Matthew 21:8-9 , Mark 11:9-10 - True Knowledge of Christ as Messiah

[Polanus1561]

Did this people have a true knowledge of Christ as the Messiah? Some commentators see them as fickle and that the crowd are also involved with supporting Christ's crucifixion (as He did not bring forth the kingdom that they expected). Or alternatively, they are indeed a small number of people who believed Christ was indeed the Messiah (with both Marys)

 

[earl40]

Did this people have a true knowledge of Christ as the Messiah? Some commentators see them as fickle and that the crowd are also involved with supporting Christ's crucifixion (as He did not bring forth the kingdom that they expected). Or alternatively, they are indeed a small number of people who believed Christ was indeed the Messiah (with both Marys)

To assume that Jesus did not have a large amount of true followers who were so fickle speaks against His Ministry In my most humble opinion. I look at it this way. Of the people who believed in Jesus I do not believe they were at the trial, and were at the crucifixion mourning Our Lord. Now in saying this, were the two crowds the same at the entry praising Jesus, and at the sentencing yelling to crucify? To equate equal numbers to the crowds is off.

55 And many women were there beholding afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him:

 

[Contra_Mundum]

Jesus ends up completely alone. Not even those with the best reasons to hope can maintain their own hope. Jesus prays for them, Jn.17:9-15.

I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled. And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.

This is the ultimate reason why the very closest to Jesus do not all apostatize to the last man or woman. Because they are kept by the Father.

The crowds were up and down, and all over the place. No, they did not all accept Jesus on his terms. That last point is HUGE. You cannot be a disciple of Jesus on your own terms. This is what was so hard then; and frankly, it is what is so hard even now. People, and whole churches, want a Jesus of their own imagination. They do not want the Jesus who demands everything of them by way of discipleship. He will not be made your King; he IS your King, and you have one duty: to serve him.

And, to be honest, the problem is also with us Reformed-types. We may imagine ourselves as being among his most loyal servants in our day, as devoted to his will and Lordship as his nearest disciples were in his earthly days. We obey his word! And yet, they were no more loyal in the day of his arrest than the rest of "his own" to whom he came, Jn.1:11. Peter, who swore he would not fall away even if the rest did--he failed also. Not even the Twelve were entirely his on his terms alone. What makes us think that we, in our own strength, can stay true to him, and on his terms?

We cannot. We are still as frail as the first disciples were. But, we also have his promise to us: Heb.13:5, "I will never leave you or forsake you," actually a quote from the OT (Dt.31:6), but grounded in the Savior's own terms: "Lo, I am with you always" (Mt.28:20).