As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”

Luke 19:41-44

Imagine for a moment that you were Jesus. You’ve been preaching the Kingdom and performing miracles for three years; the people have followed you. Your time has finally come to enter Jerusalem in triumph as the King sent by God your Father to His own. The people have come out to welcome you, to cheer you, to praise God for you. You ride up the hill to where you can see your great city stretched out in the distance… and you say this?

Hold on a minute! You are the conquering hero sent by God to sweep the Romans before you, restore Israel to greatness and rule her as a mighty King, right? Haven’t you been telling everyone that the Kingdom of God was at hand?

I wonder… did the crowds know about this?

In due course, these words came to pass.

The disciples later understood that Jesus never had any intention to re-establish Israel to its former glory in the days of David and Solomon, for having an earthly kingdom within the pantheon of nations of this world was never God’s objective: No, not ever.

It would seem that there was a major disconnect between God’s purpose and the way the people understood God’s Kingdom. The understanding held by the people of that time, and frankly, many today as well, has much more to do with what they wanted from God, than it ever did with what God wanted. The people wanted to be free of Rome and go back to the way it used to be, but then how well had that ever worked?

God, on the other hand, wanted relationship with purpose, and sent Jesus to make that happen, and that is exactly what Jesus did: The people who cheered Him when He arrived in town that day had no concept of this, but that was about to change.

The next time we see Jesus in Jerusalem, He is chasing the money changers out of the Temple. Then we see Him teaching in the Temple, and being under attack from the Jewish leaders. He defeats every attack and then He goes on the offensive, passing judgment against their whole way of doing things. After that, He is arrested on trumped-up charges, and many of those same people who shouted “Hosanna” when he arrived were now shouting “crucify”, for Jesus was not the kind of Messiah they wanted.

His disciples were stunned and dismayed, the Jewish leaders were on the verge of victory, but there was still one man who stood in their way, and in one of history’s greatest ironies, that man might have been the only guy in town who understood the real nature of the Kingdom of God…