding “the Key of David, He opens and no one can shut, and shuts and no one opens.” (Rev 3) He comes to take possession not only of David’s throne, not only of Jerusalem, that is, “the holy, Christian and apostolic Church,” but to claim you as His own treasured possession, to claim the kingdom of your heart. For that’s why the Father sent Him, “to bring you out of the domain of darkness and into the Kingdom of His beloved Son.” (Col 1) And that gets us back to our one little Hebrew word today. You know the Word. We sing it every Divine Service—“hosanna”! After all,
CHRIST, YOUR LORD, COMES TO HOSANNA.
(II. He comes for one reason to “hosanna,” to forgive and save.)
Hosanna—הוֹשִׁיעָה נָּא—a Hebrew drawn from Psalm 118: “Save us, we pray, O LORD! O LORD, we pray, give us success! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the LORD! We bless you from the house of the LORD.” To ask Christ to save is to ask Him to do according to His most holy name, IHS. For He is named, IHS (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ, Joshua), “because He will save His people from their sins.” (Mt 1)
This is why Christ comes. He comes to save, which means He comes to bleed and die. He again fulfills the saving promise made to His people, and prophesied in Jacob’s blessing: “Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes.” Indeed His garments would be stained, not with the blood of grapes, however, red with His own blood. He the choicest vine, “crushed and bruised for our iniquities,” (Is 53) “by His wounds you have been healed.” (1-Pet 2)
Christ is “the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.” (Rev 22) Judah was “a lion’s welp,” (Gen 49) but not Christ. He’s the grown up lion. He, the lion, is slain as lamb, that all is wrong would be set right. As you heard in Last Week’s Old Testament: “The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox.” (Is 65) In fact, even saved sinners seated at His eternal feast! What a promise, indeed!
So, we too, sing our hosannas. In Matthew 21, we’re told He rode into Jerusalem to those cries of hope and praise. On Good Friday, He made good on their prayers. Dying at the hands of sinful men, for all sinful men, for you. Today, He rides in again. He comes humbly, borne on the lips and hands of another beast of burden. The gathering today is much the same as it was that first Palm Sunday. There were crowds ahead and crowds behind—Christ in the middle. So also, as we gather around Him, we’re before His glorious throne here and on the other side, the saints triumphant, there. Still crying out “Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna in the highest! Blessèd is He that cometh in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest.” And the Lord makes good on that cry of praise and hope, makes good on His very own name. His saving body and blood given through the blessed bread and wine for the forgiveness of all your sins—IHS (Hosanna!) for you!
(Conclusion.)
Christ comes. He comes as promised. He comes to do what He promised. He makes good on all that He says and promises. It’s all summarized in one little Hebrew Word today: Hosanna! CHRIST, YOUR LORD, COMES TO HOSANNA, to save and forgive you.
There’s no reason to doubt His promises. His death and resurrection prove that. But still “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” (Mt 26) So it was that even His disciples that first Palm Sunday, as John tells us, “His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when IHS was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written about Him and that they had done these things to Him.” (Jn 12) The resurrection makes clear a great many things. Christ’s passion and resurrection make clear His promises, that He keeps His word: A donkey ridden, affixed to a cross, an empty tomb, “this is My body; this is My blood; given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”
Because of the flesh, we’re no different than the disciples. Some things might not be fully clear to us either this side of resurrection on the last day. But we need not doubt. Scripture proves He makes good on each and every word He’s said. Even His own Name (IHS), and that little Hebrew word from Psalm 118: “Hosanna.” Even today,
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