04/09/2020
Devotion
We are in the heart of holy week that begins on Palm Sunday and concludes on Easter Sunday. It was all the events that happened during the week that made Holy Week the most important week of all human history.
It began with Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a donkey to the shouts of the people, “Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest”. Sadly, many of those shouts would turn to crucify him on good Friday . Matthew 21:1-9.
Jesus went into the temple and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers reminding them that his temple is to be a place of prayer and carrying out God‘s ministry to the world. They had turned it into a place of greed and worldly activities. (Matthew 21:12-13.
Jesus took time to remind the religious scribes and Pharisees of how God really saw them. Hypocrites; false and blind leaders of the people. (Matthew 23:13-17)
Then as he gathered together with his disciples on Thursday of Holy Week in the upper room, He used the setting of a Passover meal to establish a new covenant with the Israelites that would also include the Gentiles. We now celebrate the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion. Then he told them to continue to observe (celebrate) the Lord’s Supper until we join Him in heaven. (Matthew 26:20-29)
Then, they left the Upper Room and went to the Garden of Gethsemane and prayed the most challenging prayer of his ministry. “Oh my father, if it be possible let this cup of suffering pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done.” Never forget that Jesus was fully man as well as fully God and felt all the human emotion any human would experience throughout Holy Week.
One of his disciples, Judas Iscariot would betray Jesus into the hands of the Roman soldiers for 30 pieces of silver. (John 18:1-12.) Another disciple, Simon Peter denied knowing Jesus three times when Jesus needed someone to speak up for him.
On good Friday, as Jesus stood on one side of Pilot and a thief named Barabas stood on the other side of Pilot, the crowd cried out, “Release Barabas, crucify Jesus.” Matthew 27:17. Now, God’s plan for man and salvation was about to come to fulfillment. The perfect lamb of God was ready to take man’s sins upon himself and on Easter Sunday, defeated man sins, physical death and the grave.
As Jesus was dying on the cross, he was between two thieves. One who cursed him and the other one finding forgiveness for his sins through Jesus’s words, “Today, you shall be with me in paradise. (Luke 23:39-43.)
Jesus’s last seven words or phrases from the cross sums up his ministry here on earth. Remember, his final words, “It is finished. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” (John 19:26-30). “Praise the Lord” as the song says, “He did it all for me!”
