Focus: The Passion Week Of Christ (Pt.1)

Text: Mt.21:46

"But when they sought to lay hands on him, they feared the multitude, because they took him for a prophet."

We are now in the Passion Week of Christ, the week in which He died to save humanity from sin's shackle and Satan's thralldom. The week started with Jesus entering Jerusalem, and triumphantly riding on a donkey as the meek King of Israel. Matthew records that "all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee" (Mt.21:10,11).

Today, being Monday, was an activity-filled day for Jesus Christ. From His point of entry into Jerusalem He proceeds to the temple for an unfinished business. Remember that during His first year of ministry Jesus entered the temple and found those who were desecrating it, and He dealt with them. He scourged them, chased out of the temple all of them that sold stuff, scattered the changers' money, overthrew their tables, and scolded the people, and said to the sellers of doves, "Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise" (Jh.2:16). Now He's back, three years after, to finish off His work. This time around, after casting out the desecrators, He says, "It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves" (Mt.21:13). Right there too, He made the blind to see and the lame to walk (Mt.21:14).

From the temple He went to Bethany to pass the night there. In the morning, as He was returning to Jerusalem, He was famished, and seeing a fig tree in the way, He came to it and found no fruit, but only leaves. He says to the fig tree, "Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away" (Mt.21:19). The disciples could not believe their eyes that the fig tree instantly withered away. So the Lord taught them a great lesson on faith from it.

He also told parables that indicted the Jewish authorities and got them upset big time. In their anger they planned to have Him arrested, but they couldn't carry out their plan for the crowd was on His side.

On this second day of the Passion Week Jesus demonstrated the authority of heaven. He took charge of situations and judged evil. He showed us truly that "by him all things consist" (Col.1:17). The translation of J. B. Phillips says, "He is both the first principle and the upholding principle of the whole scheme of creation." 

It is in Christ that all of life finds congruence, coherence, cohesion or equilibrium. Without Jesus Christ at the center of things creation collapses and life loses balance.

He upholds all things by the word of His power. Wherever you find Christ you will find mystery, majesty, might and ministry. Someone says that "Jesus Christ is the meeting place of eternity and time, the joining of deity and humanity, the junction of heaven and earth."

Lessons for us:

1. You are God's house

You absolutely belong to God. Clean up your life for Him. Deal with the holes in your holiness. Your body is God's temple and the Spirit lives in you. Let God's house be God's house, nothing less and nothing else. Don't give people the permission to make your sacred space a place of buying and selling or where anything goes. Honor God in your soul and body. Make prayer a priority in your life.

2. You are God's tree

You are God's fruit-bearing tree. God planted you to bear fruits for Him. He requires and desires that you bear fruits. You can't afford to be barren or fruitless. God hates showy religion - all leaves and no fruit. Fruitless faith is of no use to God. We must avoid a religion of rituals without reality, of motions without movement, and of shadows without substance. G. Campbell Morgan says of certain people, "They are confident in their knowledge of truth, responding to that knowledge mechanically, technically; but their hearts, their lives, their characters, the inwardness of their natures, have been a perpetual contradiction in the eye of Heaven."

3. Exercise your faith

Learn from the parables of Jesus and take charge of your life by faith. The mountains of life give way only to people of faith. We live and prevail by faith. We take charge of life's circumstances by faith. Jesus says, "If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive" (Mt.21:21,22).

In this Passion Week of Christ I pray that we encounter Him afresh and appreciate His sacrificial suffering and vicarious death on the cross. Our lives are forever tied to Him. We are one with Jesus Christ.

Scriptures to read: (Mt.21:18-22; Mk.11:12-19; Jh.2:13-25)

by Bishop Moses E. Peter