- Covered In His Dust
- Posts
- Luke Chapter 19 (part 2)
Luke Chapter 19 (part 2)
George Sisneros
March 24, 2024
Good morning! ☀️
"When disciples followed a rabbi, they followed him closely so they would never be out of his sight, never be someplace where they couldn’t hear him speak. They followed him so closely that his sandals often kicked up dust."
May you be covered in His dust.
If this is your first time getting Covered in His Dust, WELCOME!
Read Chapter 19 before reading my notes. They’ll make more sense.
Access previous notes on Luke by signing into your account. Click 'Read Online' at the top right of this post and scroll down to find them waiting for you.
Today, people worldwide are celebrating Palm Sunday, and I think it’s so cool that that’s exactly where we are in the Gospel of Luke. Thus, you’re getting my notes a day early.
I grew up Catholic and remember celebrating Palm Sunday, but I never really knew what it meant. As we entered the church, I remember being handed a palm branch, which my mom or one of my aunts would form into a cross.
Palm Sunday falls on the Sunday before Easter Sunday, marking the beginning of Holy Week, which commemorates the final week of Jesus Christ's life on Earth. Palm Sunday celebrates Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem!
Holy Week in Guatemala IS A BIG DEAL. It’s more celebrated than Christmas, and it’s not even close.
Schools are shut down.
Many businesses are closed.
Buses carry people hundreds of miles to be with family.
Jesus enters Jerusalem during Passover.
“Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ you shall say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.’”
Why does Luke record a colt, not a donkey?
The Greek word "πῶλον" (pōlon) can have several meanings depending on the context.
A young male horse or donkey or even a young animal in a general sense.
I love examining parallel stories in the other Gospels as I read and research. Let’s take a look at the Gospel of John.
And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written,
“Fear not, daughter of Zion;
behold, your king is coming,
sitting on a donkey’s colt!”
Here, John is referencing an Old Testament prophecy written over 500 years before Jesus's birth.
"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."
Try to imagine the scene.
Jerusalem’s population is around 40,000 people. Except this was at the beginning of Passover when it would swell to 100,000-200,000. And those numbers are conservative.
Josephus wrote that during Passover in Jerusalem, around 256,500 lambs were sacrificed.
Since tradition required 10 to 20 people to be present to eat one lamb, there could have been 2 million people in Jerusalem at the time. Scholars still argue about exactly how many people were there during Passover in Jerusalem.
Flavius Josephus was a Jewish historian who lived in the 1st century AD. He wrote detailed accounts of Jewish history and the Jewish-Roman wars, which provide important insights into that time period.
Here’s the point. It was crazy.
The story of Jesus being left behind during Passover as a boy now makes more sense. They looked for him for THREE DAYS!
Every year Jesus' parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover.
When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it.
Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him.
After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.
As Jesus rode in on a colt, 200,000 people or more were crammed into the city of Jerusalem.
My wife and I visited in 2022. The country of Israel is tiny. It’s approximately 1/12 the size of my home state of Colorado!
Jerusalem is surrounded by forty and fifty-foot walls. The area isn’t as big as you might think. Passover in Jerusalem must have been chaotic and crowded.
Photo I took at the Western Wall of the Temple
The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!”
"Hosanna" comes from Hebrew, written as הוֹשִׁיעָה־נָּא (hosha'na), and it means "save, please" or "save now."
So the crowd is crying out to Jesus, “Please save us!”
Back to Luke
“Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
The Pharisees sound desperate. They were worried that Jesus' popularity might cause trouble with the Roman rulers, so they tried to quiet His disciples to avoid any problems.
Or maybe they were jealous of Jesus' growing popularity and influence.
At the end of the day, their actions backfired, making Jesus' message even more powerful and influential.
He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
Saying the rocks will cry out is a more symbolic way of saying that Jesus is worthy of all praise. As the King of Kings, He will receive the praise He deserves—and if people won't praise Him, the rocks will.
This 2-minute video shows another interesting interpretation. I’ve walked this road, and I would definitely consider it as a possibility.
Jesus Grieving for Jerusalem
Jesus is saddened by the city of Jerusalem because He knows what will happen to it in the future. God’s chosen people didn't accept Him as their Savior and missed the chance for peace and salvation.
Jesus predicts that Jerusalem will be destroyed and suffer because it didn't understand the importance of His message. It shows how much Jesus cares for the people, even though they didn't believe in Him.
And just as Jesus prophesied, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, which led to suffering and devastation, fulfilling His words of warning.
In the final verses Jesus references two Old Testament Scriptures.
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.”
The temple wasn’t generally thought about as a house of prayer but rather a place of sacrifices. Jesus is challenging that idea.
Don’t miss the lesson.
The reason for sacrifices was for people’s lives to be transformed and made whole before the Lord Almighty. Sacrifices were never meant to be a religious act. That would be like reading your Bible just to complete a reading plan. We read the Bible to gain guidance, a transformed life and to hear the voice of God speaking to us through His Word.
“But you have made it a den of robbers.”
Jesus is often described as "angry" in these passages, but I don't think it would be a stretch to say He was disappointed. He knew something no one else knew: He would be crucified soon, the ultimate sacrifice for all mankind.
As a Christian, I’ve never understood Passover. Bits and pieces maybe, but not really.
I’m thinking of doing a deep dive into what it is, what it means to Jews and what it means to you and I.
If that’s something you’d like to see, let me know and I’ll send it out on Wednesday night.
DON’T MISS TODAY’S SONG. It’s inspiring.
I love you,
George
Uncovering Scripture
PS - Do you love Covered in His Dust? Someone you know is praying to understand scripture. Scroll to the top and click on one of the icons to share or email.
Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe to future notes here.
George Sisneros serves as a full-time missionary in Guatemala. He is the founder of Ordinary Missionaries and the El Rosario Christian Academy for Boys.
He’s been married to his wife, Vonda, for 25 years. He’s a father to nine children, five adopted.
George and his family will be expanding to Cuba in 2024.