Another Palm Sunday...Matthew 21:1-11...Jesus is so much more

 


I squeezed in another snowshoe hike above 10,000 today.  Up the Red Mountain Trail and then off to climb to the Ditch Road and then down the Hells Hip Pocket ravine to the trailhead.  My snowshoes became skis a couple of times.  You can start to see the creeks emerging and also plenty of sign that elk and moose have been out and about.  You can access the Ditch Road from at least 3 different trails and it offers such views of the different mountain ranges.  It is also a break in the summer if you are heading up higher.  Howard and Cirrus above and Specimen below.


I pulled out 4 points from the passage this Sunday.

1.  The requirement of the Christian to practice simple obedience to the commands of Jesus.  The 2 disciples went and did as they were told and they found it just as Jesus had said.  Simple obedience in what seems the little things of life prepare us to be obedient in the big things of life.  

2.  The need of corporate praise of who Jesus is.  There is a crowd ahead of Him and a crowd behind Him crying out loudly that He is the Son of David.  The religious authorities object to Jesus and He says that if this praise wasn't coming from the people it would come from the rocks.  

3.  The fulfillment in such detail of this prophecy of His entrance into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey found in Zechariah 9:9 written some 550 years earlier.  The prophecies that Jesus is fulfilling with His first coming, His only God can do miracles, and this prophecy point us to the prophecies of His second coming to be fulfilled also.

4.  Jesus is so much more than what society makes Him out to be.  The crowd answered the question, "Who is this?" with Jesus (His given name), the prophet (a holy man) from Nazareth (His hometown) of Galilee (the northern region of Israel).  What they didn't say was that His name is also Emmanuel meaning God with us.  They didn't say that He was the One the prophets and John the Baptist where telling us about.  They didn't say that He came from His hometown of heaven from His Father.  They didn't say that His impact was not just the northern region of Israel but He is the Savior of the whole world.  Jesus is so much more.

Society today will acknowledge Jesus as a man with a given name.  They will also acknowledge that Jesus was a holy man with wisdom for others.  They will also label Him a Jewish man as His ethnicity and residing in the geographical region of Israel.  We have the opportunity to tell them that Jesus is so much more.  May we not miss the opportunity to answer the question "Who is this?" more fully.  

May your Holy Week be filled with much reading of the final week of Jesus before the cross.  May you join with others to give Him the praise that He is due.  May you be looking forward to the second coming of Christ as a fulfillment of all the prophecies given us of Him.

Adam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nFYw0lsC-M&t=407s

A simple man serving a great God and the local pastor of Stillwater Community Chapel (stillwater-chapel.org). We are in our 38th year of full time ministry. God directed us to this local body of believers on the Western Range of the Rockies to grow with them in mission and mindedness of Christ.

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