Good day dear friends. We celebrated a great Palm Sunday yesterday. We were blessed by the procession of children and the great music of our choir and we even sang one of my favorite Spanish hymns, "Mantos y Palmas."
The sermon was called "Entry of Victory" given all that Christ did on our behalf during this Holy Week. Our study guide for today is this:
Monday: Yesterday’s passage from Mark tells of the fulfillment of God’s purpose for Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Let’s visit the passage from the Old Testament. Please find and read Zechariah 9:9 and Psalm 118:26. What do those verses say about this coming Messiah? Do you believe them to be fulfillment of prophecy? Another interesting item about this entry by Jesus, if you were to visit Jerusalem today, the gate believed to be the one used by Jesus is now shut and a Muslim cemetery is there. A Jewish messiah will never use this gate to pass due to the presence of this cemetery. Read what Ezekiel 44:1-2 says about that.
Zechariah 9:9 says, "Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey."
Psalm 118:26 reads, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD. We bless you from the house of the LORD."
I shared with the congregation that some believe there are 300 propheices about the coming Messiah in the Old Testament. A French mathematician, George Heron, calculated that the odds of one man fulfilling only 40 of those prophecies are 1 in 10 to the power of 157. That is a 1 followed by 157 zeros. Compare it to this; your odds on winning the state lottery are 14 followed by 6 zeros. We see two of those in the above OT passages. Zachariah's word was that rejoicing should come to Jerusalem because of her "king" coming to her "triumphant and victorious...humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey." After the first service, Dr. Tom House, our veterinarian said I could have spent half a sermon just on the miracle of riding a colt that had never been ridden before. The Psalm was the shouting by the crowd as Jesus entered, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord."
What struck me as the most interesting is that if one goes to Jerusalem today, the gate used by Jesus to enter the city is now closed. And in its place is a Muslim cemetery. The commentator sharing this said, logically, no Jewish messiah would ever enter through there even if the gate were open. This follows what the OT passage from Eze. 44:1-2: "Then he brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary, which faces east; and it was shut. 2 The LORD said to me: This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it; for the LORD, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore it shall remain shut." Shut now because "the LORD, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore it shall remain shut." Hmm. In spite of what recent "discoveries" and books published about Jesus and His divinity, the Bible remains true to what God said about this coming Messiah and His entrance into the holy city of Jerusalem. In Christ Jesus we have the fulfillment of God's purpose, and the start of all the events of this week.
Our Lenten journey is drawing to an end. Those of you who gave us things to eat or drink, have only until Sunday to wait. But for now rejoice in what the Lord God did for you and me through Jesus Christ. Please be in prayer for our special services Thursday and Friday at 7 pm, may God use us to bring others to the saving knowledge of Jesus.
PRAYER: Loving God, we thank you for all You did through Jesus Christ. Let us not take any of it for granted, let us rejoice in Your love and the victory You offer to us over sin and death. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Have a great and blessed day!
e.v.
