This blog will be posted on my website Palm Sunday. As I celebrate the first Holy Week after my full recovery from the Covid virus, I feel so blessed by God to be able to commemorate with you the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, His death and His resurrection. It is the most important week in human history. Without the events of that week, we would be unable to approach our heavenly Father in direct prayer and worship; we would still be sacrificing innocent animals to atone for our sinful nature and our inability to live by God’s laws because we would not have the Holy Spirit to give us the strength needed. There would be no Christian life for me to write about without the events of that week. I cannot thank God enough for sparing my life once more, so you and I can praise Him together for the love, grace and mercy He made available to us that week so long ago.
John 12:12-19 and Matthew 21:1-11 describe Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem that day as their Messiah and their King. We call it Palm Sunday because the crowd laid clothing and palm branches along his path as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt that had never been ridden by a human before. John writes that the reason so many people turned out was because word had spread about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. The size of the crowd welcoming Jesus had the religious leaders helpless to stop him.
It only took five days for those religious leaders to have that crowd that shouted “Hosanna” as Jesus entered Jerusalem shouting “Crucify him” to Pilate, My Christian brother or sister don’t think for a moment that you or I would have been any better than those people. The Holy Spirit has spoiled us, but without His guidance and strength we would have given in to the pressures of those religious leaders. There are some religious leaders today who place too much emphasis on Jesus’ humanity, but that week speaks to me about Jesus’ deity. If I heard the same voices that praised me five days ago calling for my death, my human response would be, “I’m not dying on a cross for them! I don’t even like them, much less love them!” But Jesus had the love of God in His heart for the entire world even those who choose not to accept His sacrifice for their sins and the gift of eternal life through God’s love, mercy and grace toward them.
I pray that we never take the events of that Holy Week for granted and never think we are any better or stronger than any other sinner like we were before we gave our hearts to Jesus Christ and were reborn spiritually into God’s family. It is God’s love and strength that make us His son or daughter, all we did is accept that gift and share His love with others.