Christ's Final Days

Holy Week

Change is something that we all deal with a lot in life. Some changes are so small that we don’t even notice them. Then some changes are much bigger and we can definitely tell that they are real life changing moments in our lives. There has been many life-changing moments in my own life over just the last couple of years. That is one thing that we can guarantee that we will experience in life over and over again. How we handle that change is one thing that can be a very good indicator on just how much our lives line up with what God has planned for them. Holy Week is a time when we honor a period of great change in one man’s life that has impacted the lives of billions of people and continues to do so on a daily basis. What I want to do today is spend some time looking at some of the events that occurred during that last week of the earthly ministry of Jesus right up to his arrest by the chief priests and elders.

The triumphal entry into Jerusalem that we read about earlier is not only what we refer to today as Palm Sunday, but also the beginning of the Christian Holy Week. This is the week that includes Christ clearing the temple, Jesus spending several hours in the temple giving listeners one final lesson by using parables, Judas negotiating with the Sanhedrin to betray Jesus, the final Passover meal with the disciples and the crucifixion of Christ on the cross. This final week of his life held a great significance in his ministry in that everyone would finally see the fulfillment of the most important prophecies of the Old Testament that would leave no doubt about the divinity of Jesus which was the main thing that the Jewish religious leaders were trying to avoid.

Since before his earthly ministry even began, the Israeli people had been awaiting the arrival of a Messiah that they hoped would help them get out from under their Roman rulers, and prevent them from being enslaved by anyone else, once and for all. They knew and believed what the scrolls told them of this Messiah. They wanted to pick and choose what to believe, which is similar to what many still do today. They read in Danial 7:14 “And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” In Jeremiah 23:5-6 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely.”

            They felt that this coming Messiah would be some strong and powerful leader who would do as Moses did and more. They wanted their messiah to help them defeat their Roman rulers once and for all and allow them the freedom they had not had for several hundred years. They wanted a powerful military ruler riding into town on a powerful stead; what they got was a man of unknown power riding into town on the back of a donkey. Instead of a man of visible power and might to dethrone and eliminate their Roman rulers, they got a man who preached being humble, loving, and meek to everyone else. They got a man who claimed to be the actual son of God.

While there were some who believed, for the most part what Jesus was saying; even his disciples had a hard time fully understanding and believing everything that he was saying and doing. They had seen him feed several thousand people on two separate occasions. They had witnessed him walk on stormy waters and then calm those same waters. They were allowed a clearer understanding of the many parables that Jesus used to teach the people. And yet these 12 men still had some doubt as to what Christ was saying. If we look forward for just a minute we see that even after his resurrection they questioned if this was Jesus in the flesh and not an angel or even a figment of their imagination. Most still seen him as a great prophet and teacher but in comparison very few truly believed in his divinity.

Jesus knew when he rode into Jerusalem that in a few short days the final purpose of his earthly ministry would come to pass. However, he knew that God still had some work for him to do. While his entry into Jerusalem was met with celebration in the background the religious leaders were plotting even more seriously just how to finally rid themselves of the man who they felt claimed falsely that he was the Son of God and the long-awaited Messiah that had been prophesied to save the Israeli people. Jesus and his disciples would spend their nights in Bethany at the home of Lazarus who he had recently brought back from the dead. He knew that spending the night in Jerusalem would make what he was going to do even more difficult than it already would be.

That next day Jesus and his disciples returned to Jerusalem to ramp up the intensity of his preaching. Jesus knew what his fate would be and he used his teaching in parables to continue to question the teachings of the Jewish leaders which he knew would increase their anger. These parables were also meant to teach the Israeli people what the truth of God’s word truly was, not just what they had been taught by the same power-hungry religious leaders. The one thing Jesus did that second day, that to this day is questioned by many people, was as they entered the outer courtyard of the temple, he turned over the tables of the merchants and money changers accusing them of turning the house of prayer into a den of robbers.

There are some who question his actions claiming that many who came to Jerusalem were poor and having traveled a great distance had no real way to bring the necessary animals with them for the sacrifices. They also point out that the money changers would have been needed to ensure that people had not only the required Jewish currency, and not Roman coin, but that they had the required amount as well. The problem was not necessarily that the merchants were doing what they were, it was that they were in the temple area and not outside the temple where they would not be corrupting the sacred area.       The main point of his actions was once again to anger the religious leaders so that they would unknowingly fulfill their part in God’s plan for the redemption of his children and that was Jesus’ death on a cross at weeks end.

They returned to the Bethany that night to rest returning that next day to continue once again to ramp up the intensity of his teaching to anger the religious leaders to the point they had no choice but to act. Once again the authority of Jesus is challenged by the chief priests, and it does not go the way they want it to as we read in Matthew 21:24-27 “Jesus answered them, “I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?” And they discussed it among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From man,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” So, they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

They still feared losing the power and control they had over the Jewish people. They coveted that power given them by their Roman rulers and rather than admit Christ was who he said he was they lied. Jesus continued his teaching with the parable of the tenants, which the priests knew was directed at them. Once again they refused to act as they wanted to because the people still seen Jesus as a prophet and they feared his arrest would immediately turn the people against them and they would lose that power that they coveted so deeply.

Matthew spends a great deal of time covering the various parables and other teachings that Jesus did that day in the temple. Among those are the parable of the wedding feast, the parable of the virgins and the parable of the talents. We also see Jesus give us the great commandment in Matthew 22:37-39 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Once again we see He teaches being meek and humble and not the powerful conquering leader that the Jews were wanting and expecting.

The Tuesday of Holy Week is when Jesus does the majority of his teaching in the temple. They return to Bethany and it is generally understood that they spend the Wednesday resting. This is also the day when everything begins to do a 180 and the mood of the Jewish people starts to shift. Wednesday is also the day when Judas meets with the chief priests and agrees to betray Christ for 30 pieces of silver at the earliest opportunity. Jesus knew that his betrayal was only a few short hours away. Just a couple of days earlier everyone was cheering the arrival of the “Son of David.” They were cheering for the one who they actually recognized as their Messiah. Now things were starting to turn. One of his most inner circle had chosen to betray him for 30 pieces of silver.

There continues to be a debate as to just why Judas decided to betray Jesus. He had been following him and supposedly believed in his message. When we look in Exodus 21:32 we see that God had given the price of a slave as 30 shekels of silver. Again, we don’t honestly know if there was any correlation between the two, however, when the chief priests, the guys who are supposed to know the Old Testament better than anyone else, give you 30 pieces of silver to betray the biggest threat to their power it stands to reason that at least some of them were aware of what the Torah had stated. The religious leaders finally had a way to arrest Jesus for all the supposed blasphemous claims that he had been making. While the Jewish people still were amazed by the miracles that he had done, the chief priests knew that if they did not do something quick they very well could lose the power that they coveted.

Thursday would see the Passover meal being shared one last time, Jesus washing the disciples feet, as well as the arrest of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Up to this point the only ones that knew what would happen that night was Judas and Jesus. When Jesus told them that one of them would be the one to betray him they all were in shock trying to figure out just who it was. We see in John 13 Jesus telling them that the one he handed the piece of bread to was the one who would betray him. Right after Judas took it he left to fulfill his part in God’s plan. When Christians take part in communion they are doing so as a remembrance of the Last Meal that Jesus shared with his disciples as a way to remember the sacrifice of Christ’s body and blood for our sins.

Later Christ would go to the garden to pray one last time before his arrest. He spends several hours before his death on the cross being questioned, mocked, and whipped with several very sharp objects. What is ironic is that when the Jewish leaders realize their laws forbid them from killing Jesus, they send him to Pilate. He lets them know that he finds no fault with this man but they have gotten the crowd so incensed that he had no choice but to relent and have him crucified after they demand the release of the criminal Barabas instead of Christ. I am not going to spend any more time today on what happened after his arrest. I hope that we will all be able to attend services on Good Friday and Easter and perhaps hear more about this period then.

Holy Week, the period between Palm Sunday and Easter is a period of prayer, fasting, and reflective meditation for most Christians. This week is the culmination of a 3-year ministry that saw Jesus fulfill over 300 different Old Testament prophecies. The power of the gift given to forgive the sins of all mankind is greater than we ever truly understand until we are finally in the presence of God and hopefully we can finally get the answers to a lot of the questions that we have when it comes to understanding all the God provides for each one of us.