We don’t do much to celebrate most holidays on the calendar at Christ Fellowship. If you want to celebrate Valentine’s and Groundhog Day, that’s just fine. It’s just not something we pay much attention to around here. But Christmas and Easter are pretty important and I believe Easter should really get the priority. Without Easter, there is no Christmas. Without Easter, we don’t celebrate Jesus. Without His death, burial and resurrection, why celebrate His birth?
So, this week I would like to prepare us for Easter by observing what is called “Passion Week.” Some people say it is called Passion Week because Jesus had such passion for us that He was willing to die on the cross in our place to pay the price for our sin that the Father said was due. I believe the real reason we use the word “passion” is after the Greek verb pascho, meaning “to suffer.”
It began with his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Sunday as found in Matthew 21:1–11; Mark 11:1–11; Luke 19:28–44; and John 12:12–19. We talked some about that yesterday morning. That triumphal entry fulfilled the prophecy found in Zechariah 9:9.
On Monday of that week, Jesus went into the temple. You can read about that in Matthew 21:12–17; Mark 11:15–18; and Luke 19:45–48. You might remember that story. Jesus found the temple to be filled with vendors making a lot of money selling things and He drove them out declaring that “My house will be a house of prayer but you have made it a den of robbers!” This fulfilled the prophecy of Malachi 3:1-3.
Tomorrow we will look at what Jesus did on the Tuesday of that week but for today I just ask you to read these passages and meditate on them for a while, thinking about what must have been going on in the mind of Jesus this most painful of all weeks.