Following the Crowd

From last Sunday, Palm Sunday, until next Sunday, Easter, is Holy Week.  The week began when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey.  A crowd gathered along the roadway and symbolically waved palm branches as a king entered Jerusalem.  That crowd “went out to meet him, shouting, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the King of Israel!’” (John 12:13).  A crowd also gathered early Friday morning, without a doubt most of the same people from last Sunday were in this crowd, but they exhibited a demeanor with a radical change.  The Friday crowd gathered and shouted, over-and-over again, “Crucify him!  Crucify him!” (Luke 23:21). 

How can a crowd welcome the King of kings one day and a few days later want to free the rebellion criminal named Barabbas and have Jesus executed in his place?  To which the Roman governor, Pilate asked, “Why? What crime has he committed?” (Matt. 27:23). 

But, “the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas” (Mark 15:11) and the crowd shouted back at Pilate, “Give us Barabbas!” (John 18:40).  Pilate, in political correctness, followed the crowd’s desire.  Such is the craziness of following a crowd, a deceived crowd.  But, isn’t that the point?  Jesus had “been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet was without sin” (Hebrews 4:15) and the “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3).  Similarly, we are under the judgment of eternal death, but Christ Jesus took our sins on himself and took them to the grave and left them there when He rose from the grave, in turn, all who follow Christ are freed from death to eternal life with our Lord.

The clamor of deceivers stirs us up, we follow the crowd, and become deaf to truth in midst of all the noise.  We have always questioned what the truth is throughout our human history (see Gen. 3:1-10), and with deaf ears follow the crowd that is deceived by the lie of satan and chant the lie together.  Truth can be hard to accept, but following the crowd is easy.  There is an emptiness in us that we desire to be filled, mistakenly we think that comes by recognition in the crowd.  We’re all that way to some extent – we just follow the crowd, which is why Jesus warns us to “watch out that no one deceives you” (Mark 13:5).

Following Jesus, not the crowd,

Owen <><