HOLY MONDAY

  In case you were worried that a week spent in the scriptures would lose your attention even for a moment, enter Jesus into the temple. What unfolds next is one of the most well-known scenes in biblical history, which, when viewed through the lens of the culture, points us once again to Jesus’ true purpose for this week.

  What it must have been like to stand in that temple, a crowd pressing you from every angle and the shouts of buyers and sellers alike assaulting your senses until it was hard to focus. Imagine the sudden commotion and stunned silence that would have fallen over the people like a cloud as Jesus, with hands worn and calloused, gripped the tables and benches and heaved them so. What did Jesus' voice sound like as over the sound of coins rattling to their resting place, he whispered, spoke, or shouted the words of Jeremiah, “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers.”

  Here, friends, context is key. Jesus’ righteous anger was not pointed at the mercantilism, for it was just a symptom of a greater sickness. No, his indignity was pointed at the heart of the issue. Misuse of the temple grounds had led the people of God away from putting on display the prophetic vision of the new creation. The people of God had packed the outer courts in order to make a profit off of what should have been worshipful, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, in doing so, they left no physical space for gentiles and outcasts to come to seek the true God. Have you? Perhaps you are a believer today, anxious to catch another glimpse of Jesus, eager to join once again in the chorus that greets him there, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” Have you packed your heart and mind, or even your church, with so many things that you’ve forgotten your doors are to be flung wide so that Jesus can be on display and call people to himself through your life? Wonderer, maybe you are still following this supposed Messiah with an investigative eye, waiting to see if He is who He claims to be. Have you left any space in your mind for the possibility that all of this is real and that there is a God who paid a price to be in a relationship with you?

  Either way, there is much to consider and many days still to come.

———

All to Jesus I surrender

Humbly at His feet I bow

Worldly pleasures all forsaken

Take me, Jesus, take me now

Source: www.passionequip.com & www.bible.com.  Find the entire series through a Bible Reading Plan on the YouVersion app or via www.bible.com; click Holy Week Bible Reading Plan for the reading plan.

HOLY TUESDAY

  Our journey continues as we walk with Jesus through Holy Week with an albeit troubling day. On the other side of history, we may take comfort in Jesus’ prediction of his own death, but can you imagine being one of his followers or a Greek who had traveled to hear from Jesus himself and the scene unfolding around you? Just as Jesus is at the height of his popularity and fame, after all of the celebrations we witnessed just two days ago, his tone turns to a future where the necessary thing is the hardest to hear.

  For the believer, with the knowledge that this prophetic parable would come to pass, you may be tempted to see this as something exclusive to Jesus. Certainly, He was the only Son of God, the only one who was able to lay down his life for the salvation of many, but what does it look like to live so selflessly for those who now claim His name, who call themselves Christian? We may read passages like Mark 11:24 and see the power that is available to us through prayer, but do we wield it the way that Jesus did when, even though his soul was troubled, he said to his Heavenly Father, “Not my will, but thine be done?” Do we live with such obedience because we long for a world in desperate need to hear the voice of God? If all you prayed for today was given to you, how many people would know Jesus as Savior as a result?

  And for the wonderer, how can it be that the whole crowd surrounding Jesus on that day heard that voice? How many people do you know who would willingly lay down their lives for the sake of another? What about for a stranger? Are you starting to see Jesus’ mission this week, his single-minded focus on being obedient to the task in front of Him so that the outsider could be brought inside, so that he could, as the people cried out, save?

  Each day is bringing us closer to the conclusion. Are we prepared for it?

———

Just as I am, Thou wilt receive

Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve

Because Thy promise I believe

Oh, Lamb of God, I come, I come

Source: www.passionequip.com & www.bible.com.  Find the entire series through a Bible Reading Plan on the YouVersion app or via www.bible.com; click Holy Week Bible Reading Plan for the reading plan.

HOLY WEDNESDAY

  The greatest stories have the greatest stakes, and the stakes have never been higher than they were as Jesus’ earthly ministry drew to a close. While Scripture doesn’t record what our Savior did on the Wednesday before the Cross, we can surmise that He and the Disciples would have been preparing for what came next, the celebration of the Passover. In one of the most intimate scenes of the week, we find that what was on the table for the followers of Jesus thousands of years ago is what is still on the table for us today.

  Here, believer and wonderer are on even ground, for neither needs the power of the gospel more than the other, both are confronted with the same issue. Each one of us has a sin problem. For some, this may be an easy thing to admit. Your flaws and shortcomings are as obvious to you as the clothes you wear. Others might find this admission difficult; after all, it can be challenging to acknowledge when the call is coming from inside the house. But, admit it or not, each of us, as a result of the fall of man, has been separated from God’s holiness by necessity. His perfection cannot stand proximity to imperfection. The result of our separation is death, both spiritual and physical.

  But God.

  God delivered us good news in the form of Jesus. This man who we have been following, who the crowds cried out to with shouts of, “Hosanna!” This Son of Man was the Son of God, and although he would be betrayed, and although He would be beaten, and although He would have to die an excruciating death, He willingly did all of this because it was the only way to close the gap sin had created. This is why those who have placed their faith in Jesus are said to be born again, and those who turn away from him have not.

  Our prayer is that this journey continues to serve as a reminder for the believer, to arrest your attention and remind you of what your Savior went through to purchase your salvation.

  Our prayer is also that God would use this journey for you who are investigating the things of faith. That by seeing this week not as stories in a book but scenes from history, the full weight of Jesus’ love and willingness to die for you would sink in, and you would, for the first time, feel the embrace of Heaven’s “welcome home.”

———

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch; like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

Source: www.passionequip.com & www.bible.com.  Find the entire series through a Bible Reading Plan on the YouVersion app or via www.bible.com; click Holy Week Bible Reading Plan for the reading plan.

HOLY THURSDAY

MAUNDY THURSDAY

  The scriptures are God’s gift to us. These intimate looks at God’s relationship with mankind put on display His character so that we can know Him and respond with worship. Take, for example, the dinner we have been observing for the last two days. Here in the upper room, it’s as if we’re there at the table with Jesus. If you close your eyes, you can picture what it must have been like as the disciples laughed with each other, poked at one another, and then grew quiet as Jesus began to celebrate the Passover with them.

  In the Jewish tradition, the Passover represents a moment to celebrate God’s mercy and salvation from their enslavement in Egypt. As a result of the Pharaoh’s refusal to set God’s people free, even after nine incredible signs displaying His power, God sent the tenth plague, the most terrible of them all. He warned his people that that very night, He would make his way through Egypt and claim the firstborn son of every household, and He instructed his faithful followers to sacrifice a spotless lamb and to mark their doorways with its blood so that when God saw the covering, He would pass over their home, and spare their son. And so He did.

  It was during this commemoration of God’s mercy brought about by the covering of blood from a blemishless Lamb that Jesus, whom Isaiah prophesied would be led to slaughter, told his disciples to worry not. He looked into their eyes and told them that he would have to leave them in order to prepare a place for them in Heaven. Can you imagine the tension in the room, the way the dust must have hung silently suspended in the candlelight, the creak of the floorboards if anyone dared shift their weight?

  Here, across the table from us, is a man whose feet scuffed the earth, who laughed and who cried, who felt the joy of love and brotherhood and the breathtaking pain of betrayal, and here, across the table from us, is the lamb of God willingly heading towards His own death. Each beat of his heart, every breath drawn to form a few last words of instruction, moved him one moment closer to that brutal ending, and yet, with a smile, he whispered, “You believe in God, believe in me.”

———

Would you if you were there? Do you now?

And when I think that God, His Son not sparing

Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in

That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing

He bled and died to take away my sin

Source: www.passionequip.com & www.bible.com.  Find the entire series through a Bible Reading Plan on the YouVersion app or via www.bible.com; click Holy Week Bible Reading Plan for the reading plan.

GOOD FRIDAY

  It was all real.

  There was a man named Jesus, this much Tacitus will tell us. He was called the Christ, according to Josephus.

  His feet swept the dust and sunk in the dirt. His hands, cracked and lined with age, held the dead and dying, the loved and the lying.

  Where he went, the people followed, and where he went, the spirit surged, and where he went, the father smiled because it was all real.

  And because it was all real, our debt that was due came due, and it called. Its payment had to be real, and the payment had to be permanent, and the payment had to be rendered. That which was wholly unclean had to be made holy and clean.

  So the man named Jesus, the one who, out of his parted lips, came the words, "I am," confessed that it was all real.

  So the beatings were real, and the lashes were real, and the blood was real, and the thorns were real, and the mocking was real, and the shame was real, and the scorn was real, and his mother's pain was real, and his brother's pain was real, and his pain was real.

  And the Cross, not old or rugged but fresh and ruthless, not gilded but jagged, not clean but cutting, was real.

  The celebrated became lonely, and the skeptic believed. His death, long predicted and predestined, became real.

  There, at the fulcrum of time, was nothing...

  And it was all real.

———

See, from his head, his hands, his feet,

sorrow and love flow mingled down.

Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,

or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Source: www.spokengospel.com & www.bible.com.  Find the entire written series through a Bible Reading Plan on the YouVersion app or via www.bible.com; click Holy Week Bible Reading Plan for the reading plan.

SILENT SATURDAY

  “Take a guard,” he said, “make the tomb as secure as you know how.”

  Imagine thinking it would make a difference. Of course, Pilate didn’t know what we know now. Even in his wildest imagination, this executor of Roman authority could never have seen all of this coming. Why? Because Pilate’s concern was protecting the tomb from the outside, while all along Heaven and Hell were colliding within it.

  Of course, some of us are still stacking guards outside of the tomb, aren’t we? In spite of our faith, we hide things away from the resurrection power of God. We cram our little caves full of regrets, secrets we believe to be too difficult for God to redeem or shame so dark as to blot out His resurrecting light. We offer everything to Him except what we keep for ourselves.

  And we shake our heads at Pontius Pilate.

  What a beautiful invitation Holy Saturday is, and yet how seldom do we accept it? In our earnest eagerness to celebrate the empty tomb, we fly so swiftly by this opportunity to stop and reflect on the meaning of an inhabited one. There his body lay, broken for you. Today need not be a day of great sorrow, for unlike the Apostles, we know how the story ends, but it can be a day of great surrender. What remains in you that needs to be handed over? What needs to die in order for you to live?

  It was our sin and God’s plan that led Christ to the Cross. It was his power and his authority that ruptured the darkness and resurrected Him to everlasting life. But on this Holy day, we must ask ourselves the question: “How am I still working to secure the tomb and keep the power of resurrection inside?”

  Sunday’s coming. Will you experience the fullness of that freedom when it does?

  Call back your guards. Take a deep breath, He shall soon do the same.

Source: www.passionequip.com & www.bible.com.  Find the entire series through a Bible Reading Plan on the YouVersion app or via www.bible.com; click Holy Week Bible Reading Plan for the reading plan.

EASTER SUNDAY

  Imagine Mary’s eyes, how they must have burned and stung with tears of frustration. Watch as she wipes at them softly at first and then furiously, emotionally wrung out and yet seething with something beyond pain. They had taken him, they had murdered him, and now his body was just past this stone they had rolled into place to keep her away from him. How quickly must her eyes have widened and then squinted almost completely shut as she shielded them against the bright light before her. Listen for the sound of Roman armor slamming into the soil, the dust kicking up as the men collapsed at the sight. Then a pause, and then…

  “I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.”

  Come and see.

  Come and see the empty tomb, Mary who breathlessly cries out to Him, “Rabboni!”

  Come and see, Mary, mother of James, who collapses at His feet in worship.

  Come and see, Cleopas, whose heart burns in the presence of the resurrected Christ.

  Come and see, Simon, whom Jesus renames Peter, and who insists on a death worthy of his Savior.

  Come and see the holes in his hands and his side, Thomas, so you know the price paid for you.

  Come and see that your brother is Lord, James.

  Come and see, 500 others who look upon Him and believe.

  Come and see, Saul, killer of Christians, and be transformed into Paul, the great Church Father.

  Come and see, teachers, that He was the law you so love.

  Come and see, preachers, that He is the Word made flesh.

  Come and see, history, that the flow of time is bent around Him in a triumphant arc.

  Come and see, death, that your sting is final no more.

  Come and see, believer, that you were purchased for a price will be welcomed home.

  Come and see, skeptic, the pierced hand still reaching out toward you today.

  Come and see the place where he lay. Let your eyes rest where he once did, but don’t linger. He didn’t.

  Go quickly and spread the news. Tell them the truth of His word that you’ve read and the miracles you’ve seen in your life and the lives of others. Wherever you walk, wherever you work, invite them, with your kindness and generosity, and with the honesty in your eyes that shines amidst any circumstance, to come and see.

  He is risen.

––––––

Crown him the Lord of life,

who triumphed o'er the grave,

and rose victorious in the strife

for those he came to save;

his glories now we sing

who died and rose on high,

who died eternal life to bring,

and lives that death may die.

Source: www.passionequip.com & www.bible.com.  Find the entire series through a Bible Reading Plan on the YouVersion app or via www.bible.com; click Holy Week Bible Reading Plan for the reading plan.