The whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:  “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”                                                                     Luke 19:37-38

But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed.                                                               Luke 23:23

Same crowd.  Perhaps even some of the exact same fickle souls played party to both crowds, lifted their ‘loud voices’ in both sets of cries.  How on earth could this happen?  How could just a few days change so very much?

There are some days in our own lives that change everything.  A loved one dies, a dream dies, a child arrives, a debt is relieved, a job is lost, some things alter the course of our lives instantly for the better or worse.  This crowd didn’t necessarily experience any of that.  They didn’t necessarily experience a crisis of faith a midst a struggle in life.  They were just plain fickle.

And yet Luke called them disciples.

And they appeared, by all that we see, to have recognized this Man as King of Kings.  They praised the Lord.  They laid down their coats in submission.  They knew not just with their heads, but with their hearts that this Man was someone more.  And they acted on it.

What were they missing, where is the flaw, because the praise died and the death cries rose and the tide turned and the people fell away so far and so fast.  What went wrong?

Again, Luke hides gems.  I don’t know the motivations of mens’ hearts and I don’t know why history has played out in this way, but I think Luke felt he had some idea of why this crowd was so quick to turn.

The whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen…

Did you see it?  Their praises looked right and genuine and well founded and secure and informed, but where did their motivations lie? In the miracles.

Between the two previous verses, 19:38 and 23:23, Luke records not one single miracle.  Yet he twice points out that Jesus taught daily in the temple (19:47 and 21:37).  When the miracles took a back seat to the serious study of His Word, when the emphasis fell away from what can He do for me and toward what might I do for Him, the tide began to turn.  The people’s actions revealed the truth that lay deep in their hearts:  they didn’t love Him, they loved what He did for them.

I’ve so often wondered how, in just one tragic week, such inexplicable and drastic swings could happen among such a chosen and treasured people.  The ultimate answer is that it was the plan.  It had to be.  For my own eternal standing, praise God it was the plan.  But men’s hearts, lives, emotions… I’m lost to see how they could fall so tragically and so lightening fast.  From publicly professed devotion to cries of execution, that is a fierce jump.  And to make both shouts with such vigor as to be repeatedly professed as “loud shouts,” they cried for both with conviction.

When the miracles stop, when it becomes harder to see what’s in it for you, that’s when the heart reveals all that is within.  When you are left with nothing more under the tree, no gift waiting to be opened, does your heart still soar as others continue to unwrap their treasures?  When there is only the giving to be done, when you feel as though there’s nothing left for you, it is then that you see what rests within you.  And for so many called disciples that week, they found selfishness rested below the surface.

This nasty test has been known to reveal all manner of latent evil.  When you lose all your possessions, do you, like Job, praise the Lord who gives and takes away? When you receive great and public praise, does your heart relish the attention with an inward pride?  When great reward finds it’s way into your coffers, do you rationalize how very well deserved it really is?  When tragedy strikes, what dormant sin arises?  When glory shines, what sleeping transgression awakes?