John 12: I am Victorious

Scott Jonas 

3/25/18

Series:        John           Title: I am Victorious    Text:  John 12

Exegetical statement:  Crowds meet Jesus

Goal:  That the hearers would follow Jesus, not the crowd.

John 12:12-19

The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 13 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!” 14 And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written,

15 

“Fear not, daughter of Zion;
behold, your king is coming,
    sitting on a donkey's colt!”

16 His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. 17 The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. 18 The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign. 19 So the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.”

         Our Palm Sunday text talks about the actions of a “large crowd.”  We are going to focus on that crowd and learn more about ourselves and Jesus.

         I’ve always been fascinated with crowds.  I once read a book called, the “wisdom of crowds.”  It was subtitled, “Why the many are smarter than the few.”  The book was about crowdsourcing.  Crowd sourcing is the practice of obtaining information or input into a task or project by enlisting the services of a large number of people.  In other words, if you combine the brain power of a hundreds or thousands then you can get very accurate information.  At a state fair, there was a cow in a pen.  People were asked to guess how much the cow weighed.  Over 17,000 people responded with guesses ranging from 300 pounds to 3,500.  The average guess was 1,272 pounds.  The real weight was 1,345 pounds.  The wisdom of crowds was pretty accurate.

         I think this crowd is was not a crowd at all.  It was 17,000 people who were not in the same place at the same time.  They came at different times of the day over a week.  This “crowd” was really just a bunch of disconnected people, separated by time and space.   A typical crowd is at the same place at the same time.  When we observe the behavior of large groups of people at the same place at the same time we do not see wisdom.  We see the opposite of wise behavior.

         LEt’s take the “large crowd” in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.  Many of them were there for the Passover festival.  The Passover Festival was one of three compulsory festivals along with Pentecost and Tabernacles.  So every Jew in the world had an ambition to travel to Jerusalem to remember the passover story from the book of Exodus.  If you were a Jew in Greece or any foreign land you would say, “This year here; next year in Jerusalem.”

         Accordingly, Jerusalem and the surrounding communities swelled.  It was like Mardi Gras.  It is difficult to estimate the numbers in a crowd.  We found that out at this year’s presidential inauguration.  But one year, the Jewish leaders recorded how many lambs were slain for this festival.  The number was 256,000.  There had to be a minimum of ten people per lamb.  That means there were over 2.5 million people in town beyond the nonJewish population.  An enormous crowd.

         This is what sociologists call a conventional crowd.  A conventional crowd is a large group of people together for a purpose.  They were all there to worship Yahweh through sacrifice and celebration.  Today when you go to a movie you are in a conventional crowd.  You are all there to spend too much money for a movie that you will soon forget.  If you are in a restaurant, a coffee shop, a school, or a work place you are in a conventional crowd.

         There are four types of crowds according to the pioneer in crowd research.  There is a casual crowd.  That is people simply in the same place at the same time.  Traffic is a casual crowd.  The only thing that connects you is being in the same spot.  Then there is the conventional crowd, same place and time but for the same purpose like a convention for example. The next is an expressive crowd.  An expressive crowd is together for a purpose but they also begin to speak with one voice.  A Mizzou football stadium when everyone begins to boo is an expressive crowd.  A political rally which chants “Four more years” is one.  As is a national youth gathering crowd that sings “Christ Alone.”

         The streets of Jerusalem start as a casual crowd.  Unconnected people milling around in the big city.  Everyone is surrounded by strangers.  But as more and more Jews arrive then it becomes a conventional crowd.  They are like fans getting into town for the Super Bowl.  You may not know the person next to you but there is a good chance that you both are fans of Yahweh.  You may be from different countries but their is a commonality of purpose and identity.  All it takes is for one Jew to yell out a known phrase and the rest will join in.  “We love Yahweh yes we do!  We love Yahweh how about you?”  Or something like that.

         Now Jesus had a crowd of his own.  In John chapter 11 Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.  When you raise someone from the dead, people tend to follow you.  Not just in principal but actually walking near you.  The people of Bethany who saw the miracle, they were sticking close to Jesus because how could you not?  Wouldn’t you stay with Jesus to see what happens next?  Then you have those who weren’t there when Lazarus came out of the tomb but they heard about it.  Of course gossip existed pre internet.  Word spread like debris from a tornado.  Everyone wanted to see Jesus’ encore.

         Then you had the Pharisees who were following Jesus around because they were looking for a way to eliminate him.  They either wanted him to screw up so they could discredit him or they wanted him to make himself vulnerable so they could kill him.

         The crowd in Jerusalem that day was a complex combination of all of these groups.  Those who loved him, hated him and didn’t know him.  Jesus enters this throng of people.  His actually has a dilemma.  How do you teach a multitude this large?  This goes way beyond the crowd at the feeding of the 5,000.  His voice would be drowned out.  Even if he miraculously projected his words at the right volume, they couldn’t see him.  So Jesus decides to teach them without saying a word.  He gives them a visual lesson.

         He rides into the city streets on a donkey.  This elevated him so people could see but there is more to his choice than that.  Riding a donkey into town was a deliberate claim to be messiah.  It was a dramatic reenactment of the prophet Zechariah  who said, “Rejoice greatly O daughter of Zion;  shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem, Lo your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding a donkey, on a colt the foal of a donkey.”  There is no doubt that Jesus is making a claim that he is the fulfillment of that prophecy.

         But his visual lesson was also showing what type of messiah he was.  In the east, the donkey was a noble creature.  Kings in the Old testament rode into town on a donkey, Jair, Ahitopel, Mephibosheth, the son of Saul.  A king rode into town on a horse when he wanted war but he rode into town on a donkey when he wanted peace.  This is the visual lesson the large crowd saw.

         Word spreads from traveler to traveler that this is the Jew who raised Lazarus from the dead.  They cry out Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel! 

         The crowd of followers see Jesus on a donkey and they don’t understand.  It would be three days after his death that they would get it.  The Pharisees see the crowds response and say, “The whole world has gone after him.”  The crowd was from all over the Mediterranean, Africa and Asia.  The Jewish leaders had to squelch this Jesus thing now before the crowd returns to their homeland.  If the next week allows them to  believe he is the messiah and they travel back to their nation then the whole world will believe.

         There is a fourth type of crowd which we have not mentioned yet.  Beyond the casual, conventional and expressive crowd is an Acting Crowd.  An acting crowd is together for a purpose, they cry out in one voice and they act.  This is where we get a lynch mob.  This is how a spontaneous protest forms.  An acting crowd can turn into a riot.

         People who would never act violently when they are alone do so in an acting crowd.  It’s almost as if society is the only thing constraining the awful behavior of people.  Then when a mob forms, it’s like society is taking off the restraint  and saying, “It’s ok to be violent at this time, at this place, with this crowd.”

         There are many people who are afraid of crowds.  Maybe you are.  You see the dangerous potential.  You see the group think.  Jesus understood the danger.  Sometimes he withdrew from the  crowd.  With the adulterous woman he was able to redirect the violent crowd.  Here he shows that he is all knowing, predicting the outcome of his visual lesson.  This crowd if it turned could have torn him apart.  Imagine if that was how he died.  A multitude destroys him.  He is grabbed from the donkey and executed by a thousand angry hands.  Then there would have been no institution at the last supper, no prayer for his followers, no arrest, no trial, no cross.

         Jesus knew all of this.  He knew that the accolades he was receiving were temporary.  These was not the same crowd that would yell “Crucify Him!”  That was a much smaller, hand picked by his enemies.  But JEsus never let the crowd sway him.  He knew who he was and he knew his mission and no crowd was going to change that.

         Are you being swayed by the crowd?  It is so easy to follow them.  The applause from the crowd feels great.  When they are on your side you are bullet proof.  Everyone pats you on the back and says good job.  That feeling is addictive.  We talk about peer pressure in school but we all are influenced by crowds.  There are secular crowds and Christian crowds.  Both can be dangerous. 

         I think the best way to not be overwhelmed by the crowd is to surround yourself with people who love you.  Jesus had the Father and the Spirit.  They knew each other perfectly.  Beyond that he had his inner circle, Peter, James and John.  He called them friends.  Then he had the 12.  They weren’t perfect but he had real relationships with them.  Then you have the rest of his followers, the women and men who he invested time and energy on, sharing the Gospel.  None of them could save him from the cross.  Few of them were brave enough to stay with him through it.  But Jesus showed us that we need to protect ourselves from the madness of popular opinion by connecting to Father, Son and Spirit.  Friends, family, church.

         I think that one of the reasons a crowd can turn evil is because a crowd does not know each other.  Evil loves to be anonymous.  That way there is no accountability.  You can do whatever you want in a crowd and no one will know.

         For some people the church can be a crowd.  If you come to worship regularly but you don’t know anyone then this is just a glorified crowd.  You need more than that.  We need more than that.