Hosanna!

Last Sunday I taught our fellowship a new song called “Hosanna” by Paul Baloche and Brenton Brown. In my two decades of leading worship and church choirs I’ve run across a lot of Hosanna songs, and they’re often really good! Usually, though, these songs basically quote the crowds’ cheers found in the gospel accounts of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem a week before His death (see for example Matt. 21:1-11).

Now anyone who has been a regular church-goer has heard/said/sung the term “hosanna” many times. But what on earth does it mean? I’ll bet most of us have no idea!

The text notes in the NIV Bible translation put it well: Hosanna is “a Hebrew expression meaning ‘Save!’ which became an exclamation of praise.” So it originally was an appeal to God to save His people, and then over the centuries it became a general term of praise (like “Hallelujah”, another Hebrew term which literally means “Praise the Lord”).

If you look through your English Bible, you’ll only find “hosanna” in the gospels. But the cheering crowds were quoting one of the ancient psalms. Take a look at Psalm 118:25-26.

O LORD, save us;
O LORD, grant us success.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD.

If you read all 29 verses of Psalm 118, you’ll see that it is a song of triumph, with the people celebrating that God had rescued them from a great enemy. And you can just imagine those Jews in Jesus’ day seeing this miraculous teacher ride into Jerusalem and thinking that He would deliver Israel from the chains of the Roman Empire. They no doubt shouted “Hosanna!” with all of its double meaning, praising their King and asking Him to save them! Of course we know now that Jesus’ intention was not to save 1st century Israel from the Romans but to save us from our spiritual condemnation.

So back to our new worship chorus. As a student and fan of song writing I appreciate that Baloche and Brown wrote a song that is musically exciting with a good, singable melody. But even more, it’s obvious to me that they dug down deep and understood their scriptural theme, and then gave us this song to help us express our own hearts:

Praise is rising, eyes are turning to You
We turn to You
Hope is stirring, hearts are yearning for You
We long for You

Hear the sound of hearts returning to You
We turn to You
In Your kingdom broken lives are made new
You make us new

'Cause when we see You
We find strength to face the day
In Your presence
All our fears are washed away
Washed away

Hosanna, hosanna!
You are the God who saves us
Worthy of all our praises
Hosanna, hosanna!
Come have Your way among us
We welcome You here Lord Jesus

(c) 2006, 2005 Integrity's Hosanna! Music / Thankyou Music (Admin. by EMI Christian Music Publishing)

Now my reason for writing all this isn’t that you’ll think, ‘Wow, Paul Baloche and Brenton Brown sure are good song writers!’ But God has gifted these guys with song writing abilities, and then they were faithful to use it in such a way that we now have a new instrument--a song--to worship together as a community of Christ-followers here in McMinnville. So if you’re with us this Sunday morning, we’ll sing this song again, and I hope this tune will help you and I together say to our Lord:

We long for You.
You give us hope for new life.
When You are near, we don’t have to be afraid.
You have saved us!
We praise You as our King!

Hosanna!