The Cry of the Human Heart

In one paragraph

Pastor Brian picked up where last week's message left off, asking what would finally soften the heart of national Israel so that they would say, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord." The answer he worked toward was a single Aramaic word: Hosanna. And before the evening was over, that word had stopped being about Israel and started being about everyone in the room. Last week closed...

Read together

1. Matthew 23:37-39 main passage from last week, Jesus lamenting over Jerusalem and foretelling they would not see him until they said blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord
2. Psalm 118:26 source of the phrase blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord, which rabbis would quote to trigger recall of surrounding verses
3. Psalm 118:22 the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, used as a rebuke of religious leaders who rejected Jesus
4. Romans Paul's description of Israel experiencing a hardening of the heart so the gospel goes to the Gentiles
5. Isaiah the spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me, anointed to announce good news, freedom for captives, sight for the blind, used to describe the good news Israel would one day receive
6. Jeremiah 30:1-17 read at length to show God's promise to restore Israel through judgment and healing, including the time of Jacob's trouble and the future raising up of a king descended from David
7. John 12:12-13 the triumphal entry, crowd shouting hosanna and blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, used to explain the meaning of hosanna as a cry of save us

What was said

• Read Jeremiah 30 this week and look for the phrases 'in that day' or 'the day of the Lord' as markers that point to future events still to come.
• Ask yourself honestly whether there is an area of your life where you have been treating the counsel of Jesus casually, doing things your own way instead of following his guidance.
• The next time you hit a wall in a situation you cannot solve on your own, try saying the word 'Hosanna' out loud as a genuine cry for God to save you out of it.
• If you have never spent time in the Old Testament prophets, pick up Isaiah or Jeremiah this week with the lens Brian described: God is speaking about Israel as Israel, and many of those promises still have a future fulfillment ahead.
• Come to the Shabbat dinner at the Hunters' house Friday at 6:30, especially if you have never been, and stay for the teaching on Sukkot.

Talk about it

1. Brian talked about the Hebrew word for 'reject' carrying the meaning of treating something casually, not just casting it away completely. Is there an area of your life right now where you have been treating the counsel of Jesus casually rather than actively rejecting it? What does that look like in practice?
2. Brian described the books of the prophets as having a 'now and later' quality, where some things were fulfilled in Jeremiah's time, some we now look back on, and some still point to future events. How does thinking about scripture that way change how you read the Old Testament prophets? Does it open anything up for you, or does it raise new questions?
3. Brian said that the chastisements of God are always the least severe measures taken to bring about the maximum possible correction. He used the image of stepping on a rake and just getting mad rather than softening. When you look back at your own life, can you see a time when repeated difficulty was slowly working on your heart before you finally surrendered? What eventually got through?
4. Brian described Hosanna not as a word of celebration but as a desperate cry, the kind you cry when you have tried everything and nothing has worked. Is there a situation in your life right now where you are still trying to solve it on your own rather than crying out Hosanna? What is making it hard to get to that point of surrender?
5. Brian closed by connecting Israel's coming cry of Hosanna to the condition of our own hearts, saying that Hosanna is the cry of the human heart that finally realizes it cannot save itself. What would it look like for you personally to make Hosanna less of a church word and more of an honest, daily posture toward God?