What do you do when you have done everything you can do and nothing has changed?
That is a different question from what to do when you have done nothing. If you have money problems and will not look for work, or you want a better marriage but keep a hostile home, the answer is not a deeper prayer. It is to take part in the process. But many people have taken part. They have cooperated, given, waited, prayed and stayed kind, and the situation has not moved. For them, Palm Sunday holds a word that has been sung for centuries and is rarely understood: Hosanna.
What Hosanna Means
Hosanna is often treated as a worship filler word, or even as another name for Jesus. It is neither. Hosanna is a cry that means “God, save us.” It comes from Psalm 118, which pilgrims sang on their way up to Jerusalem for the feasts: “Save us, we pray, O LORD!” (Psalm 118:25).
When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, the crowds spread their cloaks and cut branches from the trees, the palm branches that give Palm Sunday its name. Then “the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!’” (Matthew 21:9). They were not singing a nice chorus. They were pleading for mercy.
Why the Crowd Cried Out
The people lining that road were carrying a heavy load.
They had lived under Roman rule for nearly a hundred years and were second-class citizens in their own land. They paid taxes to Rome and the temple tax the law of Moses required, and that tax had to be paid in an approved coin. The money changers in the temple courts profited from the exchange, which is why Jesus overturned their tables that same week (Matthew 21:12-13). The governor, Pontius Pilate, was harsh; Luke records Galileans “whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices” (Luke 13:1). Many felt their own religious leaders had made their peace with Rome to keep their position. And Jesus was not the first man people hoped might be the Messiah. Others had risen and fallen, and the Book of Acts remembers two of them (Acts 5:36-37).
Against all of that, Jesus’ words land with new weight: “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30).
It was also Passover. Jerusalem was crowded with pilgrims celebrating the night God delivered Israel from Egypt, while they lived under another tyrant and another system of oppression. The city was a powder keg. That helps explain how a crowd could go from “Hosanna” to “Crucify him” in a single week. When tensions run hot, people make bad decisions.
Hosanna in the Highest
“Hosanna in the highest” is not a polite prayer. It is not “thank You for the day and put a hedge of protection around us.” It is the prayer you pray when every other option is gone: “God, save me, and save me in the highest fashion. Do something I have never seen You do before.”
Scripture shows three things God is for the person praying that prayer.
1. God Is a Refuge
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1). And “The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe” (Proverbs 18:10).
A refuge does not mean the circumstance changes. It means you are kept safe inside it while it is still happening. There is always some gap between calling on God and seeing the answer. When Jesus told a royal official, “Go; your son will live” (John 4:50), the boy was healed that very hour, but the father still had to walk home before he knew it.
Sometimes the gap is long. Romans 8:28 promises that “for those who love God all things work together for good.” It does not say that everything that happens is good. You can be going through a bad situation without that situation going through you. Refuge means you are under attack, but in the presence of the Lord you are kept. Whatever happens to you does not have to happen in you.
2. God Is a Deliverer
God is not only a refuge. He is “my stronghold and my deliverer” (Psalm 144:2). He is able, capable, willing and faithful to bring you out.
In Acts 12, James had just been killed and Peter was in prison. The church prayed, and an angel led Peter out past the guards. Peter “thought he was seeing a vision” (Acts 12:9). God still delivers.
Christians need to hold both truths at once. Run into the refuge and be safe, and keep believing for breakthrough. Some hardship can be redeemed, but that does not mean you must accept it as permanent. You do not have to stay broke, in danger, abused or sick forever. The God who delivered Peter can bring you out.
3. God Is the King Over All Kings
Ephesians 1:22 says God “put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church.” Jesus is the head of the church, and He is more than that: He is head over all things, and He has been given to the church. Jesus is a resource for the believer.
Life becomes a series of appeals. You ask for the manager, then the regional manager, then the vice president. You see one doctor, then a specialist, then another. You send out the resume, try to refinance, get a second opinion. Eventually the appeals run out. The woman in Mark 5 “had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse” (Mark 5:26).
Every authority on earth answers to Him. “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1). He is “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” (Revelation 5:5), and He fights for His people.
Taking Your Case to the Highest Court
That is what the Palm Sunday crowd was doing. “Hosanna in the highest” meant going past every human authority to the One they all answer to.
Most of us fight our battles on the ground level. We try to fix our adult children, our bodies, our jobs and our country in our own strength, or we argue about them online. But “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities” (Ephesians 6:12). The answer is to take the case higher.
Jesus is alive. He rose from the dead, He is the King of kings, and He is coming again. In the meantime, He answers the prayers of people who look to Him and say, “Hosanna in the highest.” When you have heard no after no after no, He can say yes. If you have done everything you can do and nothing has changed, that is not the end of your options. It is the moment to appeal to the highest authority there is.