God’s Impeccable Timing
This year, we're collaborating with writers across the Augustine Collective, a network of student-led Christian journals, to bring you a series of short devotional articles during this season of Lent, the 40-day period prior to Easter. Find this series also published by UChicago's CANA Journal and UC Berkeley's TAUG.
By christopher ho kim
“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!’ 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!’ 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.” [1]
The opening scene of The Prince of Egypt, an animated retelling of the Book of Exodus, shows the Israelites under Egyptian rule. Amongst the montages of intense slavery, we see Pharoah order his people to kill all the Jewish male firstborns. In an effort to protect her son, Jochebed makes a basket out of reeds and floats her baby Moses down the Nile, with Moses’ sister Miriam close behind to keep an eye on the basket. The basket falls into the hand of the Pharaoh's daughter, who takes pity on the child and declares that she will raise him as her own. The scene ends with Ofra Haza and the accompanying choir singing, “Deliver us to the promised land.” God would, of course, go on to use Moses to deliver the Israelites out of Egypt through a series of ten plagues, the last of which would be the most devastating.
“So Moses said, ‘Thus says the LORD: “About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again.”’” [2]
God gives explicit instructions on how the Israelites would be spared.
“‘Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. [...] and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. [...] For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.’” [3]
The Israelites go on to keep the Passover by holding a feast for the Lord and remembering how He had delivered them from Egypt.
In John 12, Jesus enters Jerusalem during what John writes as “the feast,” and God shows His impeccable timing in two significant ways. [4] First, Jesus, the true deliverer, arrives during a time of remembering deliverance. The feast that John describes was the Passover, when the Israelites were “passed over” from God’s wrath and judgment. Second, Jesus, the true lamb of God, enters amongst the zoological lambs of the earth. Jerusalem would have been filled with people bringing in sacrificial lambs to observe the Passover feast, and Jesus would have been right amongst them.
So, it is even more significant why the crowd cries “Hosanna!”—the meaning of which can be found in Psalm 118:25 where the Hebrew words of yasha (“deliver, save”) and anna (“beg, beseech”) combine to form a definition meaning “Save, please!” [5] The crowd cries for Jesus to save them, and soon, He will.
As we enter Holy Week, I encourage us to appreciate the beauty of God’s timing in all aspects of our lives.
Christopher Ho Kim is a senior at Cornell studying Biology and Society.
SOURCES
[1] John 12:12-15 (ESV)
[2] Exodus 11:4-6 (ESV)
[3] Exodus 12: 3, 6-7, 12-13 (ESV)
[4] John 12:12-15 ESV
[5] Piper, J. (1983, March 27). Hosanna! Palm Sunday [Review of Hosanna! Palm Sunday]. Desiring God. https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/hosanna