The most important life ever lived was that of Jesus Christ and the most important part of His life was the momentous week that ended it. This is what we today have come to know has Holy Week and it starts off with the Sunday before Easter (Palm Sunday) with Jesus’s triumphal entry. During this week, I think we sometimes lose the meaning of what is going on during this week. We know and recognize Palm Sunday and then it’s like we automatically skip on ahead to Easter Sunday with no regards of the events that has led up to Easter Sunday. We sometimes seem to overlook when Jesus cleansed the Temple for the second time, His final teaching, the institution of the Lord’s Supper, His arrest, trial and crucifixion and ends with His resurrection. This was by far one of the most exciting and saddening 8 days in all of history!
The final week of Jesus’s life is so important that the gospels give a rather large amount of time to the last eight days. For example, Matthew devotes one-fourth (21-28) of his gospel to Jesus last days, Mark devotes one-third (11-16) to it, Luke gives a fifth (19:28-24) of his chapters to it and John, who is the most remarkable gives half of his gospel towards this (12-22). In other words, if you put all the chapters together from the gospels it would total eighty-nine chapters, with twenty-nine and a half recounting the last week and days of Jesus’s life and ministry. The beauty of all this is that it was planned from the beginning of creation and our salvation from sin depends on them.
This climatic week begins with the triumphal entry which is found in all four gospel accounts and they all begin with Jesus arranging what was going to happen. He enters Bethphage and he sends two disciples to go and get a donkey for Him to ride on as he enters the city. The interesting thing to me is that here is a king entering a city not on a mighty horse but on a donkey. Another thing, Jesus didn’t really need a donkey to ride on, because after all, they were already walking and getting close to the city. But Jesus needed to ride on a donkey so that Zechariah 9:9 would come true. (“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey”). And what a king he was. By coming on a donkey it’s as though he is saying I’m king of peace and mercy, not of war and destruction. We see the disciples lay down their cloaks for Jesus to sit on, they throw their cloaks on the ground along with all the people for him to walk on as he enters the city. Some even throw down palm branches. The people were before and behind Jesus shouting and praising Him. It’s also interesting to remember that Jesus was entering the city during Passover week, the time when people would be bringing their lambs to offer has a sacrifice. If only they recognized that Jesus was coming as the perfect sacrifice to save them from their sins once and for all! (But more on this later in the week).
The Jews did not recognize that Jesus had come has the promised Messiah, the one who had come to save them from their sins so that they would know God and live with Him eternally. They recognized him as a great prophet and maybe even the one who save them from the Romans, but they did not recognize Him as God’s Son!
Who is Jesus to you? Take time this week to read through the above mentioned Scripture and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to you who Jesus Christ really is. Easter and Holy Week is not just about reading through the Triumphal Entry and the crucifixion and resurrection, it’s about knowing that Jesus is the Son of God, the one who came to save us from our sins, the one who came to offer us life eternal with him in heaven. I close with a quote from C.S. Lewis…
C.S. Lewis wrote similarly, “You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool; you can spit at him and kill him for a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Thinking of Jesus merely as a good man or a good teacher is impossible, but what are the alternatives?
I became curious while working on my Sunday school lesson this week about what others believe or think about the resurrection so I decided to search for a few “good responses.” Our Sunday school lesson this Sunday (Easter Sunday) is from 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 and we are focusing on how Christ has victory over all things because he did defeat death and rose again. The apostle Paul was challenged by the Corinthians about the reality of the resurrection just as much as we are today, yet too many Christians today cannot simply state answer the question, “Why is the resurrection so important to the Christian faith?”
Coffee Conversations 