The HOLE in Holy Week

As Jesus entered Jerusalem from Bethany, where He was staying to be near the temple for the coming feast (Passover), the people chanted and sang to Him and about Him. They covered the dirt streets to ensure the hoofs of the donkey He was riding didn’t touch the ground. They were welcoming their coming Messiah, their Savior. It must have been an amazing sight to see.

But before long they changed their tune, and they acted as if He was never who they thought He was in the first place. They were asked on Friday if they wanted Him released to them, to which they cried all the more louder “Crucify Him!” What could have possibly happened to change their minds and their hearts so dramatically?

I believe this is a clear picture of our human condition: everything needs to be as we expect it to be. The Jewish Nation was waiting for a conquering king who would conquer their enemies and set their nation up to its rightful place as God’s chosen people. Things weren’t going the way they thought they should. They wanted the world to be conquered for their well-being, but instead God conquered death for the well-being of the world (rf. John 3:16).

Is this the view you have of your Savior? That He needs to save you the way you want to be saved? How do you think Moses felt when God gave Him a staff to show Pharaoh? Or Joshua when God told Him to march with his worship band out front into battle? Or Saul when little David asked if he could fight the giant Goliath? Or the disciples when Jesus told them they needed to be like children to enter the Kingdom of God? I bet they were a little less than excited with these propositions, but we can look back on how their obedience brought deliverance every time.

We don’t need to lower our expectations of Jesus, but the opposite – we need to raise them. We need to start to expect our Savior to save us from the worst of all attackers: ourselves...from the complacency that Jesus is not saving us the way we want Him to, that can lead to the indifference of who He really is. Instead of being just like those folks almost 2,000 years ago, we need to accept the completed work of Jesus as enough, and start obeying His word over our will. Then the response we will hear will be “Hell?...NO.”

Come and join us for our Easter gathering this Sunday. We will be celebrating the completed atoning work of Jesus the Christ on the cross at Calvary, and His defeat of death on Sunday proven by the empty tomb. Jesus answers the question “Where does one go after we die?” once and for all, and we will be looking to His Word for our way to lean into Him to experience His glory. In order for the tomb to count, we need to count on the tomb – it is the fullest empty that can and will ever be.

In His grip,

Pastor Pat